Crypto Critics' Corner

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Episode 169 – Cryptocurrency funded American Fascism

Cryptocurrency funded American Fascism – Crypto Critics' Corner

Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey discuss the unlawful actions of the Trump administration, including unlawful deportations. Additional episodes mentioned in this episode:Episode 21 – BitcoinPlaylist of videos about El SalvadorAdditional resources: Reporting on the illegal deportationsThis episode was recorded on March 16th, 2025.

Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin discuss the unlawful actions of the Trump administration, including unlawful deportations.

This podcast was recorded on March 16th, 2025.

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English Transcript:

00:00:05:01 - 00:00:15:12
Cas Piancey
Welcome back everyone. I am Cas Piancey. I'm joined, as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. I'm not, you know,

00:00:15:16 - 00:00:17:05
Bennett Tomlin
Things are bad.

00:00:17:05 - 00:00:24:11
Cas Piancey
bad. Everything is bad right now. I'm not even going to. We're. There's no reason to really even pause and think about it. So we're going to move right along.

00:00:24:11 - 00:00:26:12
Cas Piancey
We're in the midst of a constitutional crisis.

00:00:26:12 - 00:00:30:02
Cas Piancey
I think that is pretty much the only way to put it right now.

00:00:30:02 - 00:00:41:00
Cas Piancey
there's no hyperbole anymore. We have a president of the United States of America who is not obeying court orders. And if you're not obeying court orders,

00:00:41:00 - 00:00:52:12
Cas Piancey
that are constitutionally like, you're breaking the Constitution and the court is saying you need to stop that, and then you just ignore them, that, you know, it's the end of the US Constitution.

00:00:52:12 - 00:01:13:16
Cas Piancey
And, and I guess I want to talk about how we got here and why it turns out that freedom fighting, cryptocurrency tea bros maybe aren't that freedom loving and have actually brought about the end of the US Constitution as we know it. So, let's talk about how we got here, Bennet.

00:01:13:20 - 00:01:14:13
Bennett Tomlin
Sure.

00:01:14:13 - 00:01:17:09
Cas Piancey
Why, what what am I directly referencing today?

00:01:17:09 - 00:01:21:09
Cas Piancey
Because there's probably a hundred constitutional crisis. Crises.

00:01:21:12 - 00:01:22:03
Bennett Tomlin
Yes.

00:01:22:03 - 00:01:23:14
Cas Piancey
But, yeah. What is this one?

00:01:23:14 - 00:01:57:02
Bennett Tomlin
Today, specifically, several hundred individuals who the government was in the process of deporting were transferred from United States detention to El Salvador. Despite a judge order that specifically said they could not remove these people from the United States, and specifically said even any flights that are already in the air need to be turned around in. These people need to be returned to U.S. detention.

00:01:57:04 - 00:02:48:10
Bennett Tomlin
Moreover, the administration has taken this moment to gleefully promote the fact that they are ignoring the court order. Nayib Bukele, the dictator of El Salvador, had made a post on X.com where he proclaimed something like he he too late. When, people started posting about the arrival of these individuals in El Salvador. This was like retweeted by, Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, the special adviser to the president, who has taken on a truly expansive role in this administration, even went so far as to suggest the judge behind the order should be impeached immediately for having the.

00:02:48:10 - 00:02:53:01
Bennett Tomlin
Willingness to file an order against the Trump administration.

00:02:53:01 - 00:03:03:05
Cas Piancey
Yeah. And so I will pause there just to say, you know. Oh, gosh. I don't even know if we should bother saying I think we're going to just skip saying this judge's name.

00:03:03:08 - 00:03:04:21
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah, let's not add to that problem.

00:03:04:21 - 00:03:20:00
Cas Piancey
Yeah, any more attention is bad attention at this point. But basically what Elon Musk is doing, mister, I'm getting death threats every day, and it's so hard for me and hard for hard for Tesla is, you know, this is basically putting a death threat out there for a judge.

00:03:20:00 - 00:03:29:23
Cas Piancey
Because he's naming the judge, he's shaming the judge, and he's saying we need to impeach him. Meanwhile, the Doge team and Donald Trump actively don't obey the Constitution.

00:03:29:23 - 00:03:43:04
Cas Piancey
the idea that they would go about proper procedure and follow the rules and regulations for impeachment of a judge, like it's crazy that that would even be a thing that we're talking about right now for this judge in particular,

00:03:43:06 - 00:04:10:13
Bennett Tomlin
Well, and I think we should pause and be explicit and say that the United States Constitution lays out the grounds for impeachment of a federal judge, and they are only high crimes and misdemeanors. And I struggle to see how this order could possibly be interpreted as either either of those. Which means Elon Musk is, again, explicitly advocating for removal of a judge outside of the constitutional process if the constitutional prerequisites have not been met.

00:04:10:13 - 00:04:26:13
Cas Piancey
Right, right. So it's like it's already unconstitutional and silly, but on top of being unconstitutional and silly, like there's no way they would ever try to abide by the Constitution anyway because they're actively ignoring the Constitution as we speak right now.

00:04:26:13 - 00:04:31:10
Cas Piancey
The reason I want to talk about this, though, isn't just because, oh, the Constitution is getting torn to shreds.

00:04:31:10 - 00:04:38:23
Cas Piancey
Well, that's good enough reason, right? But we are generally focused on cryptocurrency, on monetary policy.

00:04:38:23 - 00:05:03:22
Cas Piancey
I think it's really important to acknowledge who got us here and who got us here. Cryptocurrency pros. Did you know in 2014 in 2015 and 2016, generally cryptocurrency people involved in bitcoin because that was pretty much the main the main cryptocurrency, the main the main one with all the liquidity.

00:05:03:22 - 00:05:04:08
Cas Piancey
Right.

00:05:04:08 - 00:05:29:00
Cas Piancey
We're libertarians right. And I know you, you, you scratch a libertarian, you get a fascist. But they did have some serious liberal libertarian ideals. And I think that is you and I have talked about this in previous episodes, but what attracted us to cryptocurrency in general was that it was interesting. It was interesting as a P2P cash, as being decentralized, as not being a nation state currency.

00:05:29:06 - 00:05:53:06
Cas Piancey
The idea that refugees or dissidents could utilize this money outside of their own money to to live and survive was cool as an idea. Now, is that what it's used for anymore? No, I don't think it is. I don't think it's I you could argue it never was really used that way, but I think it definitely is not used that way anymore.

00:05:53:07 - 00:06:17:20
Cas Piancey
It's almost entirely speculation. And what has that gotten for the cryptocurrency world? Well, it's gotten united. But Kelly, who is now a dictator, dictator in chief in El Salvador, this man has no morals. He has no ethics. He does whatever he pleases. Now, I have no there's no doubt in my mind that the people of El Salvador are happy that he's imprisoning tons and tons of people.

00:06:17:22 - 00:06:22:05
Cas Piancey
Does that mean he's doing it legally and responsibly? No, of course not.

00:06:22:05 - 00:06:42:21
Cas Piancey
that's what Bitcoin helped establish was the dictator of El Salvador. Also, it got us Donald fucking Trump again because one issue voters chose this man to jump in to the president's chair again. And now we're having a complete destruction of the Constitution.

00:06:42:21 - 00:06:44:08
Cas Piancey
it's time to take responsibility.

00:06:44:08 - 00:06:46:12
Cas Piancey
These. Did you guys did this?

00:06:46:12 - 00:07:25:12
Bennett Tomlin
I think that, yeah, we talked about this in our, like, series of videos about El Salvador, about how disappointing and infuriating it was to watch this group of people who paid lip service to these ideas of freedom and protection from authoritarianism to immediately, so wholeheartedly wrapped their arms around someone who was so clearly an authoritarian who, like, broke the Constitution in terms of imprisonments like and, broke the Constitution in terms of term limits, marched the army into Congress like messed with the judicial system.

00:07:25:17 - 00:07:56:11
Bennett Tomlin
There was plenty of well-reported evidence that Nayib Bukele, including by his own fucking tweets, was a dictator. And yet, because he was willing to embrace cryptocurrency and bitcoin specifically, that was the most important thing. And like you said, again, we see that with Donald Trump. And there's going to be a lot of cryptocurrency people, executives and stuff like that who will try to claim that they did not expect Donald Trump to do all the things that Donald Trump is doing.

00:07:56:12 - 00:08:20:01
Bennett Tomlin
And I think that's obvious bullshit, right? Like Donald Trump promised during his campaign to deport more individuals than there were undocumented individuals in the United States. That means, best case, he said, he was going to deport people who were not undocumented. And he was exceedingly explicit about this. Like he said it well over a dozen times, I think, at rallies and speeches.

00:08:20:03 - 00:08:21:10
Bennett Tomlin
And it reminds me of,

00:08:21:10 - 00:08:52:01
Bennett Tomlin
there was one quote from a cryptocurrency venture capitalist named Mike Dudas recently that I think emphasize this. Mike do this was an investor in world Liberty Financial, a clear and obvious grift from people connected to the president. But as it became increasingly obvious that this was a grift, Mike Dudas tried to separate himself from this project, claiming in this quote that like, he expected this to be a serious project, but it had devolved into some kind of pay for play thing, as though that's not what it was originally.

00:08:52:03 - 00:09:17:04
Bennett Tomlin
And like the God honest truth is that these cryptocurrency people who have been paying lip service to freedom, to rights, to things like that for years were always, always only interested in a single thing, and that was number go up. And they were willing to sacrifice millions, billions, however many people. It was necessary in order for them to make themselves believe that number would go up.

00:09:17:08 - 00:09:47:23
Bennett Tomlin
And, you know, perhaps the most infuriating part of this is the number ain't even fucking going up. They sacrifice the whole fucking thing, the whole fucking game, the whole fucking like idea of them being an antique technology. They sacrificed all of that. And despite the president's own cryptocurrency company buying millions of dollars of bitcoin, despite the United States government saying they're not going to sell any more Bitcoin, despite the United States government saying they're going to find budget neutral ways to acquire more Bitcoin.

00:09:48:01 - 00:10:19:13
Bennett Tomlin
Despite all of those things, Bitcoin is still underperforming because it turns out there are more important issues than just whether or not someone can stand on a stage in Miami or Nashville or wherever the fuck the conference was, and go Bitcoin. Russ Ulbricht so yeah, a bunch of freedom loving people were actually fucking liars and specifically advanced fascism using both their words, their wealth, and like their positions of power and influence.

00:10:19:13 - 00:10:36:06
Cas Piancey
I know we've said this before. I totally get it. This is something I'm, I'm repeating from a year and two and three years ago probably at this point. But but it is very depressing to see people who, who actually had a pretty interesting concept

00:10:36:06 - 00:10:38:14
Cas Piancey
throw the most interesting part of it into the trash.

00:10:38:17 - 00:10:52:06
Cas Piancey
So that number go up. What, like, wow, what what a despicable way to just destroy the one positive use case for what was created.

00:10:52:06 - 00:10:56:07
Cas Piancey
And I, you know, I'm not surprised at this point. I'm just super disappointed.

00:10:56:07 - 00:11:04:21
Cas Piancey
one other thing I think is worth mentioning here is that, like tether, who we've been covering now for seven years, of our own time,

00:11:04:21 - 00:11:09:00
Cas Piancey
you know, they're basically in the pocket with the president.

00:11:09:00 - 00:11:13:14
Cas Piancey
They got to go to the white House. They got to like Paolo Ardoino

00:11:13:14 - 00:11:16:04
Bennett Tomlin
I think the president is in Tether's pocket. Basically.

00:11:16:04 - 00:11:27:10
Cas Piancey
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean like I, that I exactly. Right. Like they're going to the white House Howard Lutnick is still as far as I know hasn't divested himself from from all of that nonsense yet.

00:11:27:12 - 00:11:53:10
Cas Piancey
And what's amazing to me is they're also destroying their main business model. Like you need a strong dollar, you need the dollar to be the reserve currency of the world for for tether to fucking matter. And guess what they're doing? Guess what they're helping to do right now? Destroy the fucking dollar. So like, I don't know, all these people only care about money, only care about amassing more of it.

00:11:53:12 - 00:12:15:12
Cas Piancey
And while they do that, they they're ruinous to their own bags. It's happening over and over and over again. And I like I just don't even know. I don't even know what to say anymore. It's so depressing what they're doing to our country, what they're doing to freedom in general, and how they're treating money. It's so despicable and so sad.

00:12:15:14 - 00:12:19:04
Cas Piancey
And that's it. That's what I had. Like, that's what I have to say about all of them.

00:12:19:04 - 00:13:07:17
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah. The one thing I think will be important when the opportunity arises is to remember which individuals were advancing this. And make sure that they are relegated to a societal space where they no longer have the ability to advance that kind of thing. I think that's a specific, as I'm going to get on that for now. And you also and like even more than that, we need to especially remember those who were who did not just like donate or advance it, but took roles in the administration, showed up at administration events after unconstitutional activities after unlawful detention of green card holders, after like violating the Constitution.

00:13:07:17 - 00:13:26:08
Bennett Tomlin
In all these many and varied ways, the ones who continue to show up are the ones who we need to be especially concerned about. I mean, Tyler fucking Winklevoss apparently believes that if Trump hadn't been elected, he would be in prison. And I just have to say, what were you doing, Tyler? What were you doing over at Gemini?

00:13:26:11 - 00:13:35:13
Bennett Tomlin
No one fucking cares about Gemini except when you guys decide to, like, manipulate markets using your own stacks of Bitcoin. So what the fuck were you doing that was going to get you arrested? Tyler?

00:13:35:13 - 00:13:54:04
Cas Piancey
Crime, it's legal now. So there you go. And that's and that is the new, by the way. That is the new, the new slogan for CasCoin is hey, crime's legal now. So buy your CasCoin crime is legal now.

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