Neil Eriksson
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neileriksson.bsky.social
Neil Eriksson
@neileriksson.bsky.social
140 followers 88 following 15 posts
Interested in #climate change, the brain, trees, the outdoors, camping, space, technology, beer, food, roughly in that order. Software engineer. South African 🇿🇦 in the UK 🇬🇧.

315 ppm



@Neileriksson@mastodon.social

Was on Twitter as @neileriksson
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Reposted by Neil Eriksson
molly.wiki
One by one, agencies have been handed over to the very industries they were meant to regulate.
The SEC and CFTC have been turned from watchdogs into cheerleaders responsible for propping up technoligarchs’ industries, embarking on “Crypto Sprints” and “Project Crypto” and insisting that they “must do more than just keep pace with the digital asset revolution. We must drive it.”8 The DOJ effectively walked away from crypto enforcement. The House voted to prohibit state-level regulation of AI for a decade (though it was later blocked by the Senate). Days into 2026, xAI’s Grok chatbot was generating nonconsensual deepfake pornography across Twitter — including sexualized images of minors — while Musk’s xAI holds a $200 million Pentagon contract. Foreign regulators opened inquiries; US agencies stayed silent.9 Prediction markets — the tech sector’s end run around gambling regulators — have surged. Polymarket’s election‑fueled boom drove massive volume and a post‑election valuation that made its founder a billionaire. One by one, agencies were handed over to the very industries they were meant to regulate. And crypto and AI super PACs are already building toward 2026, promising nine‑figure spends to solidify this capture and punish any lawmaker who’s not on board.
January 7, 2026 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by Neil Eriksson
molly.wiki
2025 was the year of technoligarchy. Musk got DOGE, Sacks became crypto czar, the DOJ dismantled crypto enforcement, and the Trumps built a crypto empire while destroying regulations. The industry that once promised to free us from captured institutions captured them instead.
2025 was the year of technoligarchy. The tech industry’s political investments paid off spectacularly as Trump returned to the White House with a Republican trifecta. Some technology executives secured Cabinet and other advisory roles, and far more were regularly invited to policy- and lawmaking conversations to write their own rules with little concern beyond expanding their power and profit. The installation of tech oligarchs into positions of political power was part of a broader dismantling of institutional checks — enabled by a Supreme Court that granted the presidency sweeping immunity and a Congress that declined to exercise its oversight powers — in a year that also saw mass immigration raids, military deployments to US cities, and extrajudicial killings of supposed drug traffickers in the Caribbean. Unelected billionaire Elon Musk was given broad authority through DOGE,a gleefully slashing critical government funding while positioning his own companies to reap billions in federal contracts and favorable regulatory treatment.12 Tech VC David Sacks was installed as the AI and Crypto Czar, rolling back regulatory frameworks that had begun to constrain industries where he retains financial interests.3 He negotiated controversial AI chips and weapons deals, appearing to grant favorable treatment to the UAE and Saudi Arabia in exchange for lucrative crypto partnerships with Trump’s companies [I93, I97]. Second in command at the DOJ is Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer to Trump who holds significant personal crypto investments.4 Nearly immediately upon appointment, he dismantled the agency’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and directed the Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit to “cease cryptocurrency enforcement” [I81]. Industry cheerleaders were installed to lead the SEC, CFTC, and other regulators, and more cautious commissioners were pushed out without replacement.b And the Trump family themselves modeled this new era of shameless profiteering, building a sprawling cryptocurrency empire spanning memecoins, NFTs, a defi platform, and stablecoins while systematically dismantling the regulations that might constrain it — all while scoffing at the legislators who occasionally raised weak objections to such brazen self-dealing from the office of the presidency. Trump also issued sweeping pardons to industry figures including Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, BitMEX executives, and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, telegraphing that consequences for crypto crime were a thing of the past.
January 7, 2026 at 6:44 PM