Crypto’s Failed Promise

The problem with crypto-as-a-nation-state

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Oshyan Greene about 3 years ago

This all seems fairly correct. But isn't there something even deeper at the heart of this, that underlays most of the problems with Crypto *and* "traditional" (modern) government? I'm talking, of course, about our economic model. You say at the start: "...society faces many hard problems that capitalism as it currently exists does not seem capable of solving" and then never really return to that.

I know this is an article specifically about the failings of crypto, but I tend to feel that those failings are just sped-up and magnified versions of the failings of the root system it is based on. We had "hypercapitalism" before crypto, so I don't know what we can call Crypto in relation, maybe it's just approaching Übercapitalism 😄 Blockchains and digital contracts and code as law essentially just further extend the speed and fluidity of capitalist activity to a further logical end. The fact that horrible things are happening because of it and that IRR is king in that world is actually literally no different from capitalism in general, as a whole. You have the obvious examples, like how most people just relate to a company in terms of its balance sheet, as well as the huge negative consequences for millions or billions of people (the various bubbles and crashes, like the one we're living through now, the massive and growing inequity, stagnant wage growth, etc.).

So sure, crypto is disappointing, but is it really more so than the growing clarity of disillusionment we are coming to at the beginning of the 21st century as we see that the system that has brought us here (for better and worse) seems unable to bring us much further without destroying ourselves, the planet, or both? What truly comes beyond this? Can blockchain be part of the solution? Whatever it is, I think we need a new understanding of "value" and how to exchange it.