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.
If the project doesn’t have to be a traditional crypto, but just an alternative payment system, there’s probably some stuff already. I’ve bumped into community based time tracking software before that had a similar goal of making sure folks were compensated for taking care of common spaces and neighbors.
I think we could somewhat reasonably setup a labor voucher network where participating organizations and people can compensate other individuals with single use vouchers for time worked, that can then be used at that same network of participating companies. Like all monetary like systems its subject to many potential exploits, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are already some decent technical and social solutions for many of them.