But they are baked into the product. Coinbase’s success depends on the success of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. That is fundamentally related to questions of wealth inequality, banking, state economies, and crime.
Would you say that Facebook is an apolitical product since it is just its users that are affecting public behavior?
Absolutely I'd say that! If a tool just improves communication efficiency, that efficiency improvement doesn't necessarily mean that the medium is political.
If coinbase and its cryptocurrencies improve the means of wealth and capital exchange, that doesn't mean that cryptocurrencies are political. That makes it a tool, just as a shovel and rifle are tools. How they're used by people is what makes them potentially political.
Facebook's choice to moderate content that isn't advertiser friendly is what makes it political, not the fact that it improves communication. They're deciding what other people see. Cryptocurrencies make no such choices for users.
> Facebook's choice to moderate content that isn't advertiser friendly is what makes it political, not the fact that it improves communication. They're deciding what other people see. Cryptocurrencies make no such choices for users.
Coinbase has. They've done things like blacklist wallets that they believe were involved in crimes or scams.
which is not a political action. You can argue they are acting extra-judicially - which is true, but it's not a political action. If coinbase refuses to serve a customer because they are anti-whatever-political-stance-of-coinbase, then coinbase is acting politically.
Sure it is. How is this different than refusing to work with ICE because you believe what they are doing is illegal or wrong? Scammer wallets were never given any trial.
