Vox has recently started a new Netflix series about seemingly random subjects they think are topical or "edgy." Since this series started I (and I'm sure many others in the crypto space) have been eagerly waiting for the crypto episode.
Ezra Klein is so misguided in so much of his thinking (remember when he said what was great about politics was that it allowed us to solve our problems without violence, the most oxymoronical statement ever spoken) that I expected much of the episode to be subtly hostile towards something so clearly anti-government.
What surprised me is that the episode doesn't really touch on government much at all, and spends much more time talking about the trust and security issues rather than the economic ones. Not that Klein is interested in real economic thinking, but I would have thought they would have ridiculed cryptocurrency in comparison to fiat currency.
The truth is, Vox's episode on crypto wasn't political at all. This is both good and bad.
When you look at Vox's series as a whole, it's clear that they're trying to compete with Vice as being the "edgy, millennial new source" for out of the box topics. It's not a winning strategy for them or for us, because they don't have the guts that Vice has to really get into something. At its core, Vox still has to appeal to liberal normies and Gen X'ers, not Millennials. People go to Vox for the same reason Baby Boomers go to Fox: to validate their pre-existing thoughts.
So Vox didn't present a particularly interesting take on crypto. Who cares? It was much like John Oliver's but without the snark. This make it seem boring, yes, but it also tells us 2 things. 1) That to Vox (and people in that arena) crypto is associated with fringe culture, that is a vaguely interesting concept, but nothing that should be entertained seriously just by the fact that it's been grouped in a series with other episodes explicitly labeled "taboo" and 2) It shows us how crypto looks from the outside looking in to liberal normies.
I say yes, it is worth watching, but it's disheartening. I'm not sure if I wouldn't rather someone be actively hostile, because then it would at least signal how legitimate all of this is.