Throughout millennia there have been two types of people. Those who invent and produce, and those who covertly insert themselves as financiers (the middle-men) to control the resulting wealth.
An entrepreneur needs capital in order to start a new business. Those who supply the capital are in a position to control the business. Therefore, the ability to co-opt national economies has traditionally been achieved via control of the money supply.
There is a new invention that is promising to change things though, and it does this by removing the perennial middle-man, enabling trustless exchange, and eliminating single points of failure.
Crypto Removes The Middle-Man
Bitcoin launched in early 2009, introducing a new form of money that can be transferred peer-to-peer, without a trusted intermediary.
But is it naive to think that powerful people cannot undermine a cryptocurrency?
There are already claims that Bitcoin has been hijacked by bad actors, who may have intentionally stunted Bitcoin's growth by limiting its blocksize, and therefore its TPS.
The adoption of cryptocurrency may have indeed been delayed by Bitcoin's high fees and unreliable transactions, but general progress in crypto continues unabated, and the introduction of new governance mechanisms promises to prevent similar takeovers from happening in the future.
Likely as a result of Bitcoin's hindered development, there are now plenty of alternatives that exist without the 1MB blocksize limit, high fees, and slow transactions. The question is, could these other cryptocurrencies be co-opted?
Eliminating Single Points of Failure
Not only has cryptocurrency eliminated the need for middle-men, it's also changing the way we govern and organize ourselves. Throughout history, governments and organizations have always had a single point of failure.
In the past, it has been possible for powerful people to secretly bribe and blackmail kings, presidents, and CEOs, in order to have them under the control of a "deep state", if you will. Could this same strategy be applied to gain control of the crypto world?
The problem for the saboteur is that decentralized miners/validators and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) make it difficult to target single individuals who could secretly undermine the network.
In theory, the operator of a mining pool or validator could be bribed or blackmailed to fulfill the wishes of a secret party. That said, the actions of both mining pools and validators are completely transparent, as blocks are published to the blockchain. Things like censorship and theft can be easily detected by the community, and the operators expelled from the network for their unscrupulous actions.
If money and future organizations (in the form of DAOs) are decentralized, and their competitors that spring up are equally censorship-resistant as well, how would it be possible for a single group to co-opt this ever expanding world of crypto / web 3.0? Gaining control of enough miners, validators, and token holders of all blockchains would be an impossible task, and resemble more a game of Whack-a-Mole.
Founder & Community Responsibility
Keep in mind that true decentralization is contingent on the efforts of the community. Only when everyone diligently works together does it become infeasible to take control of this decentralized movement. If the community detects foul play, a co-opted blockchain could always be replaced by a more honest one.
For this movement to succeed in decentralizing power, it's important for project founders to eventually cede control to the community (as Satoshi did), and equally important for the community to pickup the baton (by active participation in development and governance) and not just rely on the founders to do everything.
Until next time...
By eliminating middle-men and single points of failure, crypto has the potential to make trustless money and incorruptible decentralized organizations.
Both the founders of a crypto project and the community need to take on active roles, and responsibly cede or take power to make a decentralized future possible, and sustainable.
If you learned something new from this article, be sure to check out my other posts on crypto and finance here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.
Resources
Rothschild Quote [1]
Jafar Controls Sultan Image [2]
Other Images Courtesy Of Venice AI [3]