Unearthly Tales from the World of Cryptocurrency

The cryptocurrency movement may be a mainstream media story but confusion about it is widespread. It evokes deeply polarized opinion, what with daily stories of scams, speculative booms, crypto billionaires, and government bans amid tall claims about how cryptocurrencies (and blockchain) are about to transform life and society as we know it. I call it a ‘movement’ because its acolytes imagine it as a totally disruptive force for economics, politics, governance, the Internet, and much more, even though there is little empirical evidence yet to ground that imagination.

The cryptocurrency (aka crypto) movement is exciting—full of brainy people, venture capital, heady innovation, and high hopes. It behoves us to more clearly understand the animating ideology of the crypto movement. Should it ever succeed, where might it fit into our political economy and what might be its effects on society? And finally, just how likely is it to succeed?


The Ideology of Crypto

As I see it, the crypto movement, which gathered pace with bitcoin around 2010, is driven by a confluence of three types of instincts:

(1) Anarchistic instincts, often left-leaning, that despise the State for its coercive authority, legalized corruption, misuse of taxes for war, power to censor and spy. Such instincts seek to weaken the State to make room for a Stateless, decentralized society of sovereign, self-organizing individuals. Cryptocurrencies, by using encrypted transactions and decentralized data storage, enable censorship resistance, anonymity, and tax evasion. Crypto-anarchists also hate Central and corporate banks (cryptocurrencies bypass them) and hope to rescue the Internet from the dominance of big corporations (like FAANG), towards a more open and decentralized Web 3.0. Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin, had strong anarchist leanings, as does Vitalik Buterin, 24, who founded Ethereum at 19 and wants ‘more open, free, egalitarian and efficient systems for human cooperation, including improving or replacing present-day corporations and governments’

(2) Capitalistic instincts, close to libertarian, that want true capitalism with a genuinely free market, instead of the one we have now: hampered by regulations seen as rigged, onerous, or inefficient, and dominated by monopolies and crony capitalists in cahoots with the State. Such instincts value the radical freedom that cryptocurrencies grant to a market-maker to issue his own coin, set his own transparent market rules, regulations, and monetary policy, with incentives from game theory driving the right market behavior, where people choose the value of goods and services that they freely exchange with others via smart contracts and without middlemen, preferably anonymously and beyond government interference and taxation. This vision also implies privatizing all State services, and sees markets, or algorithmic cost-benefit decisioning, penetrating more and more areas of our lives. Both Nakamoto and Buterin display strong free-market leanings.

(3) Opportunistic instincts, which get people in every time and place to jump on the latest bandwagon, make a fast buck, or have fun making cool new things in an exciting space. Such instincts pull in a wide variety of people: techno-geeks, idiot savants, trend-riding entrepreneurs, ladder climbers, con men, hucksters, kooks, scamsters, boosters, futurists, problem solvers, etc. Among them are folks who launch crypto ICOs (so far 80+ percent of them scams), build crypto trading platforms, and serial evangelists like Don Tapscott who’ve made a career out of glibly boosting every next-gen tech as having revolutionary, world-saving and happiness-spreading potential, through which people will automagically learn to collaborate, self-organize, create unprecedented value, change the old laws of business, lift each other up, and sing kumbaya—with no consequences whatsoever for inane predictions. Wikinomics, wrote Tapscott in 2009, ‘may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance, or the rise of Athenian democracy’. WTF, right?!

So the primary ideology that drives the crypto movement, mixing anarchism and capitalism, is anarcho-capitalism, with its strongest roots in the US. Its followers see it as a force for good that’ll usher in a golden era of growth, redistribution, and prosperity. A board member of The Bitcoin Foundation called cryptocurrencies a ‘decentralized revolution in individual freedom and financial sovereignty leading to a restructuring of global economics and power and a shift in favor of the people, rights, peace and liberty the likes of which the world has never imagined.’ To a small new breed of left-leaning crypto-anarchists like Buterin, cryptocurrencies and their blockchains permit the creation of decentralized and radically free markets run by open source software algorithms. As these markets spread, they will cause the withering away of the State and bring us to the Promised Land: an egalitarian, self-governing, classless society without borders—wet dreams of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.


The Political Economy of Crypto

What should we make of this vision of hope and change? Can anarcho-capitalists deliver the goods? I don’t think so. I think they are victims of self-delusion and naive ideological optimism based on ignoring nearly all of basic social science and the human material. Theirs is a great example of magical thinking. Yes, I know what they’ll say: I’m a man lacking in imagination, too attached to the status quo (JSYK, I identify as a Liberal, a social democrat). But what I (and others) see crypto fans effectively rooting for, knowingly or not, is anti-Statism with free markets. I think this is a terrible idea. It cherry picks theory from both anarchism and capitalism to make an awful brew—a toxic concoction. Let me explain.

 

Crypto-anarchists are among the most privileged, globalized techno-elites who find it easy to grossly undervalue the State and vastly overvalue the ability of crypto economics and its unproven and dubious ‘consensus algorithms’ to solve real human problems. They tend to be idealistic young men who get off on mouthing fashionable anti-State nonsense while sucking on its teats. They won’t be caught worrying about how their vision would make up for all the good that most democratic States also provide—such as redistribution, regulation, equal civil rights, legal and social justice, security, labor laws, consumer protection, public services, constitutional checks and balances, being lender of last resort—each of which has been achieved, to the extent it has, after much collective struggle. If the State often corrupts free markets to privilege some over others and commits other wrongs, doesn’t history also bear witness to corruptions and wrongs in decentralized socioeconomic life? Before deciding which is worse, we should at least understand the long vision of anarcho-capitalists: no State; no fiat currency like USD, Pound, or Rupee; no Central Bank and no commercial banks regulated by it—only hundreds of unregulated, anonymous, and tax resistant free markets and cryptocurrencies competing with others, mostly run by ‘smart’ algorithms with no pesky middlemen—essentially a Stateless libertarian capitalism on steroids.

We’re not angelic beings. In our flesh-and-blood world, even the freest of markets with clear rules will heavily shape outcomes by the social lottery of birth and narrow ideas of ‘merit’. Free market competition and property rights inevitably produce winners and losers—and class and culture wars. The winners accrue wealth for their families, clans, tribes, and use their power to shape knowledge, dominate others, and perpetuate their privileges. This too is what makes us human and it’s only worsened by scarce resources, economic competition, and rapid cultural change. Without the modern liberal State, such forces—often led by aggressive, predatory, and reactionary interests—will be far more vicious. Without redistribution through taxation, they’ll vastly amplify inequality and make our democracies even more oligarchic. This may seem obvious to most people but not to anarcho-capitalists, who fail to see why their techno-utopian ‘solution’ to the ills of the modern nation-state is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

A very different idealism informs the real card-carrying Anarchists who, even as they reject the State, at least have the intellectual honesty and consistency to also oppose capitalism and the idea of private property, and promote the mindset of communes and cooperatives. No wonder they hate the incoherent mess that is anarcho-capitalism. For instance, here are two prominent living Anarchists on anarcho-capitalism, the intellectual ideology of the crypto movement.

‘Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn’t the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of “free contract” between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else’. [—Noam Chomsky]

To be honest I’m pretty skeptical about the idea of anarcho-capitalism. If a-caps imagine a world divided into property-holding employers and property-less wage laborers, but with no systematic coercive mechanisms … well, I just can’t see how it would work. You always see a-caps saying “if I want to hire someone to pick my tomatoes, how are you going to stop me without using coercion?” Notice how you never see anyone say “if I want to hire myself out to pick someone else’s tomatoes, how are you going to stop me?” Historically nobody ever did wage labor like that if they had pretty much ANY other option.’ [—David Graeber]


The Prospects of Crypto

What should we make of this vision of hope and change? Can anarcho-capitalists deliver the goods? I don’t think so. I think they are victims of self-delusion and naive ideological optimism based on ignoring nearly all of basic social science and the human material. Theirs is a great example of magical thinking. Yes, I know what they’ll say: I’m a man lacking in imagination, too attached to the status quo (JSYK, I identify as a Liberal, a social democrat). But what I (and others) see crypto fans effectively rooting for, knowingly or not, is anti-Statism with free markets. I think this is a terrible idea. It cherry picks theory from both anarchism and capitalism to make an awful brew—a toxic concoction. Let me explain.

Crypto-anarchists are among the most privileged, globalized techno-elites who find it easy to grossly undervalue the State and vastly overvalue the ability of crypto economics and its unproven and dubious ‘consensus algorithms’ to solve real human problems. They tend to be idealistic young men who get off on mouthing fashionable anti-State nonsense while sucking on its teats. They won’t be caught worrying about how their vision would make up for all the good that most democratic States also provide—such as redistribution, regulation, equal civil rights, legal and social justice, security, labor laws, consumer protection, public services, constitutional checks and balances, being lender of last resort—each of which has been achieved, to the extent it has, after much collective struggle. If the State often corrupts free markets to privilege some over others and commits other wrongs, doesn’t history also bear witness to corruptions and wrongs in decentralized socioeconomic life? Before deciding which is worse, we should at least understand the long vision of anarcho-capitalists: no State; no fiat currency like USD, Pound, or Rupee; no Central Bank and no commercial banks regulated by it—only hundreds of unregulated, anonymous, and tax resistant free markets and cryptocurrencies competing with others, mostly run by ‘smart’ algorithms with no pesky middlemen—essentially a Stateless libertarian capitalism on steroids.

We’re not angelic beings. In our flesh-and-blood world, even the freest of markets with clear rules will heavily shape outcomes by the social lottery of birth and narrow ideas of ‘merit’. Free market competition and property rights inevitably produce winners and losers—and class and culture wars. The winners accrue wealth for their families, clans, tribes, and use their power to shape knowledge, dominate others, and perpetuate their privileges. This too is what makes us human and it’s only worsened by scarce resources, economic competition, and rapid cultural change. Without the modern liberal State, such forces—often led by aggressive, predatory, and reactionary interests—will be far more vicious. Without redistribution through taxation, they’ll vastly amplify inequality and make our democracies even more oligarchic. This may seem obvious to most people but not to anarcho-capitalists, who fail to see why their techno-utopian ‘solution’ to the ills of the modern nation-state is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

A very different idealism informs the real card-carrying Anarchists who, even as they reject the State, at least have the intellectual honesty and consistency to also oppose capitalism and the idea of private property, and promote the mindset of communes and cooperatives. No wonder they hate the incoherent mess that is anarcho-capitalism. For instance, here are two prominent living Anarchists on anarcho-capitalism, the intellectual ideology of the crypto movement.

________

NB: After 20 years in Silicon Valley tech shops, I shifted my focus to the social sciences and the humanities. This piece owes much to my animated—and sometimes exasperating—conversations over many months with my good friend Aditya Dev Sood, who heads Startereum.

Image sources: onetwothree  

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Namit Arora Written by:

Namit Arora is an essayist, humanist, travel photographer, and former Internet technologist. He moved back to India after two decades in Silicon Valley. He often volunteers his time for the Dialogue and Development Commission, an advisory body of the Delhi Government tasked to find innovative solutions to civic problems, where he led the drafting of Delhi's solar energy policy and worked on the problem of air pollution. Namit’s essays have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including four college anthologies in the United States. His videography includes River of Faith, a documentary on the Kumbh Mela. His latest book is Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization (Penguin Random House India, 2021). His web home is at shunya.net

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