The Declaration of Currency Independence is a document written to help the early adopters of cryptocurrencies to find agreement on a set of principles surrounding the perception of Value in society.
This is the 'explain it like I'm a five year old' version, since that was a common set of feedback our team received.
Bitcoin and the blockchains that came after it are creating a new part of the internet that lets people avoid the control governments have over currencies without losing the security their control creates.
The Declaration doesn’t explain how it will do this. It explains ‘why’ these technologies will do this.
To keep it quick and simple, the team behind the Declaration of Currency Independence put together this quick rundown:
Point 1: Use of energy is the only real source of value.
Try to think of something that you value that didn’t require the use of some form of energy. I’ll wait. Even the plants growing your food required sunlight from a giant ball of exploding gas to travel millions of miles. You think that’s cheap?
One bank telling another they added another zero to their account does not put any energy to use, it’s just flipping some bits. What value is created there? Most people don’t ask even more wouldn’t know to ask. That’s the game.
Point 2: People naturally avoid control, but welcome security.
Think of a young family going on a vacation. Unless they want a concierge service, they don’t want to be told where to go and what to do. It’s THEIR vacation! But, drop an active shooter at their resort, and they all look for the police for the security.
For big countries with banks, high security is normal. People in the West don’t really worry about having their money stolen from their debit card. If they do, someone will give them their money back, even if it’s just more bits being flipped.
Point 3: You can’t be both free and secure, at least not totally.
How many times have you seen the Benjamin Franklin quote about giving up freedom for security, but that always ends up worse than when you started? Well, the laws of currency is the same as the laws of physics in this regard. You either trust a bank with vaults and governments to safeguard your money with no REAL control over your value OR you control your Value on your own using a variety of tools available to you.
Those are the ends of the spectrum. We are somewhere in the middle. Many of us want to move further to where we have more control over our own Value. Some of us are almost totally there.
Point 4: More people in a complex system make more room dishonesty and screw-ups.
When a bank gets robbed, at least one thing went wrong along the way in the life of the robber which led them to a situation where they would be willing to risk their life to steal things from other people. Our lives and our families are complex systems filled with people. Lots of things can go wrong, quickly.
The more control a government has over your currency, the more room there is for complex systems full of people, who all happen to be salaried government workers. This creates a firestorm of bad things that can happen. Some of which you never hear about because there’s so many people capable of hiding bad things or simply just not even realizing it happened.
So, you’ve made it this far. What’s the point? Where do we go from here?
Sign the Declaration if you haven’t. If you have, go talk to friends and family to see what they know and how they see Value.
We’re going to keep pushing out analysis and news that shines a light on the road ahead towards more independence over our choice of currency.
