Without Peer-to-Peer Freedom, Crypto Is Just Surveillance Money

There's a disturbing de-evolution happening in the world of crypto, and it finds its repulsive form in the legions of self-styled crypto zealots who still mouth the words "financial freedom" and "peer-to-peer," but have effectively given up on the same.

Somewhere along the way they lost the plot — or more likely, never had it — and now are frothing at the mouth and rambling on and on in sycophantic fashion about politicians who have adopted bitcoin for "their citizens" or banks and mega payments processors "accepting bitcoin." Accepting bitcoin here almost always means: allowing registered customers whose every transaction is tracked to pay in crypto, and then immediately and automatically converting said crypto back to violence-backed fiat.

I knew the tide had changed when I was laughed at a while back for suggesting that crypto's utility for economic freedom from the destructive nature of fiat and the state should not be forgotten.

The Bitcoin whitepaper is clear enough, but even that document has come to be viewed as something of a relic, with the underlying economic profundity it embodies ignored for the sake of quick gains and new airdrops.

I always have to emphasize that I too want to make a ton of money and do well for myself. I too want to be able to taste sweet, sweet gains and leverage them to improve my life. What so many fail to see, however, is that the way things are going, even those opportunities for life-changing gains will soon be erased. The louder they talk about financial inclusion, the heavier the crackdown on permissionless, peer-to-peer trade. The more blabber about banking the unbanked, the less organic opportunities the statist legislators and their crony corporate servants allow to live in the stifled markets.

There is one way to centralize crypto which works every single time when done effectively: Just bribe, cajole, and threaten people with violence if they use it any other way.

I'm still trading peer-to-peer as much as possible. The smooth-talking political conmen can all get bent. I cannot stand KYC-crazy centralized exchanges. Cannot stand banks. Even if my "number" never really goes up super high, at least I still get the joy of using clean money now and again to avoid being stolen from.

Without disobedience and freedom of use on a mass scale — at least to some degree large or small by millions of individuals — the technology itself isn't going to save anyone.

A gun can't save you from an assault unless you are willing to pull the trigger.