Spain-based Therese Rosenberg and UK-based Carey Ravden were among the early investors. It was through a friend that they first learned about offsetting their plastic footprint.
The blockchain was explained to them, and Ravden became enticed by the promise of 30-fold returns.
“I would do anything to help save the planet. It sounded fantastic,” says Ravden.
They became excited and invested: Ravden with 6,000 euros and Rosenberg 600 euros. It wasn’t long before the problems became apparent.
Rosenberg admits she was blinded by the great idea.
In an email, Jussi Saloranta, who introduced himself as a member of the company’s management team, told investors there was a problem with the blockchain. Later, it was revealed that the blockchain, in fact, never worked. Customers were advised by management to exchange the cryptocurrencies they had bought from the company for others. Even those, however, were of little value.
No.
The idea of some places in cyberspace having “real estate” value predates Snow Crash, but this is like a CyberKlondike Big Inch Land Promotion scam.
If you can’t avoid sanctions, your crypto scheme fails to address that particular itch.
It sounds hilariously serious.
(I’ve seen Scientology get back domains months after they expired, so they’re a long way from dead-dead.)
I just listened to a particularly bad interview on NPR in which the cryptocurrency-loving expert asserts that minorities in the US are leading the way and “investing” in crypto at much higher rates than white folks. I suppose that may be true but no numbers were cited in the interview and it’s not a statistic that I’d heard before. Is it true?
Regardless, this interview was a whole lot of nothing and never presented any kind of real case as to why more people should get into crypto other than vague hand-waving about so many people not being well served by the existing financial system.
Edit to add:
Apparently the person being interviewed was way overstating the extent that black folks in particular were buying crypto:
I think he saw a few rappers buying into crypto and racistly assumed that meant that all Black investors were doing it too… 
You’d think so, but the person being interviewed was a black woman. She made a point of saying “as a middle class black woman with a PhD the financial system hasn’t been working for me…” Which is interesting and possibly true but she really didn’t say what specifically wasn’t working and why Bitcoin is a solution.
POC are not immune to racial bias, of course.
Was her Phd in economics, cause that might explain the magical thinking…
She’s, of course, not wrong about the financial system not working for her and other POC, of course. But leaning into white dominated neo-liberal, libertarian “solutions” won’t help that much…
I misremembered. She said Masters, not PhD. Her LinkedIn profile says she’s got a Masters in Communications.
Here’s another interview she did a little earlier, which is funny because it’s saying “yeah, maybe the crypto market is cratering but hey, it’s still accessible and isn’t that great?”
Obviously not, but I think it’s just as plausible that she’s making these factually untrue statements about black folks leading the way in Bitcoin adoption because she works for the Blockchain Foundation and also works for consulting firms that absolutely want to encourage Bitcoin use for their own financial gain. So she’s not exactly a neutral observer. Creating the false perception that minorities are buying into this (and thereby influencing reality) is basically what she’s getting paid for.
could be, but she could also believe in crypto, hence her willingness to work for Blockchain foundation.
True.
“I started publishing a weekly newsletter that goes to my public policy network.“
She’s a lobbyist.
Right, that’s a much more succinct way of putting it than what I wrote.
What made the interview so bad was that NPR chose to interview a lobbyist uncritically, with no pushback and no reference to actual numbers.
