Make Crypto Great Again

Senator Fatima Payman tours the regions

Senator Fatima Payman, formerly of Labor, now independent, has been travelling throughout the state this past fortnight, with a plan to visit 12 towns in 12 days. In Karratha, she spoke to The Last Place on Earth about a range of topics, including how angry words from Curtin Uni student protesters triggered her departure from Labor, and how she'd like to see a more urgent renewable transition than the one proposed by her former party.

You can listen to the full interview in the most recent episode of The Last Place on Earth podcast, and read our further coverage of the Senator's gas stance.

Former Premier calls out Woodside's advertising spree

We also published a guest opinion piece by former WA Premier Carmen Lawrence this week. According to Lawrence, Woodside's been spending big on those newspaper ads and billboards because it knows its standing with Western Australians is slipping. "Many are waking up to the fact that Woodside’s new projects, far from being good for WA, are positively harmful," she said.

On a related note: Imagine my delight upon ordering a coffee at the Pilbara Bakehouse in Karratha last Friday, only to be told it was Woodside's shout! Over three consecutive Fridays, Woodside put on free coffee at multiple cafes for locals who regularly breathe in all that particulate matter from the nearby Burrup Hub – parts of which Woodside pays no royalties on. The giveaway was part of Woodside's celebrations of 70 years of operation, as was the sponsored content on Sky News eviscerated by this week's Media Watch.

Crypto fascism?

Crypto mystifies me. Circa 2012, I used Bitcoin to buy some tabs of acid from The Silk Road and have them delivered to my letterbox in a fake birthday card, but I don't think that's what people do with Bitcoin anymore – the crimes these days tend much more white-collar. It's been years since someone cornered me at a party to monologue about their coin portfolio, so I figured the bubble had well and truly burst. But crypto has a new convert in the form of Donald J. Trump, who has taken up the cause with appropriate zeal. Trump has promised to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world,” establish a Bitcoin reserve, and fire tough-on-crypto Security and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler.

Max Read in his Read Max newsletter details how crypto has become a US election issue and how policies around crypto have come to symbolise how candidates will relate to business more broadly. He explains the pressure on Kamala Harris to adopt a more crypto-friendly stance, but warns:

One political issue young American men are genuinely passionate about is their absolute right to lose a ton of money on an app in a really stupid way. At some point, the Democratic Party, or “the left” more broadly, is going to have to figure out how to address the alarming importance of (at best) soul-deadening and (at worst) potentially life-ruining speculative financial games to these guys. Surely there are ways to reach them, and sustainable and socially beneficial ways to give them whatever it is they get out of crypto and day-trading and sports gambling.

I mention all of this largely to point out that the topic of crypto has delivered some of the greatest Trumpisms of this election cycle to date. In his Nashville Bitcoin Conference 2024 speech where he made all those promises, Trump signed off in the most wonderfully dismissive way possible, telling the gathered faithful: "Have a good time with your Bitcoin and your crypto and everything else that you're playing with."

A week later, he delivered this explanation of crypto to Fox News viewers:

Crypto is a very interesting thing. Very high level in certain ways. Intellectually very high level. But if we don't do it, China's gonna do it. China's gonna do it anyway. But if we don't do it, China's doing it. China's already doing it. And if we don't do it, other countries are gonna do it, so we might as well be at the forefront. There are people in crypto who are very, very smart people who do love our country, and they think it's good. Who knows – maybe we'll pay off our $35 trillion, hand them a little crypto check, right? Hand 'em a little Bitcoin and wipe out our $35 trillion.

I thought the whole point of crypto was that nation-states didn't have to/couldn't 'do it', but my notions are clearly outdated.

In his Nashville speech, Trump said of crypto, "Most people have no idea what the hell it is, you know that, right?" I get the sense someone's even more mystified than I am.