Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
The risk of politician coins comes from the fact that they are such a perfect bribery vehicle. If a politician issues a coin, you do not even need to send *them* any coins to give them money. Instead, you just buy and hold the coin, and this increases the value of their holdings passively. Furthermore, there is deniability: holding the coin is, in financial effect, a linear combination of donating to the issuer and gambling. Hence you can intend to do the former but when challenged claim that you are doing the latter. You can even hold the coin privately, and show that you are holding it to whoever; you do not need any zero knowledge proofs, you just send a test transaction. This is all risky to democracy, for reasons similar to what I wrote in https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/08/16/voting3.html and elsewhere. TLDR: the economic arguments for why markets are so great for "regular" goods and services do not extend to "markets for political influence". I recommend politicians do not go down this path.
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Chinmay 🕹️🍿
@chinmay.eth
Are you suggesting that all politicians are banned from launching memecoins? If so, how about lobbyists or news reporters? Where do we draw the line?
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agusti
@bleu.eth
anyone serving publicly at least (when elected) shouldnt be doing business elsewhere and double dipping americans should pay their president a better salary. not let him get bribed onchain repercusionlessly
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jon
@jonbray.eth
if they're going to be getting bribed—which many will regardless—I think it's best done on a public ledger for all the problems with $TRUMP it's preferable to Trump holding and then publicly promoting say, Monero, where the chain-of-custody is opaque and everything is deniable
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Chinmay 🕹️🍿
@chinmay.eth
Trump can argue that he was not president when he launched the memecoins. So, he can do whatever he wants before and after. I think that's still a problem.
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