Molly Jane Zuckerman

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="256" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-60166" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Even though you may know me as a cryptocurrency journalist, I first started my writing career as a translator for sex books.&nbsp;



My career was short-lived: After completing only two books in the A Queen Until the Very End: Be First in Life and in Bed series, I was ghosted by the publisher.



All this is to say that, when I received a pitch in my inbox toward the tail end of the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sbf-trial">Sam Bankman-Fried trial</a> with the subject line: “New book a companion piece to the SBF trial, My First Crypto Sex Party, I felt like this PR person had unwittingly reached the perfect audience.



I promptly settled down to read this new book by Honey Justine (who exists nowhere but her Amazon author page) over my lunch break. Luckily, My Crypto Sex Party is a mere 27 pages long.



There’s not much that I can say that would be appropriate for print about this short essay (it can’t really be called a novel). The plot revolves around a young woman, new to her job, who receives a VIP invitation to her company’s orgy. Totally normal, right?



The only things that make this poorly written sex story “crypto” are a reference to a “massive Beeple art work [sic]” hanging in a sex chamber at the orgy, and then the issues that came up for this new company when they “first bought this entire building as an NFT.”&nbsp;



What that means, nobody knows. And that’s not to mention the unforgettable grand finale: “‘You make me HODL,’ I whisper, exchanging cuddles and kisses.’”



When trying to find out more about where on Earth this crypto sex book came from, I realized after a quick Google that Honey Justine’s foray into crypto romance is far from new. In fact, there are no less than eight erotic cryptocurrency-themed novels on Amazon that I could find, plus the four-book Bitcoin Bimbo series that are no longer for sale online.&nbsp;



While some of these books seemingly have no purchases and no readers, others actually have an interested fanbase:&nbsp;



<ul>
<li>Bedazzled by Blockchain: An Erotic Cryptocurrency Transaction — nine ratings on Amazon, with 4.8 stars.&nbsp;</li>



<li>A Perfect Girl: The XXX Archives of a Cyborg Crypto Slut has one reviewer who left an 800-word five-star review entitled “smut as a vehicle for meditation.”&nbsp;</li>



<li>Bitcoin Billionaire’s Babysitter has a whopping 329 positive reviews. 329!</li>



<li>Popular romance novelist Chuck Tingle also has his own crypto foray, featuring Jort and his handsome bitcoin Limbo —&nbsp;There&#8217;s A Bitcoin In My Butt And He Is Handsome.&nbsp;</li>



<li>And while Erocoin: the Blockchain Erotica has zero ratings, it deserves a mention simply because of its author: Satyroshi Nymphomoto.</li>
</ul>



(When conducting my crypto sex book research, I also came across an article about Bankman-Fried on The Guardian with a very unfortunate headline: “FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried ‘let me see everything’ for new book, says Michael Lewis.”)



Far and away the most popular crypto smut novels are the Bitcoin Billionaire trilogy, with more than 100 five-star ratings and a public facing author who has given at least <a href="https://medium.com/s/the-crypto-collection/bitcoin-bodice-rippers-are-romances-most-sizzling-new-subgenre-5daeb4e1bed7">one interview</a> about her choice to combine crypto and sex.



Oddly enough, it was the alleged integrity of the crypto community that made Bitcoin Billionaire author Sara Forbes settle on the subject when looking for a reason for her young, attractive heroes to have enough money to sweep her fictional heroines off their feet.



&#8220;How would they be that rich, and still be that young and still have their ideals intact? That meant reading up on bitcoin.&#8221; Apparently these bitcoin billionaire adventurers (in between sexcapades) want to use their crypto earnings to “do something to change the world for good.”



There is a certain logic to including cryptocurrency — and Bitcoin in particular — in your romance novels.&nbsp;



The online self-publishing book industry is filled with authors trying to make money with a spray-and-pray logic —&nbsp;quickly write many short books about hot topics, get them on Amazon, and hope that you’ll get lucky and find a readership. The trick is to use key phrases that will come up on Google Search — during the crypto boom, I can totally see the thought process behind throwing cryptocurrency into your sex books (and many of these e-books did come out in early 2018).&nbsp;



Now, when much of the world was searching for Sam Bankman-Fried trial news online, why not center your new romance novel around crypto with the hopes of getting more accidental readers.&nbsp;



Case in point: The aforementioned novelist Tingle put out a book last year capitalizing on the popularity of Wordle, titled, The Physical Manifestation Of Wurdle Pounds My Butt As A Slightly Frustrating But Ultimately Rewarding And Meditative Daily Routine Kindle Edition.&nbsp;



Unfortunately, My First Crypto Sex Party still has zero reviews on Amazon, despite the email marketing campaign aimed at crypto journalists during the Bankman-Fried trial. It seems that I was the only one to take the bait.&nbsp;



And while I very strongly pan this work (even more strongly than I <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sam-bankman-fried-michael-lewis">panned Michael Lewis’s Bankman-Fried book</a>), I don’t blame the author for being creative in trying to get more eyes on her writing.&nbsp;



It’s not so different from launching a new cryptocurrency and naming it HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu —&nbsp;in fact, the very idea of My First Crypto Sex Party fits in quite nicely with the ethos of crypto degens trying to make a quick buck. All that’s missing is MyFirstCryptoSexPartyCoin.



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I don’t care much about tech, I don’t care a whole lot about finance, either. I care about writing stories and watching weird things unfold. And that’s why I’ve ended up in crypto. But because I’m missing that passion for what crypto and blockchain are all about — finance, tech, privacy, yadda yadda — I’m going to write instead about what I am actually interested in. Everything about crypto that has very little to do with crypto. That’s what this column will be about. All the tangential stories that come out of the blockchain and crypto space, what I think about them, and how I navigate it all as a skeptical former Russian literature major. It’s precisely my perch as an outsider that lets me do what I do: Opine on all sides of any crypto issue, no strings attached, no skin in the game. If you want to talk crypto with me, let’s go off topic.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



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‘My First Crypto Sex Party’ is the tip of the Bitcoin erotica iceberg

I expected Sam Bankman-Fried’s defense lawyer to be a real shark. Not just because Bankman-Fried had —&nbsp;at one point, at least — enough money to hire the best, but because I know that the lawyer hired also once represented Ghislaine Maxwell.&nbsp;



Yet based on my relatively short time in the courtroom, I’m beginning to see why she ultimately went to prison.



The defense’s strategy so far seems incoherent, skipping around in opposing directions while simultaneously boring the jury to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sam-bankman-fried-trial-sleeping-juror">sleep</a>. I caught no fewer than three jurors fast asleep at different times over the past two weeks.



I’m also not sure if it’s normal for the defense to be reprimanded publicly by the judge so many times in a single day. At one point, after multiple warnings, the judge called a sidebar and turned on some white noise so that he could more comfortably yell at the defense team.



His biggest problem? The incredibly repetitive questions, worded in weird, often leading ways, that the defense insisted on asking each witness. Despite the white noise, one intrepid reporter noticed that the transcription software was still running during the sidebar:&nbsp;



“The goal here is not to set a record for the longest trial,” said the judge. “It&#8217;s to have the fairest trial. Let’s get moving.”



I asked a lawyer I know about Bankman-Fried’s defense strategy and what could lie at the heart of all the rambling: Was it a known winning strategy to bore a jury into unconsciousness?&nbsp;



This lawyer seemed doubtful. But she proffered an even odder take for what the defense could actually be doing wrong.



Her point, put simply: All these former FTX employees have admitted guilt, unlike Bankman-Fried, who says he’s innocent of the crimes to which he’s accused.



Thus, the question we’re left with is: Why isn’t the defense treating them like criminals? It’s almost as if the defense is leaving money on the table by overlooking this approach.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Starting with a whimper</h2>



The defense couldn’t catch a single break the first week.&nbsp;



Beyond the reprimands, the defense had a success rate of about 10% in getting their objections to any of the prosecution’s questions of the witnesses sustained. In contrast, the prosecution was shooting out objections left and right, and the judge was sustaining them almost faster than they could shout “objection!”



When questioning former FTX developer Adam Yedidia, defense lawyer Chris Everdell’s initial strategy seemed to primarily consist of flipping through a watermelon-sized binder after every question as if he were looking for any new angle to use. He broke up his page turns with long sips of water, loud throat clearings and frequent pauses to whisper to Bankman-Fried.&nbsp;



At one point, Bankman-Fried called him over and whispered in his ear after Everdell misspoke approximately ten times in a row —&nbsp;saying “auto-delete” when he <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-not-bulletproof">meant</a> “auto-liquidate.” Everdell appeared to mix up two different topics during the trial’s first week. These things couldn’t be any less related, yet Everdell, an attorney at a respected law firm, still managed to confuse them.&nbsp;



Another example of an Everdell misspeak came during week two, when he began the day with the proclamation: “The government offers this exhibit.”



The judge stopped him immediately, as Everdell is not working for the US government.



In a case as complex as this — with terms as basic as “code” and “bug” thoroughly defined for the jury — it’s essential to be clear and accurate when discussing the intricate financial mechanisms of how FTX worked. There’s no room for missteps in language.



As for the witnesses themselves, the defense couldn’t win, either.&nbsp;



An example of the defense’s counterintuitive lines of questioning: Last week, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys set out to prove that former FTX developer Adam Yedidia was a lowly employee who doesn’t know anything.



In pursuit of this goal, they asked question after question to set in the jury’s mind that all Yedidia did was code, no marketing, no strategy, no accounting, no trading.&nbsp;



But then, after most of their questions were successfully overruled by the prosecution, they switched tactics in an almost bizarre reverse maneuver —&nbsp;they began to ask question after question about why FTX was such a superior platform and had such high quality trading experience — perhaps inching towards the point that FTX was a fully solvent firm.&nbsp;



Unfortunately, as Yedidia was truly just a developer (as they had just spent an hour trying to prove), he couldn’t answer nearly any of their questions about user numbers or transaction speed.



The defense also seems to clumsily set up the prosecution for an easy win on occasion.



Case-in-point last week when the defense pulled up a photograph to be shown to the jury: Sam Bankman-Fried, sitting with his unruly hair, FTX t-shirt and crumpled cargo pants next to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair on stage.&nbsp;



Is this the type of man who was out to steal his customers’ money, asks the defense, this billionaire who was so immune to the trappings of wealth that he shows up like this at his own event with these very important people? He clearly doesn’t care about money to spend it on fancy brands! I mean, come on, he drove a Corolla!



The prosecution immediately went to town on the photo, essentially annihilating the defense’s argument here with just one question: And how much did Bankman-Fried pay to have these two politicians on stage with him?



At one point, Bankman-Fried’s mother buried her head in her hands. Not a good way to end the first week of trial.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Turning things around?</h2>



However, the defense does seem to be turning around in the trial’s second week.&nbsp;



Not only are they able to get into a rhythm in their cross examination, but it appeared that Sam’s parents even congratulated Everdell after his cross examination of FTX co-founder Gary Wang.



It’s true that Everdell seemed to finally hit a stride with Wang. There were zero admonitions from the judge about repetitiveness and almost no objections. The defense’s best flow was when Everdell was able to hammer home the many times that government witness Wang met with prosecutors ahead of the trial — a total of 19.&nbsp;



Regardless of the defense’s successes or failures last week with Yedidia and Wang, they now have an opportunity to do something new when the real cross examination of former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison commences.



But the five minutes that the defense had yesterday with Ellison before the court adjourned were not promising at all.&nbsp;



After repeated misstatements and conflations of different FTX money accounts, the prosecution actually stood up and said that the cross examination was “confusing.” The judge agreed.



Additional reporting by James Cirrone.



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Is Sam Bankman-Fried’s defense dropping the ball?

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="256" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-60166" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



The crypto boom of a few years ago was truly wild.&nbsp;



I wouldn’t dare to call it a Wild West, but the way that people “discovered” cryptocurrency in 2017 and made millions of dollars from ICOs for projects that probably never existed, was indeed a wild time.



Cryptocurrency was something new, something weird, and something totally digital. You literally cannot get more online than magical internet money.&nbsp;



Since then, crypto has, of course, continued to exist, but on a more muted level. There might not be the same flurry of headlines every time that crypto sneezes, but the industry is obviously still real — even if it’s not quite thriving at the moment.



While crypto is settling down into middle age, there is a new kid in town. And this new kid is totally wild: artificial intelligence.



The same type of shock and awe that people used to bestow on the wondrous new properties of digital cash are now being bestowed on artificial intelligence. It’s like AI came onto the scene and stole crypto’s thunder. AI is the thing that everyone wants to integrate into their products now, even though it makes absolutely zero sense most of the time.



I wouldn’t be surprised if we had another cycle of companies changing their names to line up with the AI craze. Remember when Long Island Iced Tea became <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/long-island-iced-tea-micro-cap-adds-blockchain-to-name-and-stock-soars.html">Long Blockchain Corp</a>.? I bet it’s already re-registered as Long Island AI.&nbsp;



You might read this and say, hey, wait a minute, cryptocurrency and AI actually do have a lot in common (unlike blockchain and iced tea). You can use AI to write smart contracts, teach trading bots on DEXs, or <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitget-against-chatgpt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">help answer</a> customer queries about your exchange (for a while, anyway).



But there is actually nothing special about the relationship between cryptocurrency and AI.&nbsp;



Replace “cryptocurrency” with “cooking,” for example (merely because they both start with the letter C). You’ll see that you can use AI to write recipes, use AI to teach chefs tips on how to cook, and use AI to help answer chef queries about your recipes.



So why does everyone in crypto —&nbsp;crypto Twitter pundits, even formerly crypto-exclusive trade publications —&nbsp;write about AI like it’s a totally normal part of the crypto ecosystem? New AI innovations are gushed about on Crypto Twitter as if they are new Ethereum proposals.&nbsp;



The answer: Crypto is trying to make AI into its own thing, even though it is so not.



Crypto has done this before. The entire industry is prone to obsession with something to such an extreme that it seems like whatever it is, it is actually a natural part of the crypto ecosystem. Like life elongation technology. Or superconductors.&nbsp;



Maybe the reason behind these obsessions is that crypto is filled with a bunch of computer nerds who find computer things cool, and so they naturally find other weird internet and technology things cool —&nbsp;like the aforementioned AI, living forever and superconductors.&nbsp;



To be fair, there are some crypto projects that actually are attempting to use AI as an essential part of their product. But so are so many other things in this world that are not cryptocurrency.



There is just something about crypto’s embracing of AI that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.



It’s almost like crypto is trying too hard to say, look at me! I don’t make people millions of dollars overnight just as easily as I used to,<s> </s><a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ai-art-blockchain-authenticity" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><s>and I can’t create a photorealistic image of you as a pirate in less than 20 seconds,</s></a> and only three people are using my DeFi platform a day, but I’m with AI! Let us into the club together, I’m AI’s plus-one, I promise.



It’s even gone so far that crypto’s public enemy number one, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gary-gensler-is-utterly-unimportant" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gary Gensler</a>, is pivoting from his tirades against the dangers of crypto to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-03/sec-chairman-gary-gensler-discusses-the-risks-to-finance-in-ai">tirades against the dangers of AI</a>.



For whatever reason, crypto has taken AI firmly under its wing —&nbsp;just like it took in “metaverse” a couple years ago. But unlike the metaverse, a concept which arguably has a real connection to blockchain, you can’t convince me that AI has anything really to do with cryptocurrency technology.&nbsp;



The two are both wild digital phenomenons in an internet age, yes, but they are actually entirely mutually exclusive.



The truth is that cryptocurrency may need AI, but AI may not need cryptocurrency.



Because now that you really think about it, do you think that the AI industry even wants to be this closely associated with the crypto one? Did they actually have any say in the matter?&nbsp;



Perhaps we’ll soon see AI politely removing crypto’s desperate grasp from around its shoulders, placing crypto’s proverbial arm back by its side…and walking away.



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I don’t care much about tech, I don’t care a whole lot about finance, either. I care about writing stories and watching weird things unfold. And that’s why I’ve ended up in crypto. But because I’m missing that passion for what crypto and blockchain are all about — finance, tech, privacy, yadda yadda — I’m going to write instead about what I am actually interested in. Everything about crypto that has very little to do with crypto. That’s what this column will be about. All the tangential stories that come out of the blockchain and crypto space, what I think about them, and how I navigate it all as a skeptical former Russian literature major. It’s precisely my perch as an outsider that lets me do what I do: Opine on all sides of any crypto issue, no strings attached, no skin in the game. If you want to talk crypto with me, let’s go off topic.

Crypto, please leave AI alone

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="256" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-60166" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



If you read my bio, you will see that one of my favorite things to talk about is detective novels. And if you read the hook for this crypto column, you will see that I have (almost) free reign to write about anything but crypto.



So what happens when one of my life’s greatest passions —&nbsp;the detective genre — somehow absurdly crosses paths with one of my life’s greatest indifferences —&nbsp;cryptocurrency?



In my lifetime, I’d say that I’ve read probably around 500 detective novels. If you think that amount is high, you’ve never seen how fast I can read. I love the classics, so the majority of that 500 were written before I was born, and hence before the invention of crypto (you’ll never find Hercule Poirot or Lord Peter Wimsey solving the case of the missing NFT).&nbsp;



But at a certain point, my classic murdery mystery pipeline ran dry, and I started to branch out to novels published in this century. And now, no matter what I read, I keep bumping up against…cryptocurrency.



It doesn’t matter what book I choose: while before, motives for murder and blackmail revolved around dancing too closely with a foreign stranger, sibling rivalries over who would inherit the family estate, or missing secret documents that could change the course of history, today’s fictional murders revolve around what is essentially a bunch of computer code.



Take Death Comes to Marlowe, set in a cozy English town with a 77-year-old motherly amateur sleuth in the center role. She and her similarly elderly friends are trying to solve the locked room murder of a lord the night before his wedding, when one of these friends begins acting suspicious.&nbsp;



Does she know who the killer is? Is she protecting someone?&nbsp;



Nope! She’s just been hiding her accidentally made cryptocurrency riches, after she realized how “immoral” crypto was. Cue this conversation between the sleuth and her friends:



“If you’re in debt, there are all sorts of organizations that can help.”



“No, it’s worse than that.”



“Worse than being in debt?”



“I invested in cryptocurrency.”



To shake off the taste of this unexpected cryptocurrency red herring, my next new murder mystery was as far from the English countryside as I could go — to the Chinese neighborhoods of San Francisco to read Vera Wong&#8217;s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.



This detective, a tea expert obsessed with finding her son a girlfriend, finds a dead body in her tea shop and decides to solve the crime herself. But then, amidst a fascinating, cozy mystery told from the Chinese immigrant perspective, NFTs just have to creep their way in —&nbsp;one of the motives for murder is that the deceased was running an NFT scam, stealing art students’ work to tokenize it without their permission.



I can’t seem to stop crypto from bumbling its way into my genre.&nbsp;



It’s 2023, and when authors are looking for inspiration as to why a character needs to be brutally murdered by a candlestick in the library by Colonel Mustard, NFT scammers are as good of a suspect as anybody. Actually, when you really think about it, if you’ve been looking for evidence that crypto is finally achieving that mainstream adoption everyone wants so badly — this might be it.



Because surprisingly, I haven’t yet seen any of these new detective writers bungle what cryptocurrency actually is. The use of crypto in these murderous plot points, while annoying to me personally, actually gets the technology right. Yes, crypto can still be the punchline, but the complexity of a murder motive being questionably legal art tokenization shows that these authors are really doing their own research.



But just because it’s now socially acceptable to include crypto in your murder mysteries doesn’t mean that I have to like it.



If anyone has any recommendations for a murder mystery that does NOT mention crypto, NFTs or blockchain, my DMs are open.



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I don’t care much about tech, I don’t care a whole lot about finance, either. I care about writing stories and watching weird things unfold. And that’s why I’ve ended up in crypto. But because I’m missing that passion for what crypto and blockchain are all about — finance, tech, privacy, yadda yadda — I’m going to write instead about what I am actually interested in. Everything about crypto that has very little to do with crypto. That’s what this column will be about. All the tangential stories that come out of the blockchain and crypto space, what I think about them, and how I navigate it all as a skeptical former Russian literature major. It’s precisely my perch as an outsider that lets me do what I do: Opine on all sides of any crypto issue, no strings attached, no skin in the game. If you want to talk crypto with me, let’s go off topic.

Keep your dirty crypto mitts off my mysteries

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1200" height="300" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-58983" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=1200 1200w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /></figure>



I don’t care much about tech, I don’t care a whole lot about finance, either. I care about writing stories and watching weird things unfold. And that’s why I’ve ended up in crypto. But because I’m missing that passion for what crypto and blockchain are all about — finance, tech, privacy, yadda yadda — I’m going to write instead about what I am actually interested in. Everything about crypto that has very little to do with crypto. That’s what this column will be about. All the tangential stories that come out of the blockchain and crypto space, what I think about them, and how I navigate it all as a skeptical former Russian literature major. It’s precisely my perch as an outsider that lets me do what I do: Opine on all sides of any crypto issue, no strings attached, no skin in the game. If you want to talk crypto with me, let’s go off topic.



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Biking home from my yoga studio in Brooklyn, I pass by the same billboard for a dating app every week: “If he invests in crypto, invest in yourself.”



In my (current) favorite song of the summer, Lana Del Rey also manages to poke fun at me though my headphones: “You name your babe Lilac Heaven/After your iPhone 11/&#8221;Crypto forever,&#8221; scrеams your stupid boyfriend/ Fuck you, Kevin.”



Liking crypto right now makes you a bit of a joke to the Real World.



So what are you…if you actually work in crypto?



I know who I am, and I’m definitely OK with it. At almost 30 years old, I have a job that I truly enjoy in an industry that has been nothing but good to me for the past five years.



But other people don’t see that. And it’s their reactions, along with a random billboard (and mother Lana Del Rey), that lead me to behave like the main character of a terrible spy movie whenever anyone asks what I do.



Weirdly enough, I’m already used to people thinking that I’m a secret agent. Having lived abroad in Russia for the majority of my adult life (no, I don’t live there right now, I’m not crazy), most conversations with new people have already been tortuous — everyone wants to know if I’m in the CIA, or if I’ve met Putin, or if I’ve seen a bear. No one is original. No one.



This meant that not only have I spent years evading the truth about what I do, but also trying to disguise where I actually lived.



“Yes, yes, I live abroad. Which country? Oh, one of the ones near the Baltic Sea that ends in the letter A. Have fun guessing. And where do I work? I cover money. No, not Wall Street. Think Lehman Brothers, but decentralized.”



And that’s usually enough for most people (especially at New York bars or friends’ birthday parties where it’s either too loud to hear properly or people are just looking for any excuse to talk more about themselves).



But when my question dodging doesn’t work, and I’m hit with: Where do you actually live? What’s the name of your news outlet? Where can I read your work?&nbsp;



I do have to tell them.&nbsp;



Depending on the day and my mood, I then follow up with some light verbal diarrhea and apologize for what I do, pre-admit that all crypto is stupid and yes, also bad for the environment, and make it clear that I must be a capitalist with masochistic tendencies.



The reactions when you tell people that you work in the crypto industry range from ‘surprisingly unintelligent’ to ‘wildly offensive’ (regardless of how apologetically you can try to sell yourself and your job). Everyone either thinks I write about bitcoin’s price all day (which, to be fair, I have done at past jobs), I’m a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/elizabeth-warren-crypto-web3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shadowy supercoder</a> (even though I never hide my journalism side) or I’m a scammer (not yet).



But my reluctance to tell people what I do for a living actually has very little to do with the fear of being associated with the “bad actors” of the crypto industry. Nor does it have to do with a fatigue engendered by years of explaining what cryptocurrency is to the uninitiated.&nbsp;



Because, as an aside, since the FTX scandal (plus now Binance and Coinbase with their SEC drama), it’s actually been easier to reveal what my actual job is from that standpoint — the news coverage is so widespread and relentless that it has drilled what crypto is into most people’s heads. Praise be to SBF for shortening my small talk spiel by a few sentences, I guess.



My hesitance to brand myself to new people as the girl who works in crypto instead comes down to what I see as the nascent crypto industry’s misplaced and often cringeworthy bravado.



I’ve been writing about crypto long enough that I’ve seen both the good and the bad, and I’m able to discern between overambitious promises to change the world and cautious optimism about a new technology. But the crypto industry is still very new and very small, and it constantly overestimates its own impact — probably because the ethos of most projects in the industry is to literally change the entire world.



If your goal is to bank the unbanked population globally, you tend to act in a certain way that doesn’t really match up to the reality of a few coders in a DAO chatting on Discord. And so you’re continually setting yourself up to be the punchline for dating ads and pop songs.



What this all means is that the reactions I fear aren’t “crypto is a scam,” but “crypto is a joke, crypto is temporary.” The worst response I ever received to my big job reveal was — “Oh, this will be a great way to get a job next in real journalism.”



There’s no happy ending to my tale here —&nbsp;I don’t yet have an anecdote about that really cool crypto ZK-EVM privacy eyeball scanner account abstraction DeFi yield farming thing that has finally made me able to confidently tell strangers at bars that I work in crypto, dammit, and I won’t hide it any more.



But each time I do take the plunge and let people know that I work in cryptocurrency, I am forced to get slightly better at owning my career. And forced to work on not apologizing for liking a job that lets me be creative and write about a weird, emerging industry filled with ridiculous characters making decisions so wacky it seems like they have reality scriptwriters whispering in their ear.



Wait —&nbsp;did I just give an actual, good reason for loving my job in crypto? Does this mean I can put my evasions and apologies behind me?



The alternative is living my life bowing and scraping to those whose beliefs (or ignorance) somehow have the power to make me feel bad about my job&nbsp; — and that’s a terrible alternative, especially when I work at what I consider to be a top notch media outlet, covering news and stories in a fascinating way.



So if you see me out at a bar in New York this summer, talking to strangers while waiting in line for an Aperol spritz, you might hear me talking about my cool job as an opinion editor at an emerging crypto publication, a job that I took right after I moved back to the US from Russia to escape the bears.



Or you might hear me putting on a fake Finnish accent and talking about my long career in Scandinavian interior design.&nbsp;



But no matter what you overhear, if you read this op-ed, you’ll know the truth. I’m a <s>financial</s> crypto journalist, and I love what I do.



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<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Molly Jane Zuckerman is the opinion editor at Blockworks. She previously led educational content at CoinMarketCap and ran the news desk at Cointelegraph. Molly Jane is now based in New York after almost a decade in Russia, and can talk your ear off about Russia lit and detective novels. Contact Molly Jane: molly@blockworks.co</div>


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Off Topic with Molly Jane