Hilary J. Allen
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Hilary J. Allen
@profhilaryallen.bsky.social
1.4K followers 320 following 540 posts

Law professor at the American University Washington College of Law (but all views expressed here are my own); author of Fintech Dystopia and Driverless Finance; mythbusting crypto, AI, and other fintech

Internet serial: fintechdystopia.com .. more

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profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · Aug 29
"Let's Get Skeptical," the final chapter of Fintech Dystopia, has dropped
fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...
Covering
- How much the abundance agenda and VC output suck
- Silicon Valley subsidies we can take away
- How to laugh our way into Silicon Valley skepticism
- A plan to actually fix finance
A picture of Olivia Newton-John with the caption "Let's Get Skeptical"

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 3d
As a start, let's make sure we all laugh at it...

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...
Although many media and academic institutions are compromised by ties to Silicon Valley (not to mention besieged by funding cuts from the Trump administration), there are still many independent journalists and scholars who can and do play an important role in reframing how we look at technological innovation. But skeptics without the benefit of a university or publishing platform can also help change the narrative, and they can do it the same way everyday people have always undermined the power of the powerful – by laughing at Silicon Valley and its narratives of inevitability. As activist Saul Alinksy put it, “ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule.” While I don’t want to downplay the harm that Silicon Valley does, it is still a ridiculous place, and ridicule is one of the best ways to defuse Silicon Valley’s narrative power and rebalance our yin and yang in favor of skepticism. In the classic comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur says to his knights (after a ridiculous musical number) “on second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.” The goal is to change the “facts on the ground” so that everyone thinks of Silicon Valley as a silly place too. There are plenty of great hype men in Silicon Valley, but that hype loses its power if people start laughing at it. I suspect that Silicon Valley hype is effective in part because people want to believe that the world is better than this – that techno-solutionist bullshit couldn’t possibly be perpetuated at such scale in such a cynical way, so there must be some germ of promise in it. Accepting that Silicon Valley can really be this cynical can break your brain, and humor is probably the most palatable way to deliver this kind of brain-breaking message. That is why I am prescribing you all a watch (or rewatch) of HBO’s Silicon Valley TV series to help inoculate you against techno-solutionism.

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 4d
Exactly!

As I wrote last year:
(fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...)
AI hype continues unabated in 2025, but lurking beneath the surface there’s a palpable sense of desperation about low AI adoption. You can see that desperation in the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan when it says “the bottleneck to harnessing AI’s full potential is not necessarily the availability of models, tools, or applications. Rather, it is the limited and slow adoption of AI, particularly within large, established organizations.” You can see that desperation as tech CEOs line up to declare their companies “AI-first,” forcing their employees to use AI tools and sometimes using “level of AI usage” as a metric in employee performance reviews. Silicon Valley’s preferred playbook of “get us all hooked and then turn the screws” won’t work if we never get hooked in the first place, and so the AI industry seems to have enlisted the Trump administration and their tech CEO friends to try and make GenAI indispensable. It feels a bit like Meta pleading with its employees to please, please, please use the Metaverse back in 2022, only on a more environmentally destructive and soul-crushing scale.

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 4d
And I would add, all of this is happening at a time when the use of AI tools is highly subsidized. How much will employers be willing to pay for the unsubsidized versions?

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 4d
(Screen shot from fintechdystopia.com/chapters/int...)
Fintech Dystopia - Introduction
fintechdystopia.com

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 4d
@davekarpf.bsky.social @lizzieohreally.bsky.social

Imo there are parallels here with how SBF tried to position FTX (politically and morally) as the Dem-affiliated "good guys" in crypto. Of course FTX did fraud/played both sides of the aisle, then Coinbase/Circle decided to try out being "good"...
By now, many books have been written about the grisly details of FTX, SBF (as Bankman-Fried is often called), and the rest of 2022’s “crypto winter.” These books tell the story of an industry practically quilted out of red flags, which combusted in a spectacular series of frauds and failures once the easy money of 2020 and 2021 ebbed away. But every time news broke about a fraud or a failed company, the rest of the crypto industry performed a curious rhetorical trick. The remaining players circled their wagons and said “they deserved it, they were bad crypto. Not like us – we’re good crypto.”

Reposted by Hilary J. Allen

medievaliste.bsky.social
Gillian Gower, PhD @medievaliste.bsky.social · 4d
AI is not inevitable. If we had sane people in government that were not in thrall to billionaire tech CEOs, LLMs could be regulated, forced to obey existing copyright laws, and banned from places where their use is inappropriate, such as college classes. This should be a moderate position.

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d
“Newsom currently finds himself aligned with Peter Thiel…in an effort to kill a union-backed billionaire tax that would help offset Trump’s healthcare cuts…[N] regularly bows down to the powerful California interests bankrolling the very authoritarianism from which he claims he can save the nation.”

Reposted by Hilary J. Allen

theguardian.com
The Guardian @theguardian.com · 6d
Gavin Newsom’s likely presidential bid is built on broken promises | Gil Durán
Gavin Newsom’s likely presidential bid is built on broken promises | Gil Durán
The California governor has a record of failed pledges on housing, healthcare and more as he mistakes theatrics for leadership
www.theguardian.com

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 6d
This isn’t a new playbook - Andreessen Horowitz more or less lobbied the crypto markets into existence (along with a bunch of other fintech). Lobbying and marketing - rather than finding good tech- is WHAT THEY DO.

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

Reposted by Hilary J. Allen

revolvingdoordc.bsky.social
Revolving Door Project @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social · 7d
Abundance has a new 501(c)(4) group to help push its deregulatory message according to reporting by Axios. "Next American Era" will be headed up by former DCCC chair and current OpenAI/Oracle lobbyist Cheri Bustos, further integrating data center construction with abundance
The AI Lobbyist Starting An Abundance Nonprofit | Revolving Door Project
Next American Era is hoping to help push abundance policies into the mainstream. It's headed by OpenAI lobbyist Cheri Bustos
therevolvingdoorproject.org

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 7d
I noticed this too - I wondered if they're being bombarded by AI scrapers, but I don't know enough to know whether that's a plausible explanation

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 10d
I really enjoyed my conversation with Titi and Zakiya at Dope Labs. Talking about the limitations of fintech, financial inclusion, and our crypto-captured Congress.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...
Is Financial Technology Helping or Hurting? - Lab 125
Podcast Episode · Dope Labs · 02/01/2026 · 29m
podcasts.apple.com

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 10d
Coinbase and Ripple might need some of that Fairshake PAC money back…

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 11d
This is my beat. It all depends on how interconnected crypto and the traditional financial system have become.

See:

driverlessfinancebook.com

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 11d
💯

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 12d
Let's catch up!

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 12d
My guess is some kind of combination of people being goldfish and Upton Sinclair's "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 12d
Kind of like my crypto critique

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...
But all of these aspirations are based on fundamental confusion regarding the “decentralization” that blockchains offer. A system needs to offer more than just the opportunity for decentralized control to actually be decentralized. Blockchains, and many of the things built on them, are technologically decentralized systems in the sense that there are lots of nodes involved, but if one person can control lots of those nodes, or some nodes are more important than others practically speaking, then control of the system will become centralized and all that effort that went into technological decentralization will be for naught.

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 14d
Also: crypto's potential to cause a financial crisis is seen as a feature and not a bug

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/u...
True adherents of this movement have no interest in making nation-states work better, and they would surely see the chaos following a financial crisis as an opportunity to advance their vision. For example, the online community Praxis (with backers including Silicon Valley heavyweights Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman) states on its website, “as local communities dissolve and Nation States stumble … we’ll watch the flippening of Digital Nations over Nation States in real time.” There is also an eschatological dimension to many Silicon Valley elites’ worldview. As the philosopher Émile Torres points out, Silicon Valley types increasingly subscribe to the belief that true AI will end the world as we know it. In this context, a global financial crisis would seem like a non-event. If you are convinced that our current way of life is ending, it makes sense that you would fixate instead on ensuring that our cyborg descendants can prosper in other galaxies.

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 14d
Non-USD stablecoin volume is about $1.5 billion; USD stablecoin volume is about $300 billion (if DefiLlama's nos are right)

The USD market is the ballgame - but not because Americans use them for real-world payments. Criminals and gamblers just like their USDs

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 14d
My working title for this op-ed was "Better the Devil You Know": www.ft.com/content/b986...
Donald Trump’s crypto embrace is a threat to Wall Street
Stablecoins will increasingly challenge bank deposits as a riskier place for people to park their cash
www.ft.com

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 15d
First, this is great news. Second, does this help explain what's happened to crypto prices lately? (Pig butchering scams use crypto for payment)
wsj.com The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 15d
The arrests of two alleged ringleaders of transnational scam networks in Cambodia have led to thousands of workers—many of them trafficked—being let go from compounds across the country.
High-Profile Arrests Spark Exodus of Scam Workers in Cambodia
Thousands of people—many of them trafficked—have been let go from compounds in a shake-up of the deeply rooted “pig-butchering” industry.
on.wsj.com

Reposted by Fabián Muniesa, Hilary J. Allen

wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 15d
The arrests of two alleged ringleaders of transnational scam networks in Cambodia have led to thousands of workers—many of them trafficked—being let go from compounds across the country.
High-Profile Arrests Spark Exodus of Scam Workers in Cambodia
Thousands of people—many of them trafficked—have been let go from compounds in a shake-up of the deeply rooted “pig-butchering” industry.
on.wsj.com

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 17d
Nothing says "we're so decentralized and intermediary-less that we need Congress to pass new legislation to accommodate our decentralization and intermediarilessness" than a crypto exchange intervening to prop up crypto prices.
molly.wiki Molly White @molly.wiki · 17d
Binance bitcoin bailout
Headline: Binance to shift $1 billion user protection fund into bitcoin amid market rout Binance will convert the stablecoin holdings in its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users to bitcoin over the next 30 days, with plans for regular audits

Reposted by Hilary J. Allen

molly.wiki
Molly White @molly.wiki · 17d
Binance bitcoin bailout
Headline: Binance to shift $1 billion user protection fund into bitcoin amid market rout Binance will convert the stablecoin holdings in its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users to bitcoin over the next 30 days, with plans for regular audits

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 19d
(To be clear, I know why Congress passed GENIUS. They were paid to)

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...
In 2025, Congress is pushing crypto legislation as if it were America’s number one priority. In July, a stablecoin bill titled the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, or GENIUS Act, was signed into law (as I said, I fricking hate these cutesy acronyms; I sometimes suspect that more work goes into the acronym than the actual legislative text). I spent a lot of time in Chapter 3 talking about how dangerous this stablecoin law is, particularly because it is poised to allow the largest tech platforms to effectively become our banks, but also because it applies only light-touch regulation and makes bailouts all but inevitable. Members of Congress were made aware of these and other concerns, and a bipartisan majority voted to pass the GENIUS Act anyway. For some Democrats, the fear of the crypto industry’s money cannon was just too great for them to oppose the law. The Lever reported on an influential group chat among crypto industry and Democratic party insiders where the industry folks made it clear that “if Dems bail on this [bill], they will get 0 dollars going forward…It would be political suicide for them not to support it.” The same group chat also featured a comment that Democrats “need to win the next election, which means we can not afford to alienate a very vocal and wealthy group of donors.” No doubt some Dems genuinely believed they needed to compromise on crypto in order to be in a position to fight the rise of authoritarianism, but that approach seems kind of short-sighted in light of the reality we discussed in Chapter 7 – that the Silicon Valley elite are pursuing authoritarianism through crypto.

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 19d
www.linkedin.com/pulse/stable...
Stablecoins in payments: What the raw transaction numbers miss
Blockchain data indicate huge transaction volumes for stablecoins, but most of that isn’t real-world payments. Here’s what the data really show.
www.linkedin.com

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 19d
gizmodo.com/illicit-cryp...
Illicit Crypto Flows Climbed to $154 Billion in 2025 as Nation States Evade Sanctions, Report Finds
As the Trump administration is adding rocket fuel to sanction enforcement, it's also been legitimizing crypto.
gizmodo.com

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 19d
A bunch of new reports coming out confirming what's long been obvious if you cared to look: stablecoins are for crime and for crypto speculation. Congress' bipartisan passage of the GENIUS Act for stablecoins was a huge abdication of the public interest.

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...
In short, the predominant legal use of stablecoins is not for payments, but for speculative trading. They aren’t as stable as they claim to be, and the stability they do have arises from free-riding on the US banking system and monetary policy – and as we’ll come back to, if stablecoins are able to keep gaining market share, these parasites might eventually endanger their hosts. Stablecoins are typically unavailable to those without bank accounts…and so we come to the question that I keep screaming about stablecoins (in my head, and occasionally on social media), WHY ARE WE EVEN DOING THIS???

profhilaryallen.bsky.social
Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 19d
Gallego has fundraisers with Marc Andreessen. I'm not sure it's realistic to expect him to leave said Nazi Bar.