Check Your Financial PrivilegeAlex Gladstein
Check Your Financial Privilege
by Alex Gladstein · first published 2022
7mentions
5recommended by
6HN commenters
2022–2024first – last mentioned
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues from a human rights perspective that financial access and privilege shape who needs tools like bitcoin and digital money; a clear eye-opener for readers who take easy banking and payments for granted.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…serious privacy and, at times, physical safety tradeoffs. I would encourage you to look into how those usecases currently function, in a nuts-and-bolts way. It is ugly. A decent book on this subject is "Check Your Financial Privilege", by Alex Gladstein.
on “Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?” ↗…need for low-cost narrative diversion. The fact that you don't acutely feel the need for a trustless digital money is very telling of your position in the world. I would recommend you read the book "Check Your Financial Privilege", by Alex Gladstein. You will find that, as an absolute fact, the use case is in extremely dire need of solving, and Bitcoin is the solution.
on “Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?” ↗,,I can send money anywhere for basically $0'' This book (Check your financial privilege) written by a human rights activist is just for you: https://www.amazon.com/Check-Your-Financial-Privilege-Gladst... ,,anyone born into a reserve currency like the euro, yen, or pound has financial…
on “Crypto exchange revenue jumps by 600% and surpasses traditional markets in 2021” ↗Sure, if double-spending has been solved for you, you don't need a blockchain. It hasn't been solved for everyone yet though. A great book to learn about this is: Check Your Financial Privilege (https://www.amazon.com/Check-Your-Financial-Privilege-Gladst...)
on “AWS and Blockchain” ↗having something like zelle on your phone makes it hard to understand. I'd recommend reading "Check Your Financial Privilege".
on “Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power” ↗…trafficking victims, the culture (Bored Ape parties), some of the players (eg SBF, the Tether people, etc.), and the underlying anarcho-capitalist mindset. On the impact on the underprivileged (that the "check your financial privilege" and "banking the unbanked" predatory inclusion crypto crowd purports to care so much for), the green-washing of Bitcoin, the crypto philanthropy "bad samaritans", Metaverse and Web3, check Peter Howson's…
on “Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison” ↗…we're going to build an equitable world and be able to face environmental challenges together. See recent editorial by Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation and author of “Check Your Financial Privilege.” https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/imf-world-bank-repress-p...
on “The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has been knocked offline for over a month” ↗