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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Abraham
@publiusjr
If I’m suppose to believe this is unique, I don’t. Pelosi just happens to develop the stock picking skills of Stevie Cohen? There is bribery right now. Biden used our tax dollars to bribe Ukraine. He tried to use our tax dollars to bribe people with student loans by forgiving them. The bigger issue is the third party payer effect. We certainly need rules and checks and balanced. Madison taught us that men aren’t angels. He went on to describe how ambition had to counter ambition because we could not expect to perfect man. The real fix, as the Founders told us was to have a religious society. That would get us closer to morality. And that’s the best we can hope for.
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