I was kind of sympathetic to Bitcoin in the early days. Despite the awful politics of the community surrounding it and the obvious grift angle, it seemed a positive that we might possibly be able to escape the stranglehold that payment processors are currently demonstrating online.
Obviously, the incentives at play inevitability led the project to become a series of pyramid schemes within pyramid schemes, and anyone who has actually used the Bitcoin network will tell you that it did not scale well, with slow transfers and high fees.
However, could it be done well? Is it conceptually possible to have a left cryptocurrency? How would that work, technically, politically, practicality within this economy?
To be perfectly honest, these were the questions I wished our glorious thought leaders in left media would grapple with a decade ago, but maybe we all have enough perspective on this thing now that there is some fruitful discussion to be had on here at least.
Frankly no.
I have said for years and will continue saying, it’s actually just not that useful, especially for the amount of wasted compute (which embodies electricity and water, in turn embodying fossil fuels and exploitative extraction, in turn embodying pollution and greenhouse gases, etc.). In order for a cryptocurrency to have meaningful privacy and resilience guarantees, it must be proof-of-work (proof-of-stake is horseshit, just a way for the wealthy to control the ledger again). In order for it to be widely used, that work must be performed at scale, leading back to the previous concern of wasted compute. If you relax the privacy and “decentralization” features to relax that compute - what exactly are we left with? A currency that behaves like any other except it is not state-backed and you don’t have to install venmo or zelle or whatever new start-up forms to facilitate moving money from one place to another without being taxed.
And I have not even bothered itemizing how those privacy and decentralization “features” are, frankly, worthless. Every transaction taking place inside a computer is traceable with enough time and energy. Some might require nation-state level resources to do that tracing, but the fact remains. If this is to be used for some grand “free” future, a dual financial system where the hand of the state is stayed, it fails at that purpose. In terms of preventing fraud, preventing abuse - these systems are also made by humans. All of the math in the world cannot stop someone being handed a $100 bill and being told to leave a backdoor in some validation algorithm. All the cryptographic guarantees do not stop someone slapping the wrong label on a box. Do not let the techbros convince you that math somehow fixes these human interactions - do not let them convince you that economic relations are not, in fact, social relations.
Cryptocurrency invents a world that does not exist, and prescribes a solution to the problems of that world.