comms @coincenter—the cryptocurrency policy think tank | [email protected] | food account/retirement pasture: @neerajkafood
Washington, DC
Joined May 2008
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Coin Center in Politico Decoded this morning.
Crypto is working its way into Wall Street. DC is embracing centralized issuers using blockchains. What’s lost in all this is the cypherpunk, private, self-sovereign original purpose of the technology. That’s what we fight for.
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
This story shows how hilariously broken online identity verification is from all relevant angles.
1. Your SSN, DOB, address history, etc. are sitting in countless data breaches and data-broker dumps. They’re cheap and widely available to basically anyone who looks.
2. KYC/AML mostly just checks that the data exists and matches a real person. It doesn’t confirm the person signing up is actually the real person behind that identity.
Result: Amanda Smith spent three nights in jail and now faces up to six years in prison over a $1,000 CashApp scam account opened with her SSN and DOB. It wasn't necessarily opened by her, and the phone, IP, device, address, and other details don’t match.
The funniest (and yes, saddest) part is CashApp wouldn't give her information about the account because she can’t prove she’s the owner. Her personal info was good enough to open the account, but not good enough to access it in the future, apparently. To be clear, CashApp is likely just following the law here.
Anyway, we need to burn it all down and start fresh.
New: someone made a CashApp account in her name. She spent 3 nights in jail and now faces up to 6 years in prison
Amanda Smith was arrested because a scam led to a CashApp account in her name. But she says she didn't make it, and the data doesn't line up 404media.co/amanda-smith-ope…
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
if you get styled off a menswear account, just know a chrysler 300 looks like a phantom until a phantom pulls up
unavailable
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
Love my team; love my job.
In a room full of noise, we’ll keep fighting for the values that brought us here in the first place: freedom, privacy, and self-sovereignty.
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
A few thoughts on this.
It is true that we see more interest than ever from establishment firms, however what interests most of these firms is the open programmable credibly neutral nature of the tech.
I do think more than the crypto industry moving towards the establishment we (thanks to the efforts of @coincenter @fund_defi @BlockchainAssn) have actually shifted the establishment more towards our thinking. We are moving the Overton window.
This is also due to the larger environment we are in. Now more than ever the thesis of self custodial wallets, open protocols with privacy tools, and credibly neutral software is strong - one just has to look at our society at large to see why.
We have our path forward, it is a narrow path with dangers on either side but we are walking it and more and more are walking it with us.
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
New: We found cops who kept using Flock to spy on women after they left the force.
One used it for five years after retirement, spying on his wife during a custody battle.
Another ran searches while he was suspended (and later fired) after killing a 15-year-old boy.
🧵
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
What does freedom to build mean—and what deserves to be built?
At Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress #2, @valkenburgh from @coincenter connected permissionless technology with the responsibilities of its builders.
Watch here:
youtu.be/JIRewMAPrsI
The home robot industry needs to address the obvious issue of having a giant and expensive obsolete thing in your house every few years
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
Today in Decoded: @calder_mchugh and I unpack what the Trumpification and corporatization of crypto has meant for the technology's true believers. It was fascinating to hear @valkenburgh's thoughts on how movement evolves in an AI-driven future. politico.com/newsletters/dec…
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
Waiting for the bus with a bunch of high school kids and overheard “us if we don’t lock in”
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
MAYBE I WAS WRONG ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY
I wrote about how I always used to make fun of the guys who said things like "Bitcoin is speculative, but the underlying blockchain technology is interesting." And now I think maybe they kinda had a point.
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
Any ledger that wants to be globally viewed as credibly neutral needs to be censorship resistant in practice.
Otherwise institutions will have the exact same worries individuals have in the examples you gave. He controls the ledger sets the rules of the game.
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
The "KYC everyone for everything" situation has gotten totally ridiculous.
Even for non-financial products & use cases, I am having to scan my face and drivers license to get access to things like a Lime scooter, e.g. Before they could give me accounting advice, a Big 4 firm recently asked me to send a photo of my email *attached as a JPEG*.
This expectation creep around personal data sharing already has documented devastating consequences (e.g. financial ruin) at the individual level. It's only going to be a matter of time before personal identity compromise of enough individuals leads to a total collapse of online trust.
It’s real
This baboon Elon made it so that if you click any link on here, that website you go to can get your twitter account info if it gets compromised
Which is how I have 3k+ sessions apparently
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
High session counts are a recent X app glitch from in-app browser use creating phantom Web sessions. External sites get no account info or access. Log out others via Settings > Security and account access > Apps and sessions.
help.x.com/en/managing-yo…
Neeraj K. Agrawal retweeted
Anonymity is one of the best guards we have against consequences ranging from social embarrassment to overt government oppression. So why are we giving it up without a fight?
My latest at @BostonGlobe on free speech, anonymity, and the changing internet: bostonglobe.com/2026/10/20/m…
