this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
21 points (100.0% liked)
TechTakes
2692 readers
96 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
i first became aware of srinivasan because he was running an extremely funny bitcoin scam. it was a $400 computer, the crypto mining platform of the future, a veritable font of wealth, and when people got it it was a raspberry pi with some shielding incorrectly attached, so that if you touched it wrong you shorted it and bricked the device. it mined a few cents a year and sent something like half of that to a16z
i also first became aware that noah smith was going to lose his mind when he cited srinivasan approvingly on twitter, i drew his attention to this, and he replied 'no i just asked balaji about this and he said he's cool, that it wasn't a scam and also that he was actually put in charge of it to make it not a scam'
Noah Smith has an Econ PhD, contacts at YCombinator, and lives in San Francisco. He is in the hot take business. I always felt bad vibes from him.
'is this a scam? You have to tell me if this is a scam, that is the law'
You know, never once have I heard of a crypto bro with the good manners to say "aww shucks, you got me" when called out for their flagrant con artistry.