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Miami was a matter for concern, but NYC was the heart of global finance. CityCoins was also knocking on politicians’ doors in Philly, Austin, and other cities. The token still had no use case—it wasn’t yet a vehicle for voting on city governance—except for speculating on the volatile price of a token that was difficult to trade. Like many crypto projects, CityCoins was mostly about hype, promises of future utility, and betting on price fluctuations. Like a classic pyramid scheme, the risk would fall mostly on those coin holders who could least afford to lose their money. It was a prime example of what the economist Tonantzin Carmona called “predatory inclusion”: “marginalized communities gaining access to goods, services, or opportunities that they were historically excluded from—but this access comes with conditions that undermine its long-term benefits and may reproduce insecurity for these same communities.”5 Crypto claimed to offer financial liberation, but it came with a price tag, including, Carmona wrote, “high risks and insufficient consumer protections.
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Jacob Silverman (Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley)