Crypto
Cryptocurrency platforms need better clarity to avoid being a petri dish for antisemitism – opinion
Since the infamous October 7 attacks, antisemitism has exploded and adapted in its virus-like tendencies, finding new ways to achieve popularity by infecting and leeching onto other elements of emerging pop culture. Cryptocurrency, as explained below, is just the latest example.
As cryptocurrency platforms ascend in popularity, they must exercise better moral clarity to avoid becoming a petri dish for bigotry and violence, particularly against Jews.
Cryptocurrency remains a relatively new phenomenon, yet one that is becoming increasingly integrated into monetary markets around the world.
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to adopt a cryptocurrency as legal tender when it embraced Bitcoin as a source of official currency. As Bitcoin has risen to prominence, other cryptocurrencies have emerged into the mainstream conscience, including meme coins.
While some meme coins are relatively harmless (such as the world-famous Dogecoin), others have sought to capitalize on blatant antisemitism, racism, and violence in their titles and accompanying thumbnails. Also concerning is that some of these coins are even receiving heightened exposure from large platforms such as pump.fun, which reportedly commands a net valuation estimated at over a billion dollars.
Pump has clear terms and conditions that prohibit abusive and obscene messages and reserve the company the right to remove such content. Nevertheless, it continues to platform it. Normalizing malign antisemitism, racism, and violence has severe and deadly consequences. As one of cryptocurrency’s largest trading platforms, Pump has a moral duty. It must discontinue its practice of capitalizing off tokens that normalize bigotry and violence.
According to Article 3.2 of Pump’s Terms and Conditions, users “must not post, upload or publish to the Pump Platform any abusive, defamatory, dishonest, or obscene message” and may face “termination of or restrictions on the availability of the Pump Platform” for any violations. Article 20.2 also affords Pump the “sole and absolute discretion to remove, modify, or reject any content.”
Despite having the mandate and authority to combat bigotry and promotions of violence on its platform, Pump is arguably helping monetize them. Many of its controversial tokens have achieved King of the Hill (KH) status. Tokens with KH status are tokens with the highest market cap. As a result, Pump rewards KH tokens with heightened visibility, featuring them on its homepage.
Tokens with antisemitic conspiracies
Many tokens that have appeared on Pump’s homepage with KH status include antisemitic themes and conspiracies. These include the following: “JewNazi” (accompanied by a thumbnail of a Star of David and a swastika inside), “Dirty F***ing Jew” (accompanied by a thumbnail of the Happy Merchant on a coin); “Jews did 911;” and “Jew” (captioned with Jews in Control).
Other tokens deploy Hinduphobic themes. One token, for example, titled “Jews vs. Hindus,” appears alongside a thumbnail of two Happy Merchants – one dressed in Jewish attire and the other in purported Hindu garb with a Nazi armband – chained to one another. The token is captioned with the following description: “They’re both literally the same, they s*** on everything, invade everything, destroy the economy and housing.”
Racism expressed against Black people is also prevalent throughout the platform. Multiple tokens explicitly invoke the “N-word,” and some call for the death of Black people or call upon users to “pump” tokens to kill them.
Other coins, such as “Monkey Wars,” employ other derogatory, anti-Black themes. Some coins even glorify the Ku Klux Klan, bearing thumbnails depicting a clansman alongside a description, “We are still here to protect you. Protect yourself and support us today.” The effect of these coins is clearly to gamify, glorify, and even normalize expressions of violence against black people.
Pump has also platformed tokens that appear to promote extortion and torture. One token, for example, reads, “LIVE REAL TORTURE UNTIL 100M MC (TORTURE).”
By allowing such tokens to feature on its platform, and occasionally on its very homepage, Pump has become tacitly complicit in promoting their obscene messaging. As one of the biggest cryptocurrency trading platforms, Pump must clear its portfolio once and for all of the bigoted and violent content, especially antisemitic vitriol, within its ranks.
The writer is an attorney and the director of policy education at StandWithUs, an international nonpartisan education organization that combats antisemitism and misinformation about Israel.
Crypto
Rumors are swirling about Venezuela holding $60 billion in Bitcoin—but crypto experts are skeptical | Fortune
Following the United States’ capture of Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, a report came out claiming that Venezuela had $60 billion stored in Bitcoin—leading to speculation that the U.S. could lay claim to cryptocurrency as well as oil. Despite numerous reports of the huge Venezuelan Bitcoin stash, however, a crypto forensic firm is skeptical of the claims.
The news of Venezuela’s Bitcoin holding began to bubble up last Saturday, the same day that Maduro was ousted. The digital publication Project Brazen reported that his regime could control $60 billion in the original cryptocurrency—but offered little in the way of proof.
“The article does not mention any addresses as a starting point, making it difficult to verify any of these speculated claims,” said Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at Nansen, about Project Brazen’s report.
Barthere is not the first person to express skepticism about the country’s purported crypto treasure trove. Mauricio di Bartolomeo, the Venezuelan co-founder of the financial services company Ledn, told Fortune on Wednesday that the level of the country’s corruption makes the figure hard to believe. He expanded his argument in an opinion piece he wrote for Coindesk.
Estimates of Venezuela’s crypto holdings vary wildly. Bitcointreasuries.net estimates that the country has $22 million worth of Bitcoin. That figure would make Venezuela the government entity with the ninth-most money tied up in the original cryptocurrency, just behind North Korea.
While the exact size of Venezuela’s Bitcoin wealth is unclear, the country has long been a player in crypto. Maduro introduced a token called the Petro in 2018, which was shuttered six years later. Its citizens have also turned to stablecoins as a way to fight their currency’s hyperinflation.
Trump has said that he will “run” Venezuela, and some have speculated that includes seizing the country’s Bitcoin holdings. Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, said he could not speak to the likelihood of such a seizure. He did, however, explain what gaining control of assets might look like.
A freezing of assets could occur through centralized services, he says. These services would get a court order for an exchange or an issuer like Tether or Circle who could blacklist an address. The second method is through physical seizure. The U.S. could get control of wallets, devices, and keys through compelled cooperation.
For now, there is unlikely to be a full and accurate account of Venezuela’s Bitcoin holdings until the political situation in the country becomes more stable.
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