Here’s A Very Good Argument For Not Getting High Before Writing A Graduation Speech

Occasionally, we feel compelled to remind everyone of the shebeen’s basic rule regarding cryptocurrency: when somebody comes up to you and says, “Hey, look, I invented new money,” and if there’s no seltzer bottle or cream pie handy, run like hell in the other direction. In addition, there is an unusually high strange-to-normal ratio among the various pitchmen. From NBC4 in Columbus:

Days before the Sunday ceremony, OSU’s chosen speaker Chris Pan announced on LinkedIn that he had taken the psychedelic drug ayahuasca to write his first drafts. “Got some help from AI (Ayahuasca Intelligence) this week to write my commencement speech for 60,000 grads and family members at Ohio State University next Sunday,” Pan wrote. “Tried ChatGPT but wasn’t that good.” The resulting speech and an on-stage demonstration with OSU President Ted Carter drew audible booing from the audience in the university’s livestream, as Pan tried to encourage graduates and attendees to buy cryptocurrency. “Saving is not enough because inflation exploded after the pandemic which is why everything got so expensive … I see Bitcoin as a very misunderstood asset class,” Pan said. “It is decentralized and finite which means no government can print more at will.”

Mr. Pan may not have been tripping balls when he delivered the speech, but you can’t tell by that string of words pretending to be a sentence there at the end. Also, I’m not exactly sure why Mr. Pan didn’t go for the gold and saw poor Ted Carter in half. The whole scene lacked only a medicine wagon and a dancing bear.

For a while, it looked like crypto had evaporated. The SEC was all over it. Congress, with Senator Professor Warren in the lead, was questioning its bona fides. It’s become plain, however, that the industry is counting on the 2024 elections to recapture its momentum and to make new and influential friends. From Public Citizen:

Super PACs backed by the cryptocurrency sector have raised more than $102 million, the third-most of all super PACs engaged in the 2024 election, according data from Opensecrets.org. Only the super PAC backing Ron DeSantis’ failed presidential campaign and the super PAC backing Democratic Senate candidates have raised more money so far. More than half of the crypto super PACs’ political war chests – about $54 million – comes from direct corporate expenditures, primarily Coinbase and Ripple Labs, showing the sector is taking full advantage of Citizens United-enabled unlimited corporate political spending.

The rest of the crypto super PACs’ political war chest comes from billionaire crypto executives and venture capitalists, including $11 million each from the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, $5 million from the Winklevoss twins, and $1 million from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Out of the six 2024 primary races where the crypto super PACs intervened and which are now over, only one crypto-backed candidate has lost. Eleven primary races that include crypto-backed candidates remain. The crypto super PACs have pledged to spend in general election Senate races in the battleground states of Ohio and Montana, which are seen as essential for securing a Senate majority. Democratic incumbents in both races have been critical of the crypto sector.

One of two Republicans campaigning to challenge Senator Professor Warren this November is a crypto advocate (and lawyer) named John Deaton. From WGBH:

Foreshadowing one potential theme of the election, his 2023 post about challenging Warren came in a response to comments she made about regulating cryptocurrency and the ways she sees the technology as a threat. Deaton said at the time he was “not suggesting” he’d win a but would “love to confront her.”

Deaton undoubtedly will benefit from that war chest that crypto piled up, not one buck of it anything but good old American greenbacks. That’s irony for you.