That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples?
On that note:
> I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying
What data are you using to support this belief? Do you have additional data that she left out? That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking.
What do you mean? Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim.
> That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking.
The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros, for example, has injected more than $125M into the midterm race in 2022[1]. To be clear, this is not a partisan issue; the Kochs raised over $70M last year[2]. If you want to be critical of super PACs, crypto spending is literally a drop in the bucket and completely missing the forest for the trees. There is a story here, but crypto ain't it.
The more boring reality is that (like every nascent industry) crypto is going through some growing pains, so it makes sense a16z/Coinbase/etc. need to heavily lobby DC for favorable SEC rulings & legislation. This is, quite literally, business as usual.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2022/01/31/georg...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/koch-network-...
As a generation, we really need to learn how to say: "I don't like this person and I believe they are biased and I hate their politics/tone/demeanour/ethos but that doesn't mean they are wrong about the facts."
The ability to make use of information and ideas from people we disagree with, and even agree with the correct findings or conclusions of people we dislike, is a skill we urgently need to learn.
Okay, what are the facts here? That crypto firms and VCs are lobbying politicians for favorable legislation? Um, okay. Everyone from farmers to auto-makers to tech companies do that. It's an absolute nothingburger.
Are the facts that there's over $200M injected in our political system by crypto firms? Um, okay. This doesn't even move the needle when compared to the billions injected by a class of ~30 ultra-rich individuals (both conservative and liberal) over the last 10 years.
At worst, this is misdirection, at best, it's gross ignorance of the ripple effects of the Citizens United SCOTUS ruling.
I fully agree with you that the broader problem is Citizens United and the ability for corporations and the super wealthy to pour this much money into politics. In fact, I mention this here: https://www.followthecrypto.org/about/faq#what-about.
I think projects like mine would be extremely valuable for all industries, and I'm enormously grateful to groups like OpenSecrets that do excellent work making a far broader swath of the data more legible. But I am one person without the research team, time, or funding that would be necessary to analyze the data this deeply across industries, and so I focus on crypto (the subject of much of my research and writing).
The code is all open source, and I would be delighted if other projects like this one sprung up. It seems it would be a bit more productive to actually shine a light all the kinds of spending that happen throughout industries and across individuals, rather than using that other spending as a sort of whataboutist argument to dismiss projects like this one that (necessarily) focus on a subset of spending.
> If you want to be critical of super PACs, crypto spending is literally a drop in the bucket and completely missing the forest for the trees. There is a story here, but crypto ain't it.
As this project highlights,[1] crypto is far from a "drop in the bucket" when it comes to super PAC fundraising this cycle. The industry has dramatically ramped up its spending compared to previous election years, which is a large part of why I felt it was important to keep an eye on the spending.
[1] https://www.followthecrypto.org/committees/ranking/super
Wait what? I think she's doing a great job exposing crypto grifts/scams/hacks/etc. and I check her web3 feed at least once a week, but she does have a persona to uphold. Why would I pretend she's some platonic ideal of objectivity? For reasons mentioned, I do think this SuperPAC stuff is a bit reaching, but that's neither here nor there.
I am not OP but yes, I sent some information to her via their different contact mediums and she never got back, she is not responsive and could have at least said: "I am not interested".
