I didn’t think this needed to be said; however, clearly, it does.

There’s a group of students in TCD attempting to found a student society revolving around the promotion and use of cryptocurrencies. This society isn’t interested in the technology behind it. That would be covered by the likes of DUCSS, anyway.

They’re purely interested in the speculative/economic aspect of cryptocurrencies and NFTs (which I would consider as SMF’s territory).

I can’t imagine the Central Societies Committee ever approving it as well as that; I fully intend to vote against its recognition at the AGM, in my capacity as Treasurer of Netsoc, provided they scrounge up the 200 signatories required to propose it.

In my mind, the only thing I can see this becoming is an unethical collective of people day-trading cryptocurrencies.

The whole concept of this proposed society screams highly unethical to me. The currencies they will be promoting are, at their core, fiat currencies that aren’t backed by either an organisation or commodity. Any cryptocurrency purporting to back itself with any form of commodity should be taken with several metric tonnes of salt and often lack the liquidity or capital to realise the market casp of their currency.

I have very negative views towards both cryptocurrencies and NFTs. The havoc they’re wreaking on both the environment and hardware market is, frankly, underreported. I’ve heard the arguments for “jane and joe” miners, who aren’t running large, commercial mining operations, and, for the most part, they would be fine if they weren’t propping up the commercial mining operations by validating the cryptocurrency’s value.