A Viral Case Against Crypto, Explored
About this episode
Klein interviews video essayist Dan Olson, creator of the viral two-hour crypto critique Line Goes Up, asking the inverse of his earlier pro-crypto episode: what if the crypto boosters are wrong? Olson argues crypto is best understood not as a technology but as a financial machine — a speculative asset class whose culture of hype, diamond hands, and influencer marketing exists to recruit new buyers for insiders to sell to. They discuss NFTs and the Beeple sale, the Squid Game token scam, why blockchains destroy rather than protect privacy, how mining centralizes power, and whether the communities forming around crypto could outlast a crash. Klein pushes on whether the technology might survive even if the bubble pops.