From:  	"Jorge Stolfi" <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
Date:  	Fri, June 12, 2020 6:42 pm
To:  	pr@brilliant.org

Dear Brilliant,

I noticed that your project, otherwise fantastic, has included courses on
cryptocurrencies.  Please take them down.

As a technology, cryptocurrencies are a failed attempt to solve to a
problem that had no practical interest.  Its flaws were not noticed at
first, but they became obvious more than eight years ago.  Simply put,
they are utterly inadequate as either alternative forms of money or as
systems for legal payments.

Cryptocurrencies are still alive today for two reasons only:

  (1) They are a convenient money laundering tool for all sort of illegal
activities, including traffic of drug, sex slaves, child porn (and child
sex slaves), ransomware, tax evasion, bypassing sanctions, and all sorts
of scams.

  (2) They are one of the largest financial scams in history, that already
transferred some 15 billion USD from naive "investors" to the organizers
(the so-called "miners"); money that will never return to the former, in
any guise.

In (2), like in any pyramid investment scheme, the profit of investors and
organizers depends entirely on convincing more people to invest in the
scheme.  Thus bitcoin pushers are always trying to insert their misleading
marketing into all sort of contexts, especially in those that could give
the concept an aura of respectable technology and/or investment.

That, unfortunately, is what seems to have happened in your organization.

Sincerely,

--jorge


-- 
Jorge Stolfi
Full Professor/Professor Titular
Instituto de Computação/Institute of Computing
UNICAMP