^{Excuse me for the length of this article, but the importance of the subject required that}

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Last week I was invited by a German friend —who is travelling across Latin America— to a meeting in a little restaurant of the "Vrinda House", a successful movement on Hinduism in our country. It is amazing how they could thrive in a time of horrific crisis, despite all difficulties we face in Venezuela.

The meeting was about a light sharing of our viewpoints on cryptocurrencies. We talked for a while and then my German friend wanted to buy some sweets for us, and he would buy them in crypto.

Later I understood that he had undertaken the job of speaking to the owners of this restaurant (and many others) about the benefits of cryptocurrencies, and the best way to manage them. So these restaurants now accept payments by some virtual blockchain-based assets... My friend bought all of our sweets using DASH.

The potential for a free economy

That experience pushed me, one step further, to this big possibility of making a life completely based on a free economy, set on the hands of the people.

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I know the relativity of that concept (the people), and I don't really like it very much¹; but it's the only notion that expresses what I mean now. You understand... that 99% whose lives are manipulated always by politicians, corporations and all the other people in control.

The opportunity for a free economy would mean that some major areas of people's lives would fall into their hands again²... our lives in our hands. That's just too beautiful for my eyes, that have seen so much power abuse and authoritarianism.

Of course, that would depend on many many factors in this big system of interrelated realities that we call modern society. To explore that, we would need to deviate from my present subject into the realm of politics, culture and philosophy.

For now, I think it's enough to say that the best regime known for the blooming of these potentialities is, of course, a liberal one³, that would respect profoundly the freedom of the individuals, encouraging them to manage their lives and improve their communities by their actions and endeavors.

A healthy culture of distributed systems

From the workshops about blockchain I've attended, I remember clearly the difference between centralized, decentralized and distributed systems. The last one is the case of the majority of virtual currencies we use today, and its advantages on security, stability (although not in currencies' prices, not yet) and freedom are undefeatable.

Nonetheless, from my standpoint in Venezuela, I constantly notice some of the big obstacles for this new economy to arise and spread. I'd like to speak a bit about that, because I haven't seen yet other bloggers to address these specific issues in this way. It might be because most of the people studying these things are from countries with different conditions.

Bad habits

I often hear (and read) a lot of complaints about the fall in the price of Steem⁴ and other coins, and the causes for that fall. Sometimes it is expressed —by the most engaged crypto-enthusiasts— with hatred against the people who sell their coins without any consideration on investing or saving.

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I think, as always, that they are partially right. They fail to understand that these issues are not personal, and every personal attack or ranting will just leave aside many important considerations, that should be understood to apply sound measures for the solution of these problems. A hurt subjectivity doesn't work well when analyzing reality.

I've seen (and experienced), for example, that the Venezuelan community in Steemit —which is one of the biggest in this ecosystem, maybe the biggest one— has gigantic difficulties to behave more caringly towards these coins, so that their prices could stabilize.

The key obstacle is, of course, the slightness of the rewards. When survival is in jeopardy, you cannot (even you must not) allow yourself to care about future benefits, because if you don't solve your present urgencies... you have no future.

It is easy to criticize another's behaviors when your conditions don't set your life (and that of your familiy) in jeopardy everyday. But it is a healthy mental exercise to try walking in the other's shoes. After all, these technologies were created on ideals of freedom and solidarity for the sake of that 99%... and not only for those living in developed countries. People help the people.

The road to caring

So, the aforementioned conditions explain why when a Venezuelan blogger gets some coins —in whatever platform—, he often withdraws them very fast. However, we must realize that if this is the only treatment of our crypto-economy, our assets devaluate unavoidably.

But I have noticed that it is not only the Venezuelans or other oppressed peoples that behave like that. Many others with better conditions manage their earnings the same way and, in their case, not necessarily pushed by the urgencies of their environments.

It's a lack of culture, a lack of a healthy financial culture, that could benefit us and every other member of our virtual ecosystem. As I say often, the success and stability of these platforms are our own success and stability.

In the Venezuelan case, I'm trying to develop with some friends of the International Esperanto Community (a niche where I belong) an initiative that could start the seeding toward that kind of culture, which would help the Venezuelan crypto-bloggers and their esperantist colleagues around the world.

With my friend Hive account@mattgroening, I'll be building a Tutmonda Esperanta Kripto-Akademio (Worldwide Esperanto Crypto-Academy) on these very ideals. That great initiative came from Matt.

Materializing freedom

Following the example of my German friend (the one of the sweets), who convinced some businessmen to accept cryptocurrencies, I plan to realize some events to materialize the benefits of this free economy, so that people could see it is a real, factual and present opportunity. We'll give learning workshops, art performances, advertising, meetings and so on.

I think it is very important to make something, something material, person to person, to strengthen these possibilities. We have to show this as a reality which intermixes our virtual and real dynamics. If our activities cannot create community AFK, our reach will remain strongly limited forever... that would be sad.

Of course, to make that financial culture a reality —in the case of Venezuela—, we must earn enough for taking us out of this survival mode. Then we'll inevitably begin to think in our future as groups and individuals, and also in the future of the ecosystems where we get that financial peace... which is so rare in our country.

The crypto-bloggers should be ready to save some of their earnings, not only powering up (which is a kind of investing), but saving in order to spend some of that directly. I and my fellow esperantists would often advise for that goal. That could lead us to the other possibility: a direct economy based on cryptocurrencies.

Finally, I wish to encourage all of you to explore and share ideas about this possible new culture for cryptocurrency management. We need a culture for the protection of our ecosystems, a new perspective for a good management of our own economy. It's a matter of education. But it won't happen if we don't speak about it.

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If you are interested in these projects and ideas, please follow me and remain attentive to the development of my work.

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Footnotes

_{1: Commonly the people is what governments and parties want it to be. It's very easy to use that concept without care, because it is an abstraction to mean "all civilians of a country". The people, in reality, are many groups with different values and goals, but manipulators speak about them as being a coherent unity. As Mckenna understood: If you can make they think alike, they'll buy alike... they'll kill alike.
2: I say "again" because it is proven that humanity lived with great freedom and reciprocity before the establishment of civilization. It was civilization that brought to us all these hierarchies and oppression. But, at the other hand, it's also civilization (and that stratification) which brought to us all this technology. No black & white perspectives here.
3: According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, liberalism is a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard. It is also a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties. We, liberals, have no guilt over the fact that some politicians so called "liberals" don't support those values.
4: Must the names of these currencies be written with upper case?}