@Alther 7 September 2025 more from that month

A Basket of Vegetables, A Pocket of Crypto The traditional morning-in-the-market-hour is a never-ending symphony: calling vegetable prices, bargaining mothers over fish, children running about with coins in hand, and a chicken vendor slouching amid onion and chili heaps scrawling away on his phone. “Playing a game?” his neighbor asked. “No- just checking ETH prices again. Should've sold yesterday,” he said with a crooked smile. This vendor is neither an economist nor a techno-savvy individual. He is somebody who gained knowledge of crypto largely through a WhatsApp group and YouTube tutorials. He weighs risk like he weighs chickens; the latter is easy-weighing chickens-given that cryptos appear sometimes more like vapor to him! Across the aisle, the cake seller has just welcomed a QR-code payment with a smile. She beams, feeling proud to be “modern.” Yet, she is still wondering: how does one actually distinguish between a bank's digital money and this crypto everyone talks about? Her youngest, who studies IT, explains: “Mom, it is like the government highway and the secret shortcut built by people.” The talk and doing of the market have definitely been noisy and hasty: fluctuating in prices of chilis overnight, and yet those will still count on what they spend in rupiah. But the world turns around. Below this entire noise of transaction is that one voice-not exactly an undercurrent but a whisper-that speaks of wallets, blockchain, and the strange possibilities that tomorrow can mean. Chili pepper is dangerous today and not tomorrow, as what it is, it is like that of how crypto works. For vendors, being brave makes all the difference: gamble a little with the invisible asset, or go with cash that feels heavy in the hand. That is what the economy teaches us-the fact that even if we lived on the ends of the earth at the most micro-scale lives, sooner or later the wind of larger currents would blow. And crypto, whether it was to become a mythical future or a passing fad, would nonetheless come to the most human of places: into the space of a careless chat over chicken scales, between cries of haggling voices.