Puja Ohlhaver

1. FACTUAL BACKGROUND 4. On January 5, 2024, Mr. Spilker filed a Demand for Arbitration with the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) against Coinbase, Inc. seeking damages in the amount of $350,000 for withdrawal of staked cryptocurrency, allegedly without his authorization. Ex. A at 2. He alleged that he had been in contact with a “Coinbase Agent” and brought causes of action under the Electronic Funds Transfer Act, tort and common law, breach of contract, California law, Oregon and Idaho law, and federal commodities and securities laws. Ex. A at 2-3; Ex. B. 5. The User Agreement between Mr. Spilker and Coinbase, Inc. provided that the parties agreed to arbitrate any disputes, and that the arbitration would be “in accordance with the American Arbitration Association’s rules for consumer related disputes.” A true and correct copy of the User Agreement is attached hereto as Exhibit C. See Ex. C at § 7.2 (the parties’ agreement to arbitrate and agreement that an award may be enforce

9. On December 17, 2024, Arbitrator Kruze issued an Order Granting Dispositive Motion as to all of Mr. Spilker’s claims. Ex. A at 6 (“Respondent’s Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED. Claimant’s claims against Coinbase are dismissed.”). 10. The Final Award holds: a. Claimant’s EFTA cause of action is time-barred because the “one-year limitations period begins when the first unauthorized transfer occurs, not upon discovery by the consumer, and not when the consumer notifies the defendant of the unauthorized transfer.” Id. at 3, applying 15 U.S.C. §1693m(g) and Wike v. Vertrue, Inc., 566 F.3d 590,593 (6th Cir. 2009). b. “The undisputed facts show that a third party, not Coinbase, caused Claimant’s damages” and that “Claimant’s damages were the result of an intervening and superseding cause: the actions of a third-party scammer. Coinbase, as a matter of law, cannot be held liable for Claimant’s damages.” Ex. A at 4, citing May v. Google, LLC, No. 24-CV-01314- BLF, 2024 WL 4681604, at *

Given the recent data breach and Coinbase’s user agreement that aims to force customers into arbitration rather than individual or class action lawsuits, it’s interesting to read the outcome of a recent arbitration case against Coinbase.

Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind

Shame. $Trump is both a violation of the emoluments clause and an open auction for regulatory capture. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...

When it’s harder to influence someone, it’s harder to scam them.

Increasing the cost of influence means making participants informationally aware and unique.

Plurality pushes information out.

The point is to prevent human farms, not enable them. Check out enforcement section

We are grappling with many tensions today: money/voting, public/private, democratic/corporate, voice/exit.

Here’s my draft to reconcile them.

🚀 Community Currencies: The Price of Attention & Cost of Influence or 💡 The Price of Entry & Cost of Exit

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Since AI x crypto agents seem poised to take over the world, I’m throwing this *draft* into the wild for public comment, critique, and ridicule:

🚀 Community Currencies: The Price of Attention & Cost of Influence ---or--- 💡 The Price of Entry & Cost of Exit

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

How do you reconcile this post with Brian funding SuperPacs that willfully mischaracterized the position of political candidates who (checks notes) did not even have a position on crypto?

This was a disinformation campaign and mafia tactic (pigs head on a stick) to terrify candidates.

Is it possible some black holes are just failed AIs?

There is a corollary mistake people make in thinking about privacy as all or nothing. All privacy means no coordination. We want partial privacy, with less privacy the more power you have.

Community posts!

YouTube video by Molecule How to fund Breakthrough Innovations in Science

The plural/quadratic research agenda (of which I'm familiar through collaboration with @pujaohlhaver.bsky.social) has some resonance with this challenge imho: youtu.be/guLDNMAOn24

Most people still don’t understand that decentralization is a political innovation.

It requires acknowledging the people that stand between the 0s and 1s.

Had a big eureka moment today—-the kind where the universe seems to fall elegantly into place and mysteries are no longer mysterious, but ordered complexity.

Then I realized I had the same eureka a year ago and just entirely forgot about it.

Not sure how I should feel about it.

Agree on a theory of power. And more fundamentally a failure to think about what makes power (information and control).

Adverse selection is centralizing. Most people don’t get that.

1. I saw a lot of people on Bluesky yesterday poking fun at Lindsay Graham saying that the U.S. would use financial sanctions to "crush" the economies of allies who tried to help the ICC. Graham is characteristically grotesque in his language, but I'm not laughing myself.

Son just asked me if anything is faster than the speed of light?

Snap response: love.

Hate externalizes high entropy, releasing unprocessed chaos into the world.

Love absorbs entropy, integrating chaos into coherence.

That's why the greatest stories are always about love.

I had to interview a crying mom talking about her dead son for this story, so it would be nice if it got read reason.com/2024/11/19/t...

You think so?

He’s crossed the line so many times, and people seem to forget.

How do you negotiate with someone who feels that any compromise with you risks infinity?

Interesting, you can also nudge adversarial collaboration with polarity subsets—from my piece on common knowledge. It’s a different way to think about alignment assemblies.

Btw, would add campaign finance reform to list of must-needed changes.

after forcing election administrators to become misinformation experts, after forcing doctors to become misinformation experts, after forcing federal law enforcement officials to become misinformation experts...

This is maybe my favorite passage in the book.

Cc: @himself.bsky.social @wlknsn.xyz @jay.bsky.team

Common Knowledge Machines From Community Notes to Community Posts

How can social media generate more common knowledge?

Check out my blogpost (written in the context of X but applicable to Bluesky!)

"Common Knowledge Machines:
From Community Notes to Community Posts"

High Modernism made our world On James Scott and technology

Why the late James Scott's work helps explain Silicon Valley www.programmablemutter.com/p/high-moder...

Have you ever read/seen Cloud Atlas? At the time, I didn’t understood why people were speaking jibberish in this futuristic society, but now I get it. The models start training on their own outputs, and language becomes more incoherent as people become more dependent on them.