Day 99 - Why Crypto?
One of the first things that ordinary people think when they hear of crypto is scam and get rich quick schemes.
That reputation is not entirely undeserved. There are a whole load of scams circulating around the cryptosphere. The one thing that you can learn which will protect you from 99% of scams is not your keys, not your coin. This will be expanded on in the next post, but repeat it like a mantra until you have well and truly groked it.
Nothing, however, can save you from the scams of the Bank of England and the British Treasury. That time when they gave £850 billion to the banks leaving us to starve - fuck all you can do about that. When Lizzie wants a new jewel encrusted carriage, Lizzie gets a new jewel encrusted carriage, cos the gold one is just ghastly. Our entire economy is a scam, a pyramid scheme designed for the rich to get richer.
Most people that shout about this quite often then follow it up with some shite about Lizards or the Jews. Its true there is an international global conspiracy, its called "Capitalism" and it is based on the extraction of surplus from those who need to sell their labour to survive in the interests of those who hold capital, no Illuminati required to explain it.
Scams and get rich quick schemes abound in the traditional economy - people made fortunes from the 1980s sell off of UK utilities. Property owners have made millions off the backs of the working poor, picking up the housing benefit cheques that overworked and stressed claimants have spent hours wrangling with the DWP to provide. The poor are taxed left, right and centre while the rich squirrel their money away in Belize.. Brexit, bought by dodgy cash, and supported by Gammon that have bought into the whole notion of Brit superiority, is in itself an attempted scam, but one which can be turned against the .
At the root of all this is debt, Debt is effectively a promise to pay back money in the future, and for this advance, a borrower is charged interest. Money is created by banks from thin air on promises to pay more back; money is created by governments on promises that they can raise future tax revenue from their citizens to pay it back. Its all a giant ponzi scheme, and its about to come crashing down
Crypto offers a way out, a way to exit the pound and dive into a brave new world of peer to peer transactions. The key difference between crypto and fiat (government issued) currency is that fiat currency has no maximum supply. Governments can create money at will, whereas crypto is finite. For example, there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins.
Back at the turn of the century John Holloway asked How to Change the World without Taking Power, arguing that we must not think of the struggle to change the world as being a struggle that is focused on the state and on taking state power, instead we should look for opportunities to build our own power, in the cracks of capitalism. Crypto is one of these cracks and one which we should exploit to develop a new system of values based on need rather than profit, weaponising money to turn it against the capitalists.
Despite Marx being an economist, economic fundamentals are poorly understood on the left. Marx wrote in a time of commodity money, when promissory notes were backed by gold and silver. That hasnt been the case for a long time now. Capitalists are well aware that crypto is coming and are seeking to reshape it to their own advantage. Bitcoin futures for example is an attempt to financialise crypto and resell it to the middle class while Ripple is a territorial power grab by the banks to attempt to gain control of crypto and the crypto economy.
Libertarians and the alt-right are all over this shit and there are some very worrying implementations of blockchain technology. Crypto isnt some universal panacea that is going to solve the problems of our world overnight, and there are risks and dangers inherent in it, but it does offer an alternative to the current system of repressive state power backed by debt.
Experiments in alternative currencies in the UK have been ongoing for decades through Local Exchange Trading Schemes which seek to reinvigorate local economies through skill shares and community bartering. Crypto is not an alternative, but a compliment to these schemes. Hullcoin, for example, is a crypto which rewards local community volunteers. Many of these volunteers couldnt receive actual wages for the tasks that they complete as it would fuck up their benefit claims. Hullcoin is a way of getting round that - valuing their contribution in a tangible way.
CryptoBrexit invites you to take the leap into crypto, guiding you through the first stages of the learning curve and encourages you to explore this world with an open mind. Brexit is 99 days away and an economic shock of tremendous proportions is about to unfold.