Bitcoin as financial populism

crypto.inferno (67)in #bitcoin • 6 years ago

It won’t have escaped you that people are starting to ask questions of authority and the many are standing up against the few. Bitcoin is a part of this global movement of discontent.

As a recent article from Forbes notes, ‘U.S. president Donald Trump, the UK's clumsy exit from the European Union, struggling emerging markets, the looming U.S. trade war with China, and a financial system that is neither trusted nor prepared for future shocks, are all symptoms of the 2008 financial crisis. Bitcoin ranks right along with them.’

The last ten years have seen a collapse in trust in just about every institution or authority there is. The financial crisis that saw banks implode and multi-billion-dollar corporations bailed out by unwitting taxpayers; many and varied incidents that have highlighted key politicians’ unfitness to hold office; the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church; widespread doping in sport; the #MeToo movement; huge tech companies playing a tacit part in harvesting personal data and manipulating the electorate. The backlash against these authorities and previously trusted parties is only just getting started.

Bitcoin is a part of that process: a form of ‘financial populism’ akin to the protest votes that triggered Brexit or the Trump presidency. Whether history will treat these latter decisions kindly is not the point: they reflect real discontent, and the reality that, for the first time, those who feel disenfranchised and harmed by the system that is supposed to care for them outnumber those for whom it works. Under such circumstances, it’s only natural that people should look for answers wherever they can find them.

There’s a saying, misattributed to Einstein, that you don’t fix a problem by using the same thinking that got you into it in the first place. So for all that the financial system is taking an interest in crypto, buying bitcoin is still an act of rebellion: a search for solutions outside the framework of the original problem.

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