[29.0] our money! it’s broken! (part 3)
the blockchain’s battle royale
And lo, dear reader, we approach a precipice. After so much buildup, I’m finally forced to show my hand and reveal my thoughts on crypto worlds, their beliefs and missions. NFTs might be fake-ish but my palpitations are decidedly real; woof!
As with most movements involving many people (we’re contradictory beings), cryptoevangelism contains multiple sub-movements and worldviews within it. News website Coindesk published a Mean Girls-esque “who sits where in the cafeteria?” taxonomy of the crypto world: market radicals, anti-authoritarians, anti-imperialists, progressives, alpha bros, true libertarians, fiscal conservatives, neo-feudalists, and white supremacists. There’s a 30% chance I’m already breaking out in hives :/
Most of these seemingly disparate groups share certain core tenets: (1) eschewing faith in dominant political forms, namely the nation-state; and (2) identifying blockchain-based tech as a lifeline and/or opportunity to invert our sociopolitical and material realities.
Beyond playing host to white-supremacist movements in their respective eras, both crypto and Howard Scott’s Technocracy movement clearly have a lot in common. An allergy to contemporary conditions; a belief in a technologized and exchange-based solutions for most social problems. But, where Scott preached STEM-fascism in the form of a council of scientific elders overseeing everything and everyone, current crypto high priests largely advocate for the opposite: a radically decentralized superstructure in which technologies, protocols, and tokens alone determine ownership and flow.
Or—at least in name. Just as the “content economy” of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, et. al. was once apotheosized as an equalizer and the great awakening of leisure and amateurism, this new wave of technologies is, by and large, another way for the rich to get richer, especially through venture capital streams. To some within crypto, past being prologue portends good fortune. Others see the influx of institutional capital as an apocalypse, and are mobilizing against these powers before they fully ~*flex*~. Eureka: Crypto contains multitudes!
You may recall that in 2006—back when people might have actually read it—TIME Magazine named “You” its Person of the Year. Plastering a reflective surface onto its cover, the magazine praised the Internet’s settlers for their creativity and potential to drive change. Through sheer love for the lulz and kinks for collaborations, we, “You,” were upending capitalism’s traditional paradigms:
America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.
Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?
The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you.
Of course, that’s not what “You” ended up doing, and you’re not to blame. Bulbous Venture Capital cash transfers to Silicon Valley created a ridiculous boom for useless technologies that did nobody any good (dear pizza robots: I say good day!). Surveillance capitalism flourished. Workers found themselves in increasingly precarious gig-economy roles. Governments collapsed, genocides broke out, the U.S. veered more symptomatically toward its eventual decline. Real-estate startups made billions for no reason. Blood-testing startups made billions for no reason. And, save for that last example, almost nobody has been held accountable for any of it. Look at the planet’s top billionaires! They all played determinate roles in platform capitalism’s development.
With the same venture-capital giants who once bankrolled the Facebooks and Twitters and Googles of yesterdecade now hustling for NFTs and cryptocurrency under the VC-branded guise of “web3,” shouldn’t we all take a moment to go “hmmm something’s fishy?”
Tech reporter Anna Wiener wrote an exquisite essay last week about the profit motives behind the “metaverse” (which I discussed in brief a few weeks ago). She also gestured to VC firm Andreessen Horowitz’s interest in cryptocurrency through gaming as a portal. NFTs are an entertaining, alluring way to generate interest—including attention through derision! Things can both be hated and profitable, just ask American Airlines.
Tech bros are jumping ship from the bluechip giants of yore toward blockchain-based seedlings, reinventing themselves as “outsiders” once more. There’s nothing “decentralized” or “innovative” about everyone getting money from the same five venture capital firms, lol.
So my tentative point is this: In somewhat the same way that Technocracy lost control of its future because the world moved on, cryptocurrency’s moment, with a kitchen sink of (largely libertarian) beliefs attached to it, may be coopted through corporatized and billionaire-minting means toward a future shaped in VCs’ image, or thwarted by factions repulsed by that vision.
That very dynamic answers the last part of my cliffhanger inquiry for this series, How may contemporary empires react? Nation-states, bound up in a push-and-pull relationship with tech to begin with—loving Google’s surveillance mechanisms but not loving its tendency to radicalize people, for example—may get in the way of cryptobooms by virtue of existing tout court. Just last week, Bitcoin’s already-atrocious processing power took a 12% dip because of turmoil in Kazakhstan. As much as crypto may hope to upend fiat currency through an exodus toward a cybernetic frontier, We Still Live In A Meatspace Society™.
Or (aspiring) state actors may embrace these technologies to yoke venture capital to state power—to an even greater extent than it does now. Republican Blake Masters of Arizona is running for U.S. Senate on a nationalist, transphobic, pro-militarization, and fossil fuel-kinky agenda. He also leads Thiel Capital, the multibillion-dollar tech investment firm founded by Silicon Valley giant Peter Thiel. In his most recent fundraising effort, Masters minted 99 NFTs related to the book he co-wrote with Thiel, Zero to One, which covers their ideas on tech innovation and our beta-male society. He successfully raked in over $575,000 through his crypto-based efforts.
This side of the tech adjacent right recognises Web3’s potential to inform political identities and organising principles. Acknowledging that the boundaries set by existing platforms in the current internet can be utilised to produce political outcomes, this section of the right sees Web3 as a chance to take that further—having more control over forms of digital production, exchange and value to further guarantee advantages and victories.
Returning to the contradictory diversity of the crypto world: It will be crucial to see how this burgeoning movement negotiates with itself, and potentially splinters, in the coming months and years. Many insiders are wary of VC encroachments—including Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey as well as asshat Elon Musk. Others warn that unsavory political strains are gaining strength. These two cynical factions have begun mobilizing against power dynamics in relatively novel organizational forms. This newsletter will dutifully track and report on attendant developments.
Divine Innovation will now enjoy a brief sabbath (amen!). In three weeks’ time, you’ll be invited to provide earnest feedback on how this project has fared and how it can best bring holy tech lucidity into your life. Fun and shenanigans will resume thereafter.
ttyl!
Divine Innovation is a somewhat cheeky newsletter on spirituality and technology. Published once every three weeks, it’s written by Adam Willems and edited by Vanessa Rae Haughton. Find the full archive here.