Is it damaging to Bitcoin’s credibility when one of its most famous advocates also promotes UFO theories? Or just a bit of harmless fun?
Celebrated Bitcoin bull and podcast host Anthony Pompliano’s interest in extraterrestrial life is well known – but has he taken it too far?
He is devoting an entire episode of his Off The Chain podcast to an ‘alien researcher’ who believes that ETs, in the form of a “post-biological AI craft”, have already visited the Earth.
“I’m interviewing a well-known alien researcher on Friday,” he tweeted.
“He is going to talk about ‘the first ever identification of an alien technosignature in the form of an ET post-biological AI craft that broke up in orbit around the Earth 780,000 years ago.”
Well OK then.
I’m interviewing a well known alien researcher on Friday.
He is going to talk about “the first ever identification of an alien technosignature in the form of an ET post-biological AI craft that broke up in orbit around Earth 780,000 years ago.”
Will be epic.????
— Pomp ???? (@APompliano) October 21, 2019
Who is this ‘alien researcher’ anyway?
Speculation around the as yet unnamed guest centres on the possibility he could be Dr Steven Greer, founder of the Centre for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or entrepreneur Bob Lazar, who is interested in the goings on at Area 51.
Embracing an ‘alien researcher’ and the possibility that UFOs have already landed certainly allow for a new interpretation on Pomp’s comment from earlier in the year that “crypto is not meant for humans.”
The reason it is so hard for so many humans to understand crypto assets is because these assets are not for us.
They are being built for the machines.
— Pomp ???? (@APompliano) February 23, 2019
At the time people thought he meant is was user-unfriendly or better suited to trading bots, but now…
Questions about aliens
Pompliano, of course, frequently asks his guests whether they believe in aliens.
Binance’s CZ said he believed 99.9999999% in aliens:
”They could look very similar to us but they could as well be very different to us in such a way that we can not really interact with them. I also believe in simulation theory, that we all live in a simulation.”
He recently put the same question to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who stayed resolutely on message in a soundbite that could have been dreamed up by Ripple’s marketing department:
“We think that one day we may be paying aliens with XRP – it’s the future.”
You’re trying too hard Brad.
John McAfee’s answer was probably the best and most accurate.
Asked if he believed in aliens he said: “Yes – and I am one!”
ALIENS ARE REAL! Change my mind! ???????????? pic.twitter.com/cwwMJJ8Ta1
— Pomp Pomp Parody ???? (@AParodiano) October 20, 2019
Rationalising the alien question
Pompliano told fellow podcaster Peter McCormack he asks the question about aliens because it’s a different and unusual question that elicits surprising or illuminating answers.
“I actually really care what your answer is,” he said.
“I also get to see how do you think, and so there are some people who come in and they’re funny, they say …. ‘We’re the aliens’. It gives me a lot of insight into who they are.”
Science and aliens not technically incompatible
As a journalist with a keen interest in science and empirical evidence, I don’t have a problem with Pomp toying with the idea that aliens landed here almost a billion years ago.
The time scales of civilizations in proportion to the mind-blowing age of the universe are such that it’s probably more likely we’d find evidence of aliens in the distant past that here in the present.
Many (perhaps most) of the world’s greatest scientists are also firm believers in the existence or possibility of alien life and the international scientific community has spent a fortune on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Incidentally, crypto miners are royally screwing up by buying up all the latest GPUs that the SETI guys need for their research.
In conclusion…
To me, as long as this researcher isn’t talking about being abducted by aliens that escaped from Area 51 with an anal probe, I think it’s a legitimate topic for a podcast – albeit a curious choice for one devoted to cryptocurrency.
And while it doesn’t exactly enhance Bitcoin’s credibility to have it mixed in with UFO theorists, a fun chat with an alien researcher really pales in significance next to the wash trading, exit scams, and fraudulent ICO that are really damaging crypto’s cred.