Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cases of heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination were more common among Moderna recipients than those who received Pfizer’s shot, according to a new study.

Canadian researchers analyzed a database and identified 141 cases of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, within 21 days of a dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, both of which utilize messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

That was compared with an expected number of just 20 cases.

Cases were much higher for young males, as previous studies have found, but were elevated even higher following receipt of a second dose of the Moderna vaccine compared with a second dose of the Pfizer shot.

The incidence, though, was higher after receipt of a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

“In this population-based cohort study, observed rates of hospital admissions or emergency department visits for myocarditis after mRNA vaccination for SARS-CoV-2 were higher than expected based on historical background rates, particularly after the second dose, among those who received the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccine, among males and among younger patients (18–29 yr),” Dr. Zaeema Naveed and other researchers with the University of British Columbia and British Columbia Centre for Disease Control wrote.

The paper was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Nov. 21.

Moderna and Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment.

Latest to Find Moderna Higher

Research dating back to mid-2021 shows that the incidence of heart inflammation is higher following a Moderna second dose for young males when compared to a Pfizer second dose.

Both vaccines are recommended as two-dose primary series.

Dr. Anish Koka, a cardiologist based in the United States, said on Twitter that the new study highlights the lack of action by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which continues to recommend that young males receive either vaccine.

“The rates of Moderna are really much higher for dose 2 in young men,” Dr. Walid Gellad, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, said. “I remain perplexed why US never acted on this information, which has been known for a year.”

Some other countries have suspended administration of Moderna’s vaccine—or both vaccines—for young people based on the vaccine side effects and the fact that healthy youth face little risk from COVID-19.

The CDC has also detected more cases of myocarditis (pdf) after receipt of a Moderna second dose in the highest-risk populations, using surveillance data.

U.S. authorities added myocarditis as a possible side effect for both vaccines in 2021, but have not changed their recommendations, which call for virtually all people to receive not only a primary series, but at least one booster shot.

U.S. authorities have said the benefits of the vaccines—primarily protection against severe illness—outweighs the risks.

The Canadian researchers said as much, though their only citation was to a non-peer-reviewed CDC paper from June 2021.

Other studies since then have concluded that the risks outweigh the benefits for one or more populations, particularly young males. The calculus has tilted because of the growing evidence of side effects like myocarditis and the worse performance of the vaccines against the Omicron virus variant and its subvariants, some experts say.

More on New Paper

The Canadian researchers analyzed information from a British Columbia surveillance platform that has data such as laboratory tests and hospital admissions. They examined data from Dec. 15, 2020, to March 10, 2022.

They found that 105 males and 36 females experienced myocarditis and went to a hospital or emergency room within 21 days of a shot.

Approximately 60 percent of the cases happened after a Pfizer jab, but the overall dataset included a higher level of Pfizer administration than Moderna administration.

Researchers calculated an overall rate of 1.37 cases of myocarditis per 100,000 mRNA vaccine doses, above the expected rate of 0.39 cases per 100,000 population. The expected rate was drawn from the incidence of myocarditis in the general population from before the pandemic.

The rates were far higher after a second dose and among young males.

For males aged 18 to 29 after a second dose, the rate was 23 per 100,000 after a Moderna shot and 5.8 per 100,000 after a Pfizer shot.

For males aged 30 to 39 after a second dose, the rate was 7 per 100,000 after a Moderna shot and 1.3 per 100,000 after a Pfizer shot.

Read more here…

“Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West,” Politico observes in a surprising admission which marks a stark reversal from prior mainstream media optimism and cheerleading of the White House’s blank check approach to supporting Ukraine. “Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.”

There’s clearly growing frustration among European officials over Washington’s refusal to push the Zelensky government to the negotiating table while an unprecedented billions worth of weaponry and defense aid pours in, risking unpredictable escalation between NATO and Russia. Meanwhile European populations will continue being the first to pay the price amid frigid winter temperatures and a simultaneous severe energy supply crisis even as some leaders still spout abstract ideals of “sacrifice”. 

And all the while Biden has continued rolling out his controversial green subsidies and taxes which are widely perceived as unfairly punishing European industries at this most sensitive juncture. 

A senior European official speaking to Politico additionally blasted the White House policy of in effect using the Ukraine war to line the pockets of American defense contractors while at the same turning a deaf ear on European pleas for some relief to the no-win situation.

“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” the senior official said. 

The person acknowledged a large-scale shift in sentiment happening, largely driven by the intractable ‘win in Ukraine at all costs’ stance of the US administration: 

The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies. 

“We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.”

But the US National Security Council has lately reiterated its position that the crisis is solely on Putin’s shoulders full-stop, while Washington is simply presenting ramped-up US liquefied natural gas delivery to Europe as fulfilling the need to “diversify away from Russia,” according to a NSC statement.

Even the typically compliant EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is now questioning and showing hints of losing faith in ‘united’ efforts to support Ukraine, acknowledging to Politico, “Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us.”

And for a more pointed breakdown of the problem as Brussels sees it…

“The United States sells us its gas with a multiplier effect of four when it crosses the Atlantic,” European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said on French TV on Wednesday. “Of course the Americans are our allies… but when something goes wrong it is necessary also between allies to say it.”

Another EU diplomat cited in the Politico report described that Biden’s $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries as part of the Inflation Reduction Act unleashed panic across European capitals. 

“The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” the EU diplomat said. “Is Washington still our ally or not?” This rising fury could spill into the streets as more European households are likely to experience shortages in electricity and heat this winter, further intensifying the pressure on EU politicians.

Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

Although the Free Democrats (FDP) are a part of Germany’s governing traffic light coalition, the party is increasingly at odds with its own partners on issues such as illegal immigration, energy policy, and plans to distribute huge sums of money to citizens.

Leading these critiques is the deputy leader of FDP, Wolfgang Kubicki, who has launched another attack against the other two parties, the Greens and the Social Democrats (SPD), that make up the coalition.

Christian Lindner, left, chairman of the German Liberal Party (FDP), and the party’s deputy chairman, Wolfgang Kubicki, right, attend a party convention in Berlin, Germany, Friday, April 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

The 70-year-old vice-president of the Bundestag described the migration policy as “an absolute piece from the madhouse.” The federal government is now financing “on behalf of the state a refugee ship in the Mediterranean for private sea rescue.” That is completely against the interests of “the southern EU countries and also against our own,” he said.

As Germany grapples with over 1.2 million migrants in less than a year amid a raging inflation crisis, a majority of the public believes that the country is accepting too many. Despite the criticism from Kubicki, FDP itself has long promoted mass immigration, including proposals to increase the number of accepted migrants to 500,000 per year to satisfy the demands of big business. However, Germans’ souring mood on immigration may be contributing to FDP’s decision to criticize its own coalition government on the issue.

Kubicki also slammed the government’s plans to distribute more free money known as “citizen money,” according to German newspaper Bild. He admitted that the party rejects citizen money while still advocating for it to the public.

“We as FDP are currently defending the citizen’s income – although that goes completely against the grain: We eliminate the incentive to go to work full-time if we allow high additional income opportunities with the citizen’s income. Work is no longer worthwhile,” Kubicki said.

When it comes to energy policy, Kubicki does not agree with the federal government either. The fact that nuclear power plants will not continue to run until mid-2024 is “the biggest toad that we FDP have swallowed.” It also annoys him “to death that we suddenly don’t want to produce any gas in the North Sea because Climate and Energy Minister Robert Habeck no longer wants it.”

Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

Republican lawmakers have decried the Biden administration for policies that they say are weakening America’s military through leftist indoctrination and “woke” ideological posturing to appease “Ivy League faculty lounges or progressive pundits.”

“Unfortunately, President Joe Biden and his administration are weakening America’s warfighters through a sustained assault fueled by woke virtue signaling,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in a report titled “Woke Warfighters,” according to Fox News.

“Our military’s singular purpose is to ‘provide for the common defense’ of our nation. It cannot be turned into a left-wing social experiment. It cannot be used as a cudgel against America itself.”

The report cites several examples of the administration’s stance. One example was Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first action after being confirmed by the Senate, which included signing a “racism” memorandum. The message directed all service members and Department of Defense civilian employees to conduct a “one-day stand-down” to discuss extremism within their ranks.

This was despite the fact that in a force of more than 2.1 million active and reserve members, there were only 100 such cases of alleged “extremism,” according to data collected by the Biden administration.

“The world is a dangerous place, and the Biden Administration’s insanity is eroding our greatest source of security in it,” said the report, citing the military’s promotion of Marxist critical race theory, sex reassignment procedures, and transgender ideology, as well as the punishment of those who oppose such things.

Another example was that of Bishop Garrison, who currently serves as Austin’s senior adviser on human capital and diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. The report said that Garrison promoted the “1619 Project,” which is based on a falsified history of the United States and part of a revisionist education being taught in some schools across the country.

Another case cited in the report was that of Kelisa Wing, the chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at the Department of Defense Education Agency.

“Wing also wrote a book to teach white children that they have white privilege and that ‘white privilege hurts a lot of people.’ The book comes with an exercise to help kids understand ‘what parts of my identity have provided me with privilege.’”

Sex Reassignment Procedures

Rubio and Roy pointed out that the U.S. military has historically not accepted candidates who do not meet certain physical and mental criteria, and some of the disqualifying conditions include allergies to peanuts or gluten, learning disorders, acute depression or anxiety, and skin diseases like eczema and psoriasis.

“People cannot even enlist with Invisalign or braces until they are removed,” the report states. However, recent developments have the military forces “proudly promoting and celebrating sex reassignment procedures, which can have months-long recovery periods, with complete recovery taking ‘up to one year’ for some procedures.”

Former President Barack Obama’s Defense Department in 2016 allowed unrestricted access to military service by transgender people. The GOP report argues that people with gender dysphoria suffer from mental health issues and are more likely to experience severe anxiety and poor mental health encounters, and “are eight times more likely to commit suicide.”

The report cites Thomas Spoehr of The Heritage Foundation, who said that because people with gender dysphoria are more prone to mental health issues, other service personnel “will be reluctant to rely on them” because of these issues, which would result in a section of “non-deployable service members.” This could also lead to resentment within the ranks as some members will never be “called upon to deploy,” the report states.

The Biden administration allows members to “transition” while on active duty, and allows individuals to use shower and bathroom facilities of their choosing. Military members are now being trained in the use of appropriate pronouns and “when to recommend their subordinates consider gender reassignment surgery,” said the report.

Punishing Dissenters of Woke Ideology

The report concluded with the Afghanistan withdrawal, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members. The United States also left behind billions of dollars’ worth of equipment, including 2,000 armored vehicles and up to 40 aircraft, which the Taliban seized and paraded.

“No one faced consequences. Rather, the Biden Administration continued undermining the military with woke ideology and ignored its failure. The only service member who received a reprimand from the Afghanistan debacle was a lieutenant colonel who criticized the way the withdrawal was executed,” the report stated.

The GOP report accused the administration of hypocrisy for the lieutenant colonel’s treatment when compared to a junior medic in uniform who used the Chinese messaging app TikTok to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The medic asks in the video, “How am I supposed to swear to support and defend the Constitution and a country that treats its women like second-class citizens,” adding “I will not rest, and I will not be silent, because this is an attack on women in this country.”

The report states that the medic has not received any disciplinary action for her remarks.

Chiefs Push Back on Criticism

In 2021, the service chiefs for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard rejected the assertion that the armed services are getting progressively “woke.”

“I think it’s an assertion that isn’t really grounded on facts,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said at a naval conference in 2021.

“We know that there’s strength in diversity; that is a scientifically proven fact.’’

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Defense and its education agency.

U.S. Army officials confirmed on Sept. 30 that the Army failed to meet its recruitment goal of 60,000 personnel as the service branch only recruited about 45,000 soldiers during the 2022 fiscal year.

“In the Army’s most challenging recruiting year since the start of the all-volunteer force, we will only achieve 75 percent of our fiscal year 22 recruiting goal,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement.

A new report from the electricity and gas utility National Grid (which serves parts of New York and Massachusetts) found a rapid increase in electric vehicles on the city streets and highways will require upgraded power grids to handle all the new demand. By 2035, a charging station could demand as much power as a sports arena or small town. 

National Grid expects by 2035, large charging stations serving EVs, from SUVs and pickup trucks to delivery vans and semi-trucks, would require 19 megawatts of peak power — that’s approximately what a small town uses. In 2045, those large charging stations could demand upwards of 30 megawatts of capacity, with peak usage of a large manufacturing plant. 

National Grid said current charging stations couldn’t serve the EV demand of the future, indicating significant power-grid improvements would be needed. It said expanding the charging infrastructure would take time:

“Building these high-voltage interconnections and upgrades can take years, which is why it’s important to take action right now.

“By making ‘no-regrets’ upgrades at ‘no-regrets’ sites, we can make sure fast-charging is there when drivers need it—and not a moment too late,” the report said. 

Today, the impact of EV charging on the grid is small, and there is enough excess capacity to handle the current fleet of cars, SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks. 

As EV adoption expands, so will the electricity demand, and as we’ve noted, nuclear power generation will be the best form of on-demand clean energy. The White House understands nuclear is the future for a sustainable clean grid, as they rush to secure a “large amount” of funding for a domestic uranium strategy. 

Unreliable solar and wind won’t be enough to power the Biden administration’s ambitious plan for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to be electric. Meanwhile, California set a target of 2035 to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered light-duty vehicles.

Momentum is certainly building to electrifying vehicle fleets. In doing so, increasing investments in zero-emission nuclear power production and sourcing uranium domestically will be the key to sustainably powering future EV demand. 

Authored by Ben Shapiro via The Epoch Times,

This week, another evil mass shooter unleashed horror at a gay club in Colorado Springs, killing 5 and wounding another 25. The shooter – whose name I refuse to mention in order to disincentivize future shooters, who seek notoriety – was clearly mentally ill: Just last year, the shooter reportedly threatened his mother with a bomb, resulting in his arrest. Yet Colorado’s red flag law, which could have deprived him of legal access to weaponry, was not invoked by either police or relatives. The Colorado Springs massacre, then, is yet another example of a perpetrator with more red flags than a bullfighting convention, and no one in authority willing to take action to do anything about him.

Yet the national conversation, as it so often does, has now been directed away from the question at hand – how to prevent mass shootings – and toward broader politics. Instead of seeking methodologies that might be effective in finding and stopping deranged individuals seeking murder without curbing rights and liberties for hundreds of millions of people, our political and media leaders have decided to blame Americans who oppose same-sex marriage, drag queen story hour, and “family-friendly” drag shows.

Disagreement with the radical Leftist social agenda amounts to incitement to violence, they argue.

Thus, NBC News senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny said, “there is a pipeline. It starts from some smaller accounts online like Libs of TikTok, it moves to the right wing blogosphere, and then it ends up on Tucker Carlson or ends up out of a right-wing politician’s mouth, and it is a really dangerous cycle that does have real-world consequences.”

Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times wrote, “it seems hard to separate (these murders) from a nationwide campaign of anti-LGBTQ incitement …. They’ve been screaming that drag events … are part of a monstrous plot to prey on children. They don’t get to duck responsibility if a sick man with a gun took them seriously.”

Brian Broome wrote in The Washington Post that the shooting could not be “blamed on mental illness”; no, he stated, “It’s right-wing rhetoric that sparks these nightmares …. The bottomless list of homophobes and transphobes on the right don’t need to throw the rock and then hide their hands. Instead, they use someone else’s hands entirely.”

The Left’s attempt to lay responsibility for violence at the feet of anyone who opposes the transgressive social agenda doesn’t stop with blame—it extends to calls for full-scale censorship.

“We’re living in an environment that’s driven by two things,” averred Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

“Politicians who are using us to bolster their careers by creating division and hate, and number two is social media platforms that are monetizing hate, and especially against marginalized communities. They’re—they’re choosing profits over hate, and it’s killing, literally killing our community.”

Social media, the logic goes, ought to shut down or demonetize any video disagreeing with the GLAAD agenda.

This is cynical politics at its worst. It’s also nothing new. The Left routinely cites violent incidents as reason to crack down on free speech with which they disagree. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Instagram) tweeted, “After Trump elevated anti-immigrant & anti-Latino rhetoric, we had the deadliest anti-Latino shooting in modern history. After anti-Asian hate w/ COVID, Atlanta. Tree of Life. Emanuel AME. Buffalo. And now after an anti-LGBT+ campaign, Colorado Springs. Connect the dots, @GOP.”

Yes, according to AOC, virtually every major mass shooting of the last seven years is the result of her political opponents—none of whom has called for violence. But in the world of the Left, disagreement is violence merely waiting to be unleashed. Which is why censorship, they believe, is the only way to achieve a more peaceful world.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has quietly approved plans to build a new crude oil terminal in the Gulf of Mexico off Texas, seemingly in contradiction to the president’s climate agenda.

The Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration approved the application (pdf) for Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal, one of four proposed offshore oil export terminals, on Monday.

According to the application, the port will be located offshore of Freeport, Texas. It will have 4.8 million barrels of storage capacity and add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity.

In its 94-page decision (pdf), the Maritime Administration said that it had approved the application because the construction and operation of the port is “in the national interest and consistent with other policy goals and objectives.”

“The construction and operation of the Port is in the national interest because the Project will benefit employment, economic growth, and U.S. energy infrastructure resilience and security,” the administration wrote. “The Port will provide a reliable source of crude oil to U.S. allies in the event of market disruption and have a minimal impact on the availability and cost of crude oil in the U.S. domestic market.”

Protests Over Planned Oil Terminal

The decision states that the project will expand on an existing Enterprise Crude Houston operated terminal located in Houston and will generate 62 permanent jobs over 30 years. Additionally, 1,400 temporary construction jobs will be created, with the majority of the workforce being hired from existing labor pools in Texas and Louisiana, according to the application.

The Environmental Protection Agency quietly issued its approval (pdf) of the project in October but stressed that “more emphasis is needed to ensure that environmental justice and climate change considerations are included in the project for the protection of overburdened communities.”

Read more here…

Authored by Omid Malekan,

If you’ve never seen the movie “There Will Be Blood” starring Daniel Day Lewis, then now might be a good time. Based loosely on an Upton Sinclair novel that satirizes the early days of the oil industry, it portrays the life of an independent oil man who rises to great wealth and power at the expense of his humanity. While that character’s arc is predictable, what makes the movie is his back and forth interaction with a young pastor whose own lust for power turns out to be just as great, and just as corrupting. Lewis’ character, while evil, is at least self-aware about his greed and selfishness. The pastor is not, and in some ways turns out the more pathetic character.

Welcome to the state of crypto in its thirteenth year, except that in our story the greedy entrepreneur and the morally bankrupt spiritual leader have turned out to be the same person. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, but also Do Kwon (of Terra), Su Zhu (of Three Arrows Capital), Alex Mashinsky (of Celsius) and a few others. All claimed to be working towards the greater good. All ended up obscenely wealthy in the process. All turned out to be frauds.

Tempting as it might be to focus all of our energy into anger towards these men, this is a time for self reflection. As an industry, but also a community. Crypto has attracted millions of people from all over the world and the vast majority are good people who believe in this new way of building trust. But we are terrible at picking leaders (with a few exceptions) and have only ourselves to blame when they let us down.

The great irony of the collapses we’ve experienced lately is that nobody has to use these firms. Unlike Wall Street, where consumer choices are always limited (by design) the censorship resistance of crypto often means nobody has to use any service. Most of FTX’s clients could have custodied their own coins and used DeFi, in the same way that people who wanted a more decentralized stablecoin could have used Dai.

And yet, countless users who came to crypto to get away from traditional authorities ended up running into the arms of services offered by inexperienced leaders who act like they are running a cult. But why?

The simplest answer is greed. The KwonZhuMashFried’s of the world all promised their followers a faster road to riches. Greed has an exponential function. The more money people make, the more they (paradoxically) want, despite the marginal utility of the next dollar declining quickly. Crypto has made a lot of people rich, but for every user who cashes out there seems to be two who double down. This compulsion for always making more drives some people to suspend disbelief and to seek out the quacks who make the most grandiose promises.

But blaming everything on greed is too simple. There has to be more to this story, and true self reflection requires going deeper.

Another explanation is the messy birthing process of a new industry. Director Paul Thomas Anderson chose the early days of the oil industry as the setting for his tale of human corruption for a good reason. There is something about transformative technologies and their early boom-bust cycles that pulls in certain kinds of people, and those people often end up hurting many others. There is a good amount of historical precedence to what is happening in crypto today in other industries. The early days of the railroad industry had the Crédit Mobilier scandal, the early days of the web had Worldcom, and the early days of securitization had Lehman.

Ironically, even the early days of central banking included a spectacular bubble that led to a major collapse, as orchestrated by a cult-like figure who turned out to be a fraud.

In each example, early adopters who believed that the world could be a better place — a place where central banking could work, railroads could crisscross the land, or electronic communication could be ubiquitous — had to suspend some level of disbelief. They also had to have faith in the face of great skepticism, for each new idea had its naysayers. But their open-mindedness also paved the way for grifters with a messiah complex to come in, take over, and almost ruin everything.

Almost, because good ideas transcend the bad people who hijack them. This is a point that the crypto skeptics now basking in their schadenfreude tend to miss. Crypto didn’t become important because some mountebank mouthed off about it on twitter or because some charlatan testified about it to congress. It became important because it can solve important problems, and that importance enabled the rise of people like SBF. The collapse of FTX does not change that promise, in the same way that the collapse of countless railroad companies in the 1870s did not change the utility of trains.

Blockchain is a technology invented to transform trust. In that sense, it is even more fundamental than oil, railroads or telecommunication, for trust is the alpha and omega of civilization. This transformation was always going to be messy and have many ups and downs, great moments of triumph followed by equally hard periods of despair.

The fact that history is repeating itself doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook. We can and should do better. For me, I at least owe that much to my students and readers. For you, it might be something that you owe to your investors or customers. Governments owe it to their citizens and we all owe it to future generations.

Here’s a short (but by no means definitive) list of how:

First, we need to stop with the cults of personality. Even after everything that has happened we still have too many charlatans. The Michael Saylors and Max Keisers of the world only hurt the cause. Part of me is ashamed to work in an industry where people behave like this. (Side note: Bitcoin has lost half of its value since the time Keiser declared “we are not selling.” Not only are these people scummy grifters, they are also terrible investors).

Second, success in this domain was, is and will always be about the tech, not the money, and certainly not the hype. Capital deployment, economic incentives and money legos are intricately involved with that tech, but doing well should only come to those who do good, and doing good means building something sustainable. The biggest tell of the impending doom of the KwonZhuMashFrieds of our world was their tendency to focus on flowery bullshit like super cycles and altruism, as opposed to the technology.

How sad that the lineup for the next major Bitcoin conference consists almost entirely of hype people, even after everything that’s happened. For contrast, this is what real leaders like to talk about.

Third, we need to stop the endless tribalism. Competition is healthy, believing your preferred project can only succeed if others fail is not. Tellingly, some of the industry insiders who just read my preceding paragraph have already jumped to false conclusions about my feelings towards Bitcoin and Ethereum, and will now filter the rest of my comments through that lens. This is not how serious people behave.

Our tribalism is a direct result of our insecurity. If you are actually certain that your project is the best then you should welcome the competition.

Fourth, we need a better approach to VC. I’ve worked in venture and have many friends who work in crypto VC, but something has gone wrong here, because the most sophisticated investors have somehow fallen for the biggest scams. I’m not sure what the solution is, but it probably starts with more diverse views within the venture community and more patience. Just because your fund can raise a billion dollars to deploy doesn’t mean that you should.

As a corollary, we also need to do something about the entrance of so much “biased capital” into our domain. Why do otherwise conservative institutions (such as pension funds) who would never invest a dollar into Bitcoin plow hundreds of millions of dollars into companies that promise to do stuff with Bitcoin like Celsius and FTX? Anyone who wants to get capital exposure to crypto should invest directly in crypto, as opposed to startups run by inexperienced boys with bad hygiene.

Fifth, we need better infrastructure. One reason major institutions prefer indirect equity exposure over directly owning the coins is custody. So we need better custody of all kinds, from safer self-custody to regulated centralized custodians. I find it telling that so many funds and protocols who obviously knew better still kept all their coins at FTX. They did that because it was easier.

The crypto-originalist vision of a world where every participant practices strict self-custody was never going to scale. Human beings have always wanted the help of a trusted institution to protect their valuables. This was true in ancient times when people used bearer assets like gold and will be true in future times when people use digital bearer assets like Bitcoin.

Sixth, we need better regulators. Naked ambition masquerading as “doing good” by people with a messiah complex doesn’t just infect the industry. It also infects some of the people who regulate it. Gary Gensler is a good example. He talks a big game, but his track record of actually preventing bad stuff from happening is abysmal. His agency directly looked at Terra & BlockFi, and dealt directly with Sam, but did nothing to protect their victims. This obsession with classifying tokens as securities is counterproductive.

The SEC’s refusal to allow a basic Bitcoin ETF, while simultaneously approving garbage like the BITI short Bitcoin fund, is the ultimate proof that this is more about Gary than investor protection. (BITI isn’t bad because it is shorting Bitcoin, it’s bad because it is bad at being short Bitcoin. BTC is down over 20% since it launched but the ETF is up less than half that amount.)

Gensler belongs to a family of regulators and government officials who seem to think industries exist to serve their needs, as opposed to the other way around. If they were in charge when YouTube came out they’d be fining kids who uploaded cartoon clips while demanding every YouTube channel get a federal broadcast license. Bad regulators are almost as harmful to a new industry as bad entrepreneurs.

That said, the crypto industry needs to get over its childish views on regulations. The parts of crypto that are fully centralized should be regulated like any other intermediary. The parts that sit in the middle (as FTX did) should be regulated by a mix of traditional rules and new ones that take advantage of the underlying tech, like proof of reserves. Only after we concede these points can we make a credible case for why things like DeFi should only be regulated by code and economic incentives.

Seventh, we need to start differentiating between good innovations and the inevitable get-rich-quick schemes that result. Ethereum (which only ever raised $16m) was a good innovation. The fifth smart contract platform based on the Move programming language (which has already raised a billion dollars) is not. Digital scarcity as applied to art and collectibles was a good innovation. Almost every BYAC clone is not.

As a corollary, we need to refocus tokenomics on building sustainable economic security and adoption. Bitcoin did this, but countless projects that have launched since have not. If your project gives more tokens to insiders and early investors than users will ever get then you have the wrong priorities. If your project needs a hundred million dollars to launch then you are in the wrong industry. There’s a high correlation in crypto between projects that have raised a lot of money and those that have failed spectacularly.

Eighth, decentralization is not binary and exists on a spectrum. So much time and energy is wasted on arguing the extremes in the abstract, but the real world is always gray. This is one of those areas where a bit of nuance goes a long way. Yes, Bitcoin is decentralized but no, mining and exchange are not. And that’s OK, because the underlying protocol is censorship-resistant so there will always be competition.

As a corollary, we need to be better at engaging with our skeptics, and that can only come from taking a balanced approach. For example, we need to concede the fact that hacks are a drawback of DeFi. Only then can we point out that one reason why DeFi gets hacked is because everything is transparent, so vulnerabilities are easy to spot. (Our legal system works much the same way, but we don’t try to end due process every time a criminal gets off on a technicality.)

Ninth, we need to stop rushing to embrace the next hot thing. I love DeFi, but I would never put all my money into a brand new protocol with an unproven economic model, even if I believe in the model.

Ours is an industry that likes to experiment in production, which is great. But we need to recognize that experiments can (and do) end badly.

Tenth, we need to stop relearning the hard lessons of history. Direct democracy doesn’t work, too much leverage is deadly, systems tend towards hierarchies, and financial institutions need to manage risk. Disrupting the old ways can only come from a place of awareness, not ignorance. If you haven’t studied the reasons why fiat currencies came to be, then you can’t have an informed opinion on Bitcoin. And if you aren’t an expert on banking, then you shouldn’t be building in DeFi.

Eleventh, we are all going to make it. Well, most of us anyway. Next year will be my tenth in crypto and this is my fourth bear market. Each one has its low points, but none have shaken my belief that crypto will eventually re-architect the global economy because my thesis is based on history and a deep understanding of the technology, as opposed to prices and prophets.

While it’s true that debacles like FTX now happen on a bigger scale, that’s only because the industry has grown. It will continue to do so, even if at an uneven pace.

[UPDATE] A friend just pointed out something that was missing from my 10 bullet points, which is a need to diversify the talent pool. This is a very important point so I’m adding it here. Part of the problem with the crypto industry is the way it attracts a certain kind of person — young, male, risk-seeking and likely to buckle convention. This might have been beneficial in the early days but we need older people to take leadership roles, along with more women and more people with experience from other industries.