There are some contradictions in the ethos of cryptocurrencies. Some parts are overly pessimistic, beating the drum of an impending doomsday event. We complain about the current financial and monetary system, how the access is not fair, nor transparent. How it seems inefficient or efficient for rent seeking from all those intermediaries.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.(Percy Bysshe Shelley)
We see the lack of privacy with surveillance crippling through internet to sell ads when it is not to control and censor you. Same in the real world. The COVID crisis has become a trust crisis. Who today still trust governments, central banks, institutions when their action make everyone questions their priorities and end goals? Borrowing heavily from Libertarianism, we want to be our own banks and replace the banks.
On the other hand the ambient optimism is contagious. We build in the open and we thrive to make things permisionless and share our knowledge. The culture of open source software is strong, inherited from cypherpunks. Even when there is competition, you can often see cooperation (coopetition if you will). The blockchain becomes the intermediary of choice thanks to its transparence.
Don’t trust, verify!
Communities are build from grassroots movements. We want to question things and find the right answers. We make tools to empower people, give them the choice to opt out. This is an ecosystem where anyone can join. Of course there is optimism from the trading side that numbers eventually go up.
I don’t know how those contradictions shape the future of the crypto space. Personally, I’m still optimistic, wishing for the best. It is though now clear that, as we onboard more and more people (😉 to those who joined thanks to NFTs), crypto will mean different things and we’ll have a plurality of movements.
Jean Yves Z.
what I am reading
How hard is to manipulate Uni v3 TWAP by @euler finance. This is a different approach Chainlink’s oracles and it’s interesting to see how it behave in practice.
what I’m listening
This epic 170 min Twitter space on Tornado cash, privacy, regulations…🙏 More on this soon.