Listening to a recent episode of the Solarpunk Presents podcast reminded me the importance of consistently calling out cryptocurrency as a wasteful scam. The podcast hosts fail to do that, and because bad actors will continue to try to push crypto, we must condemn it with equal persistence.
Solarpunks must be skeptical of anyone saying it’s important to buy something, like a Tesla, or buy in, with cryptocurrency. Capitalists want nothing more than to co-opt radical movements, neutralizing them, to sell products.
People shilling crypto will tell you it decentralizes power. So that’s a lie, but solarpunks who believe it may be fooled into investing in this Ponzi scheme that burns more energy than some countries. Crypto will centralize power in billionaires, increasing their wealth and decreasing their accountability. That’s why Space Karen Elon Musk pushes crypto. The freer the market, the faster it devolves to monopoly. Rather than decentralizing anything, crypto would steer us toward a Bladerunner dystopia with its all-powerful Tyrell corporation.
Promoting crypto on a solarpunk podcast would be unforgivable. That’s not quite what happens on S5E1 “Let’s Talk Tech.” The hosts seem to understand crypto has no part in a solarpunk future or its prefigurative present. But they don’t come out and say that, adopting a tone of impartiality. At best, I would call this disingenuous. And it reeks of the both-sides-ism that corporate media used to paralyze climate action discourse for decades.
Crypto is not “appropriate tech,” and discussing it without any clarity is inappropriate.
Update for episode 5.3: In a case of hyper hypocrisy, they caution against accepting superficial solutions—things that appear utopian but really reinforce inequality and accelerate the climate crisis—while doing exactly that by talking up cryptocurrency.
This kind of reasoning is too reductionist. Sure every tool can be used one way or another, capitalism is bad etc. But if you have clear evidence that a tool is predominantly used for criminal activities (and I mean that in a actually ethically harmful sense, not legalistic), and the legetimite uses are basically a rounding error, then there is really no point in reasoning that way.
Edit: also, currencies are a social tool, and not like a hammer that you can use in your shed and not care about what other people use their hammers for. A currency directly derives its function from how others use it.
But maybe this disagreement also stems from the fact that I see really no way crypto currencies could in any shape or form enable “revolutionary movements”. The most benign I can think of is them being used as a tool to opt out of some societies, but that is pretty much the opposite of revolutionary.
I guess theoretically, if a state was persecuting a political faction, part of neutering that movement would involve blocking access to bank accounts of anyone suspected of being involved, similar to how Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of anyone linked to the ‘Freedom Trucker Protest’ (not that I have any sympathy for that movement).
Then again, cash or gold/silver would also function in that scenario (or maybe the GNU Taler project that @xnx@slrpnk.net mentioned?)
According to this article, Rojava is supposedly experimenting with using crypto to avoid high fees associated with using cash in neighboring countries (unsubstantiated claim). But the article is written by a pro-crypto news site, and is clearly trying to greenwash its extreme environmental downsides:
So their claims are suspect at best.
I think you’re right, I think you seeing crypto exclusively as a tool used for “criminal activity” (who is telling you this? who decides what’s legal and why?), but not fiat money and the capitalists who benefit from it (not criminals?) is where our disagreement stems, and I can’t help you with that…
If we’re taking about actual cryptocurrencies with fundamentally limited minting, then consider this:
The inflation we’re facing right now as a society is fundamentally due to the printing of money. Literally, this is a way for governments to take value from your existing pools of money, and redistribute that value as they see fit - not in some agreed-upon, standardized, UBI-esque kind of way, but in the ‘suck it bitch, I’m spending this for you’ kind of way.
Take the inflation rate for the last ten years. That’s the amount your savings has been reduced, and that your paycheck has been cut.
With a real, hard crypto, nobody gets to just print money, and if there is printing, it’s at a known pace. Bitcoin obviously has terrible power consumption issues, but the actual monetary aspect was superb. The miners get a reward, for running the network. Over time, the granted reward decreases, and the amount of bitcoin created decreases.
Proof of stake currencies that have a similar model are a good, solid option, because they only take the amount of power needed by any at-scale internet service. Low power usage, and governments can’t just print money.
A democratic government being able to quickly raise a lot of money for emergency relief is a feature of fiat currencies and not a bug.
The artificial scarcity that crypto-currencies enforce is (besides the obscene energy use) the worst part of them and only benefit those that hoard them.
P.s.: if your paycheck has been “cut” because of inflation, then your boss is engaging in wage theft.
It’s nice that you think that the government should be able to print money. They can make a token where they have the rights to print as much as they want, and the value will speak for itself. It’s also important to have value that is independent of that malleability, because that can be (and has massively been) abused.
The power usage of crypto is a non-issue technically speaking. There is no need to use power-hungry algorithms for crypto. But humanly, there is a lot of inertia and real value tied into existing power-hungry implementations of crypto, and that will be difficult to eradicate, precisely because of the real interest in crypto. When there’s a proof-of-stake bitcoin equivalent, though, bitcoin may wane - and illegalization of power-hungry cryptos may help in that regard.
Re: your ps: wage theft? No, not unless someone is literally paying less-than-agreed dollar amounts using inflation as an excuse. So if you’re talking literally, you’re just wrong. If you’re talking allegorically, then sure. The cost of labor has gone down massively in relation to the payment provided to ‘top tier’ jobs that simply squeeze the world for gain - and that’s some shit that will hit the fan at some point. But that’s not really related to inflation, other than the fact that unless you’re making almost double in wages what you made five or ten years ago, you’re making significantly less than you were in actual value.
What is relevant to inflation and theft is all of the bailouts. Largest thefts in history.
You are not going to solve shitty government decision by switching to crypto-currencies. All you will achieve with that is to prevent potentially good decisions in the future. Or to put it differently: crypto-currencies are deeply undemocratic.
And yes it is wage-theft in any way you can look at it because after inflation they earn (nominally) more from the same labor you put into it, but are not (nominally) paying you more. So in very real terms they are paying you less for the same labor. There is no need to beat around the bush on that one, it’s as clear as it can get.
They are also paying more for all other services. No, it’s not theft by them, it’s theft by the government. And yes, you can get a new job. Yes, times are tough, and yes, that’s directly related to poor government choices.
And yes, crypto helps to insulate against those poor government choices, without requiring the government to change, which is a different issue.
I never said I would solve shitty government choices. I said, in other words, that crypto helps to mitigate them.
Look, I don’t think we will come to an agreement if you make excuses for wage-stealing bosses and claim that a tool used for massive fraud and theft is somehow “mitigating” anything. You are just looking for a scapegoat for shit that capitalism does without realizing that the scapegoat you chose is just one of many parts that make capitalism so shit, and that crypto-currencies are part of the problem.
I’m not making excuses for shitty behavior, but there’s a huge difference between not giving raises that match the (exhorbitant) inflation, and actively stealing.
You’re willfully blind if you think some coffeeshop business owner isn’t hit by inflation in a similar manner to (most) everyone else.
Also, if you can’t tell the difference between a tool used for massive fraud and fraud itself, again - you’re just wilfully blind. Most likely hurt and looking for an easy angle on blame. There aren’t generally easy angles on blame - not accurate ones, anyways. But sure, get pissed and break some shit. Blame me, I’m here, and can handle it when someone lashes out.
But, if you ever want to, y’know, just get power over your own life, then there’s that, too. It’s massively difficult, but doable, and worth it.