Crypto, More Than Ever

The electronification of our financial lives comes with enormous benefit in terms of productivity. No longer do you have to travel to a bank to deposit or cash your paycheck, or any check for that matter (take a picture, tap an app, done). The writing of checks itself is an alien concept to the young, and even the carrying of cash is less and less necessary, given apps like Paypal, Venmo, and Zelle. Direct pay, auto pay, and payment services greatly simply the moving of money.

On the revenue side of things, social media services have created income streams for millions around the world.

It's not all candy and roses, though, as we've (increasingly) witnessed of late. Youtube demonetizing channels when the content runs afoul of their "terms of service" (translation: something a woke hall monitor discovers and finds objectionable) was the first obvious example, and the "it's OK" signal to other intermediaries who want to interfere with the free financial interactions of private citizens.

To wit: GoFundMe's lockout of millions of dollars in donations to the Freedom Convoy truckers, and TD Bank's freezing of over a million dollars held in two personal accounts associated with the protests.

Herein lies the slippery slope.

Few would argue that a platform is obligated to facilitate funds transfers that are associated with critical activity, and even fewer re terrorism.

Politicians and other control freak types know this, and it didn't take long for them to figure out that simply labeling a class of recipients is often enough to scare corporations (I defy you to name an "identity group" that's more craven-chickenshit than big corporations) into trotting out the nebulous and byzantine ToS that no one bothers reading to deny legitimate and benign financial activities.

Times of stress encourage such behavior from our leaders, and sure as the sun rises, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau chose to go nuclear on the Freedom Convoy - without even meeting with its reps or considering the merit of their demands - and invoked an emergency powers act.

One of the earliest promises of cryptocurrency - before its public perception became that of an investment vehicle rather than a means of exchange - was the ability to engage in electronic financial transactions resistant to exactly this sort of intermediate interference. Crypto transactions help avoid social punishment for heterodox political views (as is being attempted by those who'd deep-mine PAC and charity donor lists to figure out who's secretly (gasp!) a Republican). And, in general, keep others' noses out of stuff that isn't any of their business.

Naturally, the aforementioned politicians and other control freak types are figuring this out, so there's lots and lots of talk about regulating cryptocurrencies.

Under the guise of ferreting out naughtiness, of course.

After all, if you've nothing to hide, why would you hide anything... right?

Only criminals, terrorists, and other nefarious types would want this sort of privacy... right?

As we are seeing, though, the government has no qualms about tagging any behavior it doesn't like with such epithets, because it can then justify intrusive, illiberal, and morally offensive actions.

Unfortunately (and perhaps inevitably), as I noted, cryptocurrencies have become speculative ventures, rather than alternatives to dollars or euros or other government-produced fiat currencies. The emergence of a number of bitcoin billionaires has countless people salivating over "get rich quick" or stressing on "fear of missing out." This, in turn, has prompted everyone and his grandmother to produce other cryptocurrencies.

Time will tell how big a bubble is being blown, and there will almost inevitably be much pain when said bubble bursts. This will, again as sure as the sun rises, be used as an excuse by the government to regulate and control crypto... as much as it can.

In time, though, we may yet come back around to the truest value of crypto - its inherent privacy. Heavy-handed government meddling in our e-finances will, I believe, accelerate the popularity of crypto, and we are already seeing more and more entities announcing their acceptance of bitcoin and some other prominent currencies on their payment platforms.

Which will make the control freaks even more nuts.

Which should make liberty lovers quite happy.