The meme behind cryptocurrency is that it is the people’s money, that somehow it will upset the Rothschild’s cart of golden apples. But just as the invention of television promised to bring culture to the masses but instead became a major marketing and propaganda tool and the internet promised unlimited information freely distributed but quickly ushered in the surveillance state and the end of privacy, blockchain has it’s own hidden agenda.
We are living in the salad days of cryptocurrencies. Don’t you think it strange that people are allowed to create money, something that has always been the purview of the State? Counterfeiting is illegal and carries stiff penalties that include many years locked in a cage. Why then does government turn a blind eye to cryptos?
The rhetoric is that cryptos aren’t real money but just points you acquire in whatever game you decide to play. The difference with crypto points is that it is possible to convert them into cryptocurrency, something that can be used in trade or even converted into fiat coin of the realm. In other words, like government issued fiat currency they have fungibility.
Fungibility is a head trip: the belief that something is valuable. Be it USD, gold, silver, tulip bulbs, beanie babies, puka shells—if people believe something has intrinsic value they will freely trade their labor and their wares in exchange for it.
In these early days of crypto, government appears to be uninterested, has a hands-off attitude even though the people’s hype is that crypto will free humanity from enslavement to financial institutions and government’s ability to regulate commerce and tax income. Doesn’t this laissez-faire attitude raise a red flag since the entrenched financial industry is the behemoth of the economy and the government its enforcement arm? Haven't governments fought world wars and killed millions of people over economic control? Don't governments impose sanctions against countries that don't accept their economic model?
Either government believes that cryptocurrency is a fad that will die out, which is unlikely, or they are biding their time until the majority of people begin to accept the fungibility of cryptos and then government will give them the boot heel. Given the history of disruptive technology, I believe the latter will be the case. Here’s why.
Blockchain technology is an unhackable accounting method. Every transaction done on the blockchain is transparent, an immutable, permanent record. We who contribute to the blockchain do so knowing that what we do here is viewable to everyone. Blockchain is the surveillance state taken to the next level. Private is now public. No warrant is necessary to audit activity on the blockchain. This is the sort of stuff governments dream of.
Once the majority of people accept cryptocurrency, possibly during a “crisis” of consolidation and radical valuation swings, perhaps during a financial meltdown wherein people lose faith in the fiat USD, the government will undoubtedly step in and regulate it, in most likelihood by issuing a statist world blockchain that will be the only acceptable form of currency used in commerce. Let’s call it the Roth.
Roth will be the end of cash. Government hates cash. It is hard to regulate. People can trade cash for goods and service and there is no record. Taxes are thus easily avoided. Cash transactions subvert the power of the largest corporations, the true constituents of government. Once the Roth is in place, government will no longer be obliged to print money and cash will be an historic artifact. The government/corporate axis will finally wield unlimited power.
Hopefully this will be the straw that breaks us, the final insult that causes the people to revolt. If not, we will experience incomparable and unavoidable servitude to the whims of psychopathic regulators. How it eventually plays out is far beyond my ability to visualize.