Is the media anti-tech—or just anti-crypto?

The New York Times has long had an implacable animus towards all things blockchain, and last week decided to double down by publishing a stupid and dishonest op-ed titled “Crypto is pointless. Not even the White House can fix that.” Authored by a pair of economists from the Biden administration, the piece seized on Bitcoin dipping below $70,000 to make the case that this time the crypto industry is truly cooked, and that blockchain technology is just a glorified database that even Big Tech firms won’t touch. The authors top this off by claiming the previous administration made a good faith effort to work with the crypto industry, but had to take a tougher approach in the wake of the Sam Bankman-Fried scandal. 

All of this is nonsense, and comes across as a last gasp for relevance by a dwindling band of Biden apologists. If you doubt it, go ask financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity, which this year accelerated their embrace of digital assets. Or poll the likes of Stripe, Shopify, or Meta about whether they agree blockchain is just another database. As for the claims of commonsense regulation, the authors fail to mention how federal judges repeatedly decried Biden-era crypto investigations as “arbitrary and capricious.” They also conveniently ignore Bankman-Fried had deep ties to the Democratic party and committed his crimes on Biden’s watch.

This sort of mendacity informs the rest of the piece, and reflects the sort of........

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