Money without the State The Bitcoin Genesis block marked a paradigm shift in the history of money. Satoshi Nakamoto solved one of the hardest problems in computer science, which allowed us to build a trusted source of truth in the high-stakes adversarial world of online value exchange. Bitcoin is important because it is money without the state. Bitcoin is our protection mechanism against hegemonic power. It is the foundation that all of the crypto space has come from. Normally money has been controlled by those in power. Those with a strong enough military to back up their banknotes. Those with infrastructure to keep the money printers running effectively. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we need a system of accountability that facilitates the exchange of one good for another. Money, indeed, can be viewed as the technology of collaboration. But without an alternative, we’re stuck hoping that those in power use it wisely and don’t take us into dark directions. DeFi is financial services without Wall Street In recent times, we’ve seen the next logical progression in the evolution of digital money. That is doing the things we can do with money - like borrowing, lending, trading - without the suits who take their slice of the pie. This is facilitated through smart contracts, which make our money programmable. Now anyone can make their own money and play with it any way they want. We have the ability to make tokens, give them out to people who contribute to the system, build markets without exchanges and do everything that Wall Street can do, and more. We’re really just getting started with this, but it’s starting to look like it’s not the guys in suits, but degens who are the future of finance. Governance without Government Now, the next phase of cryptospace is where it gets difficult. If you really want to replace those suits in the middle, you need governance. This is where the rules of the game aren’t just fixed forever, they change to improve themselves, they change to adapt to the environment. Governance is what moves us further away from the protocol and more towards the social layer, and that’s the space in which digital democracies are born. DAOs At the heart of every decentralised technology that is more than just money, you’re going to need a DAO ( or Decentralised Autonomous Organisation). DAOs decentralise trust and diffuse power among their participants. DAOs are digital organisations, and organisations are the building blocks of civilization. DAOs will be our building blocks for a digital universe that is opening up creating a new paradigm in human coordination and collaboration. The future of the cryptospace Sooner or later we’re going to have a financial layer to the internet that is better than the one you can get in the real world; more agile, cheaper, more democratic, more open. Then we can get on with the real business of building technologies that are owned and governed by the people that use them. Every app will be replaced with a dApp. Every technology that extracts value from us and sells our data to the highest bidder will be replaced with platforms that distribute value among its participants. In Summary We are not just about to enter into a new chapter in the evolution of the cryptospace, but a new phase of humanity that will be built around global and decentralised collaboration. We do this at a time when we need these technologies more than ever before. We need tools for collaboration in a world that’s increasingly driven by platforms that profit from making us angry. Free speech is going to come under attack, but our technologies are unstoppable, censorship-resistant, and decentralised. The future of the internet will be built on digital democracy and by harnessing the work and collective intelligence of a vast pool of people, we will be able to build things that right now, we are unable to imagine. Join a DAO, Build a DAO, Change the World.

Dapp

Avoid rug pulls, don’t get REKT, and DYOR; the degen’s definitive guide to DeFi

Fast-track your path to decentralisation

Too Long; Didn't Read

CTA: Download the FREE AI Productivity Shift report

Governance without Government

About Author

Comments

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN

Related Stories

Untitled Story

Avoid rug pulls, don’t get REKT, and DYOR; the degen’s definitive guide to DeFi

(1/100) Crypto Countdown: Golem

A Research Report on the Trader $JOE DeFi Platform

07/03/2018: Biggest Stories in the Cryptosphere

05/02/2018: Biggest Stories in the Cryptosphere

Avoid rug pulls, don’t get REKT, and DYOR; the degen’s definitive guide to DeFi

(1/100) Crypto Countdown: Golem

A Research Report on the Trader $JOE DeFi Platform

07/03/2018: Biggest Stories in the Cryptosphere

05/02/2018: Biggest Stories in the Cryptosphere

Light-Mode

Classic

Newspaper

Dark-Mode

Neon Noir

Minty

HN StartUps