Richard Greaser reveals that Senator Elizabeth Warren‘s top crypto advisor is Phil, her 19-year-old nephew, whose entire qualification is having lost $250 trading Dogecoin on Robinhood.

Phil, a former part-time lifeguard studying Native American Studies “at a well respected university,” spent family gatherings telling his aunt to buy Dogecoin — until it dropped after Elon Musk’s SNL appearance, at which point he concluded that crypto “was all a scam and it was backed by nothing.” Warren, explaining the hire in a CNN interview, cited Phil’s firsthand experience of “the devastation that crypto has caused to young people” and her need for “someone who is young and in touch with young people and can understand this blockchain stuff.”

The Bitcoin community criticized the appointment as inexperienced. Senator Ted Cruz seized the moment to insist that Bitcoiners send him more money to protect themselves from someone so “Unhinged.”

The article opens Elizabeth Warren vs. Bitcoin, the Bugleverse’s longest-running regulatory antagonism, and establishes its core canon: Warren’s crypto policy is built on secondhand Dogecoin grief.

irl: Published January 2023, as the real Senator Warren was positioning herself as Congress’s leading crypto critic (“anti-crypto army”). Ted Cruz’s fundraising reflex is the bipartisan punchline.