Cryptocurrencies and what "activism" really means

Author: David Z. Morris; Compiler: Block unicorn

A new book by Joshua Dávila, aka The Blockchain Socialist, makes the point that the future of cryptocurrency is not limited by the right-wing economics that shaped it before.

About ten years ago, I became interested in Bitcoin, mainly because of its association with some of the more extreme political parties. After the 2008 global financial crisis, investor interest in gold soared, especially among survivalists and "people who pre-prepared in an economic crisis." It was through talking to these “gold junkies” who often had ultra-libertarian views (what we might now call far-right views) that I began to think seriously about Bitcoin.

I take an outsider's perspective on early Bitcoin adopters' desire for hard money and radical free market ethos. Personally, I've always been a bland European-style democratic socialist with a cypherpunk commitment to privacy, with some anarcho-syndicalist vibes. But this political disconnect never affected my interest in cryptocurrencies. In fact, even if I don't agree with their conclusions, I've come to respect the many principled liberals who have committed themselves to the field. (I don't have that much patience for the authoritarian far right, especially in its overtly statist Zoomer form)

However, over the past four or five years there has been a remarkable diversification of political thought in the crypto space. Perhaps most importantly, Ethereum's smart-contract architecture has attracted a legion of would-be economic engineers concerned not with individual sovereignty like Bitcoin, but with new incentive structures that foster a more balanced and healthy society. Two key examples include Glen Weyl's "radical markets" theory, and the emerging "regenerative economy" discussion initiated by Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki and others.

In that context, about two or three years ago, a new Twitter account calling itself “Blockchain Socialist” came into my view. Subsequent podcasts welcomed truly transformative figures like artist Rhea Myers, Ethereum co-founder Amir Taaki, and Sci-Hub's Alexandra Elbakyan, who saw the utility of cryptocurrencies in a wide variety of active projects . This “blockchain socialist” has become central to discussions of American economic imperialism and, in particular, left-wing privacy rights, two cornerstones that help define a different category for stances in the crypto space than the main liberal mainstream.

**What is "activism"? **

This year, the “blockchain socialist” finally came out of the shadows and revealed his true identity as Joshua Dávila. Joshua Dávila, who has worked as a business consultant on blockchain issues at Deloitte Europe for several years, has also created a project called Breadchain with the goal of building a “financial primitive” similar to smart contracts, which developers love. "Solidarity Primitives" (simply put, he wanted to build something like a financial instrument, but to support solidarity cooperation).

To better communicate his point of view, Joshua Dávila is publishing his first book: "Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined the Crypto World and How to Fix It," which will be published by Repeater Press on August 8. Published, Vitalik Buterin described the book as an "important addition to the existing narrative in the crypto space. "

“Indeed, what defines a person as a “radical” is a willingness to rethink assumptions at the deepest level.”

The book is essentially a long exploratory essay that seeks to provide insight into Joshua Dávila's fundamental belief in cryptocurrencies as a tool for organizing non-state social and economic alliances, ranging from mutual aid groups and bail funds to support for technological development. Provides new patterns.

Joshua Dávila said that he has thus far had greater difficulty communicating the promise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies to his peers in the political world.

He told me: “If you try to talk about cryptocurrencies in left-wing forums, you will be banned. I am often accused of being a liar. I thought we could have a solid conversation, but I found out that is not the case.”

Blockchain Radicals resists this reductive condemnation of cryptocurrencies. Most ironically, these disparaging views on cryptocurrencies are often formulated by neoliberal centrists who aspire to return to the embrace of the system, especially more recently, the notoriously repressive intelligence agencies.

"Blockchain Radicals" serves in a way as a decompilation manual for those who have been misled by this twisted and deceitful "causality theory" to reorganize their thinking. The key to the book is that it provides a concise, open-minded introduction to fundamental cryptographic concepts such as proof-of-work, smart contracts, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and distributed applications, as well as historical overviews such as The creation of Litecoin and the "DAO" hack. These are clearly marked and can be easily skipped if you don't need a review, but are essential for those who have just waved their hands dismissively over the years without actually participating.

Joshua Dávila told me: "My book isn't necessarily about answering the question 'what is blockchain socialism', I don't think that's really the question that needs to be asked. What I'm trying to do in this book is deconstruct what people think The blockchain way of thinking...and showing the flaws of those mindsets.”

The Radical Potential of Cryptocurrencies

The Radical Potential of Cryptocurrencies

In that sense, the title Blockchain Radicals can be confusing. Despite the growing awareness of right-wing "activism" over the past decade, the term is still often associated with figures on the left such as The Climate Group or Che Guevara.

But "radicals" can actually have any set of political beliefs. In fact, radicalism is defined as a willingness to rethink assumptions at the deepest levels, including truths that society may take for granted or sacrosanct. The linguistic origin of the term "radical" can be traced to the Latin radix or radic-, meaning "root": Radicals are those who go deep underground to reveal the origin and true nature of things.

“Joshua Dávila is unabashedly emphasizing the potential of cryptocurrencies to get around unjust laws****.”**

The radical nature of cryptocurrencies is obvious to anyone with a deep understanding of the crypto space, regardless of their political affiliation. Over the past decade, cryptocurrencies first sparked a rethinking of fundamental concepts such as money, banking, investment, borders, and even the state itself (Joshua Dávila has repeatedly refuted former Coinbase CTOBalaji Srinivasan's book "Network Nation") .

One of the broadest “radical” potentials that Joshua Dávila ascribes to cryptocurrencies is their ability to redefine and possibly revive the “public sphere.” Historically, European and other feudal or tribal societies were organized around an agricultural "commons" shared by communities. New land and labor regimes led to these public realms being carved up into stratified private holdings (later called "enclosures") between the 18th and 20th centuries, and later staged by false racist narratives rationalized by "tragedies in the public domain". This argument has since become the justification for various profit-making privatization initiatives, including modern patent and intellectual property systems, which may limit the advancement of technology.

Seen in this light, cryptocurrency’s fundamental structural reliance on open-source software development may be one of its most profoundly radical tendencies. Joshua Dávila also describes cryptocurrencies as enabling new types of digital commons, leveraging new shared property and incentive design mechanisms, as just one aspect of his broader potential for bottom-up economic engineering through blockchain.

Joshua Dávila also proudly embraces more direct cryptocurrency activism:** Unabashedly emphasizing the potential of cryptocurrencies to bypass unjust laws. **

He shares my admiration evoked by Kazakh developer Alexandra Elbakyan, who is on par with Aaron Swarz and even Edward Snowden information rebels. Through her totally illegal website, Sci Hub, Elbakyan has for more than a decade freed publicly funded scientific research from the blood-sucking hands of essentially corrupt, rent-seeking "publishers" such as Elsevier. She is resisting the most glaring distortion of public interest created by capitalism’s “enclosure” of public property, and Bitcoin keeps that effort going.

Specific proposals, projects, and trends are explored in Blockchain Radicals. They might even seem mundane to those who haven't directly faced the challenge of building with pre-encrypted tools.

Probably the most interesting are DAO-like structures and smart contracts for building new types of collaborative enterprises. As boring as it may seem, a huge hurdle in building new economic models is simply bookkeeping, trust, and coordination. For example, I lived in collectively owned homes when I was a student, which was great for keeping costs down. But it takes a lot of commitment and mutual trust, especially when it comes to managing collective funds like home repairs and taxes.

Employee-owned businesses or resident-owned apartments may sound like radical ideas in America today, but they were once common in this country. The first American cooperatives seem to have been founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1752, and they have since managed to demonstrate at least a little of the practical benefits of socialism. The transparency and immutability of well-designed DAOs and smart contract stacks could make this collective ownership easier and more transparent, potentially putting more money back into the pockets of workers.

Joshua Dávila rightly cautions that his book does not attempt to define precisely how blockchain technology can help create a more economically just and stable world. While he details and draws lessons from many specific admirable examples, Blockchain Radicals is not a taxonomy or project for "blockchain socialism."

Instead, the book aims to open up people's eyes to the broader possibilities of cryptocurrencies that are hard to come by in the mainstream media. If you're interested in changing the world, that apparent silence alone should be enough motivation to read it.