Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Never can it be ok, let alone sustainable, for 26 individuals to hold more wealth than 3.6 billion people. It is our responsibility to fight that, as few billionaires, or others, can resist the dulcet whispers of the precious coin of power.
The get-rich-quick scheme, banned in China and elsewhere, is invading U.S. communities unchecked, posing as an “equalizing, democratizing” currency.
It’s not.
To borrow a boxing analogy, if Bitcoin is an unceasing, ever-escalating zero-sum brawl, Bitcoin Green is a group of people with a common purpose standing in a circle and holding hands. Bitcoin Green participants are rewarded just for entering the ring — no fighting required.
It’s a telling social phenomenon of late capitalism that we are willing to construct elaborate computer networks to conduct secure transactions with each other — and in the process torpedoing our hopes at a clean energy future.
According to most observers, the speculative bubble-of-the-year award for 2017—had there been one—would have gone to Bitcoin, the value of which soared from under $800 in January of last year to almost $20,000 by mid-December.
[Despite reservations], I find one aspect of the blockchain technology behind the explosion in digital currencies to be promising. This technology offers a possible path for decentralizing banking and finance and myriad other Internet-related services we’ve come to rely on from big corporations.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably been ignoring the bitcoin phenomenon for years — because it seemed too complex, far-fetched, or maybe even too libertarian. But if you have any interest in a future where the world moves beyond fossil fuels, you and I should both start paying attention now.
Do digital currencies like Bitcoin have the ability to change the global economic order?
It is only by zooming in and out, and considering the interplay between these absolute and relative perspectives that we can start to detect the complex power dynamics within Bitcoin.
Bitcoin sometimes appears akin to an illegal immigrant, trying to decide whether to seek out a rebellious existence in the black-market economy, or whether to don the slick clothes of the Silicon Valley establishment.
The recent collapse of Mt. Gox and the “inconvenience,” in its CEO’s words, caused by the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin investors’ money, should make us all think about the history of finance and … organic beets.
Among activists one often finds an aversion to even thinking about money.
