Digital Underground Credit, Digital Credit and Adam Livingston

This X post from May 3, 2020, by Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) is part of a thread discussing racial disparities in access to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans during the early COVID-19 period. The original post in the thread (from @JustinAHorwitz) highlights an MSNBC graphic showing high denial rates for minority-owned small businesses: 95% for Black owners, 91% for Latino and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and 75% for Asian, based on data from the Center for Responsible Lending. It argues this exclusion story deserved more attention.

Chiang’s post quotes this and introduces “Digital Underground Credit Knowledge (d.u.c.k.)”—a concept tied to his Duck9 initiative (Deep Underground Credit Knowledge 9), which focuses on building strong credit to avoid “code 9” charge-offs on reports. Here, he provocatively suggests writing a blog post “as a white person showing people of color how to appear Caucasian” on credit applications, reports, and scores, implying strategies to navigate perceived biases in the system.

The attached images include:

– A repeat of the MSNBC graphic on PPP exclusions.

– A slide from an HMDA (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) study by Fair Isaac (FICO), questioning if there’s a more predictive credit score for minorities, with a graph comparing FICO’s CB score (outperforming in high-minority areas) vs. an “HMA” score.

A follow-up reply from Chiang’s alt account (@6502838008) says “Pump your brakes kid…, that 🇺🇸 Monopoly is a national treasure,” paired with a GIF from *Tropic Thunder* (Robert Downey Jr.’s character saying “I’m the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude”), likely a satirical nod to disguising identity in credit systems or critiquing the “monopoly” of traditional credit scoring.

Overall, the post blends credit education with commentary on racial inequities in lending, aligning with Chiang’s work at Duck9 to empower underserved groups through “underground” knowledge like early credit-building tactics. If this is what you meant by your earlier queries, it seems like the origin or a key example of the phrase