Why Neo-Nazis Hate Ethereum

The Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer published a rant earlier this month about the “dangers of brown tech,” lambasting Ethereum advocate and Mattereum.com CEO Vinay Gupta for his opinionated tweets about race. The article explored the “mindset” of Ethereum pioneers who “hold such sway over our lives” and oppose ideas like white pride.

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin tweeted dismissively that the article contradicted itself several times, describing it as “lulzy.”

But the incident highlighted the cryptocurrency community's diversity problem. White supremacists have already created several Ethereum-based tokens loaded with hate speech. Daily Stormer CTO Andrew Auernheimer is one of many anti-Semitic cryptocurrency users who complain about Jews supposedly having too much influence in blockchain industry. Bitcoin forums are rife with countless anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Some white nationalists already crowdfund with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to support controversial political activities. Many white nationalists are bitcoin enthusiasts, although some believe the Ethereum ecosystem is dominated by too many “social justice warriors.” MyEtherWallet.com sparked controversy when the site tweeted statistics about how many women use the site. Many men felt the tweet’s tone was too feminist.

The Ethereum community is generally passionate about free speech. Aram Barnett, CEO of the Washington D.C.-based crypto hedge fund Alluminate, isn’t concerned about the diverse community hindering white supremacists’ access to Ethereum-based technologies. “The right to exist, everyone has that, down to the protocol level,” Barnett told International Business Times. “I think that they do have the right to exist on the Ethereum platform, which is anti-censorship.”

Although Barnett stressed his company’s decisions are deliberately apolitical, he thinks there is a broader discussion the community should have about institutional support versus censorship. For example, allowing advertisements for unethical projects. So far, most problematic projects haven't attracted enough support to merit a platform like Coindesk needing to consider such a dilemma. On the other hand, the same diversity some Neo-Nazis criticize is precisely what draws many people to cryptocurrency projects.

The Ethereum community is full of groups such as the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition, deliberately aiming to boost engagement beyond Silicon Valley. This approach hasn't hampered the ecosystem's growth. Bloomberg reported a CDS brokerage firm might soon offer Ethereum derivatives through a project called Virtuoso. There are people with all kinds of political opinions engaging with Ethereum, even a few rogue white nationalist trolls.

"Blockchain technology is the most powerful tool for social coordination we've ever known," ConsenSys engineer Niran Babalola told IBT. "If the teams figuring out how to build new products with it don't have a wide range of experiences and histories to fall back on, it's really easy to end up automating the social mistakes of our past and present." If socially conscious developers garner more support for their projects than "White Pride" tokens do, it's probably due to the invisible hand of the market and not an intersectional feminist conspiracy.