Blockchain innovation gets co-opted by the very finance institutions it aimed to replace.

Evidence

Besides this crypto aristocracy, the only true beneficiaries of crypto technologies have been the very institutions that crypto evangelists supposedly aimed to overthrow: Wall Street and the Big Tech conglomerates. For example, J.P. Morgan and Microsoft recently joined forces to run a ‘consortium blockchain’, based on Microsoft data centres, to improve their joint power to dominate financial services. Similar blockchain projects have been announced by Goldman Sachs and the Hong Kong central bank, by the World Bank, indeed by Mastercard and Visa themselves! Rather than inching towards Utopia, crypto has become another tool of cloud finance and engine for the accumulation of cloud capital. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 689

Categorization

• CANDY: The fact that J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Goldman, the World Bank and even Mastercard all run consortium blockchains is perfect dinner-party demolition of the crypto-libertarian myth.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 689
• XREF: connects to: Blockchain’s appeal is escaping intermediaries, states, and cloud rents — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 684; Cryptocurrency’s engineered scarcity converts success as a currency into a pyramid scheme. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 688; Digital networks that capitalism spawned are replacing capitalism with a new feudalism. (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Crypto functions as a utopian reaction to technofeudalism #expands (0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 677
• Digital networks that capitalism spawned are replacing capitalism with a new feudalism. #exemplifies (0.82)
• Financial innovation rhetoric frames new financial instruments as technological progress to legitimize deregulation #exemplifies (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 953