The Bitcoin dream is a permission-less, decentralised currency immunised from predation by encryption where trusting anyone is unnecessary.
A system that doesn’t need to trust, where a person doesn’t need permission, ruled by laws that can be changed by anyone but only go into effect with consensus, is a political structure. How could the creation of money be otherwise, whether it be by a government or a kid in his bedroom.
Bitcoin’s decentralised system works and hundreds of billions in value has been created by it.
On its back of it has risen a whole juggernaut of crypto money which needs permission and requires trust and is centralised.
These systems are anathema to the Bitcoin dream and they have little kinship to Bitcoin apart from using a blockchain and a method of encryption. They too have created a huge amount of wealth but not because of Bitcoin’s anarchic vision but in spite of it.
Anarchy in its true sense rather than in its ‘fake media’ sense is a very tempting proposition, much like most creeds, but the benefits of it break down like most, because of the actions of the criminal element. This tiny 1-2% of a population. It ruin things for everybody, be the community, communist, socialist, democrate or any permutation you can find in a book of political science. When you total up the cost of the criminal minority on your own life, the tax you pay to have things policed, the time wasted on locks and logins and other security measures, the negative impact of the criminal community is vast.
The criminal element in Crypto is also ruining the dream. Not a day goes buy that this tiny group of people is not tearing down the chance of a better world by their attempted or successful predations. The crypto-anarchy of Blockchain is having a hard time flourishing under constant attack from criminals.
These ongoing and constant attacks will boost the fortunes of centralised cryptocurrencies but they too are stunted by the criminals who still run mainly unchecked on the internet and at suffer criminal predations for the inside like all centralised systems.
It seems however that centralised crypto is wining. Once you strip out the non-minable coins and the tokens, a much smaller Bitcoin/Altcoin style ecosystem is revelled.
The Bitcoin dream is overshadowed now by the centralised, unminable, trust needing world.
This could be the outcome for crypto, the decentralised dream killed by constant attacks on the ecosystem by lawlessness, unchecked criminals.
It could be, but I don’t believe it has to end that way. The Bitcoin structure is a techno-anarchy and should, theoretically, be able to adapt. It has adapted and it still can while retains the position as no1. It is the king of the crypto-jungle, so while contenders clamour with their old-order, centralised oligarchic models, the King of Crypto remains an anarchist.
This could mean the criminal community in the end can be controlled mechanistically and that the future will contain both decentralised and centralised systems.
This is all boring thought-leader stuff, but where is a great place to back a future for decentralised, permission-less… yadayada… currency like Bitcoin?
The top pick remains Bitcoin. Then comes Monero because of its privacy strenghts, which is increasingly a big deal in this surveillance society we have awoken in and finally the long shot contender for me is the belittled Dogecoin.
Why Dogecoin? Because it is everything Bitcoin stands for, a perfect example of crypto-techo-anarchy. Nobody owns it, nobody controls it, it’s a jungle. If crpto-anarchy is part of the future, Dogecoin will do extremely well. If anarchy can never really work then it will still struggle on, unlike a stock it cant go bust.
This might seem a stretch, but the world around us is driven by the political ideas of the political extremists of the 19th century, the socialist and the anarchists. While the Royalists and Republicans (no not the GOP) were fighting to the death in the mainstream, the extremist rose gradually.
Now we have Socialists versus ‘Libertarians.’ The Monarchists and Republicans are gone. The state socialists don’t like crypto but the ‘libertarians’ like the Bitcoin a lot. Subsequently as the political struggles rolls on, the future will have permission-less, decentralised crypto-currencies in it and, these currencies should do well.
So I’m owning Bitcoin, Monero, Dogecoin and many other minable coins and awaiting the outcomes of the never-ending dramas ahead. As long as the dream of Satashi Nakamoto is possible, the upside remains so titanic, that any cheap long shot is worth backing with a little of your hard earned ‘fiat.’