The Money. The Tech. The Freedom.

An emerging crypto economy is becoming infrastructure for a better future.

In my experience, there are three main things that attract people to crypto. First is the money. Second is the tech. And third is the freedom. Personally, I earn a little income from the sector and love playing around with the tech, but what keeps me coming back to crypto is its promise of a more free future.

Remember when Canada froze hundreds of bank accounts connected to a national protest of vaccine mandates? Most news reports painted these protesters in a negative light and glossed over the chilling implications of the government overreach. This episode highlighted how the digital age has made it easier and easier for the powers that be to weaponize financial infrastructure against those with unpopular views. In the 21st century, any dissident who ruffles feathers is at risk of having their payments blocked or their money stolen by the control regime.

Remember when Wikileaks published documentation of US military war crimes, including the murder of two Reuters journalists? In response to the release of this information, the US government established a financial blockade of the organization. Because of this, Wikileaks' bank stopped providing services. Paypal and MasterCard and Visa refused to process transactions. This financial attack would have killed most organizations. But that's not what happened here.

In 2011, Wikileaks established a bitcoin payment channel, making it possible for supporters to donate funds in a way that the full force of the United States couldn't stop. This allowed Wikileaks to stay afloat for years despite the relentless pressure. Whatever you might think of Wikileaks, this episode proved that crypto can be unstoppable, even against a global superpower. In practical terms, the emerging crypto economy itself can now be considered a global superpower, valued at over $3 trillion.

The Money

Massive amounts of money are now flowing into and through the crypto sector. Anyone with skills can find a good job in the industry. For those seeking passive income, there are staking programs that earn 20% or more annually on funds instead of only earning 5% in a traditional money market account.

In the legacy economy, financial parasites and middlemen exploit the lower classes with impunity. Poor people pay insane interest rates. Migrant workers pay an average of 6.6% for remittances when they send funds back to their home countries. Crypto promises to make these and other basic financial services affordable for the people who are left behind in the current system. It also makes affordable micropayments possible, opening the door to forms of collaboration that have long been impossible with traditional payment services companies.

There is also the underlying issue of the money supply itself. In the legacy economy, banks create money by a process that ensures artificial scarcity of national currency throughout society. Cryptocurrencies are created by networks of people operating independently. They can augment the money supply in regions of the economy where there isn't enough fiat currency to go around.

The Tech

A blockchain is essentially a shared version of the truth. Blockchains like bitcoin's are public and permissionless, meaning that anyone can see the stored financial data and access the network to send and receive payments. This shared version of the truth is also decentralized, with no central entity in control of accounts. Every market participant has their own key to control their own funds, and there's no company or government office capable of overriding an individual's control of their own money.

Elon Musk has recently said that he wants to put the whole US treasury on a blockchain. From a Forbes article about it:

"Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress," Musk posted to X, referencing part of the United States code which outlines how some government payments are approved. "This needs to stop now!" Replying to X influencer Mario Nawfal who asked: "Should the Treasury be put on the blockchain so this doesn’t happen," Musk replied: "Yes!" There's been talk of using a blockchain to track federal spending, secure data, make payments and manage buildings.

There are reasonable arguments to be made against putting government budgets on a blockchain. Blockchains make inefficient databases, but they're not meant to be efficient. They're meant to be secure and immutable. The Pentagon would never fail an audit if its budget was on a blockchain. The cost would be enormous, but the cost savings of forcing every government agency to accurately and publicly account for its spending would likely far exceed implementation costs.

The Freedom

Disruptive events are always on the horizon. Companies fail. So can governments. The highly centralized legacy system could experience shocks that interfere with or take down financial infrastructure. Decentralized crypto networks are resilient to even severe disruption. Whole countries could go offline and every major blockchain would continue operating without interruption.

The political situation is dynamic and even volatile in many parts of the world, including the US. Freedoms that are taken for granted one day can vanish overnight with the passage of new rules or the appointment of new officials. And as we saw with Assange, merely exposing the wrongdoing of a government can cause that government to brand you a criminal. Once you're branded a criminal, your money and entire financial life is at risk within the legacy system.

By contrast, as long as you have the private key for a crypto wallet, the funds it contains can't be frozen or stolen by the powers that be or anyone else. And if you want to use those funds to support an unpopular person or cause, no one can stop you from doing that, either. In other words, crypto supports our natural sovereignty. It gives us our financial lives back.

In the emerging blockchain economy, there are thousands and thousands of different crypto tokens, each with its own purpose, all connected to each other through accessible global markets. Any person or group can make their own crypto token. I personally created a token called Rstory for use in digital publishing and virtual philanthropy. I'm also holding significant stake in a Solana memecoin called Moondong, which is the funniest token I've ever come across.

This new economy has its problems. It's brand new, it's very complex, and not every player in it has good intentions. Regardless, this new economy is the only viable alternative to the legacy system. So if we want to build a better world at scale, we'll be using crypto to do it.

For more of my writing, check out my scifi novels and my Hive blog.