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.
By participating in the market you provide liquidity to it, and that’s the most important thing the ponzi scheme needs as it perpetuates the illusion of others that their coins are actually worth something. Sure, there are rare situations where someone would have a use for crypto, like fleeing an authoritarian state or so, but in the end any kind of interaction with these systems is like frequenting a business where you know it is used as a front for money-laundering by criminal enterprises.
So most large corporations and banks then…
Look, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, I made it very clear I don’t support holding on to any crypto, just using it to circumvent oppressive systems, focusing on rejecting a tool (and one that can be specifically extremely useful in enabling revolutionary movements) because you don’t like how others use it, instead of a system where any and all consumptions involves multiple levels of unethical practices, seems like completely missing the point to me. ¯\(ツ)/¯
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…