We need to pair crypto bros with sociologists

Why does crypto want people to be obsolete?

*I wrote this article two years ago, when bitcoin was going through a “crypto winter.” As it skyrockets today in a Musk-Trump (current) world, I thought it was worth re-sharing.*

This week, amid the worst downfall of cryptocurrency prices since 2018, it was reported that a cryptocurrency token introduced by the city of Miami lost 90% of its value, down to $0.0044. The token was pitched as part of a program called CityCoins, where crypto could be used for local business transactions or universal basic income. New York City also signed up to participate. 

But in Miami, neither the city itself nor private business were accepting the cryptocurrency. The closest the city has come to a real use case for the token is the idea that it would compensate people with the token if they reparked fallen e-scooters. But that has never come to fruition, leading many to believe that the token was more of a speculative security than a utility. 

I worked with the main organizer of CityCoin at a small crypto company back in 2018. I joined the company, which advertised itself as a new decentralized Internet, on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. People were desperate for alternative technologies that did not exploit people’s data. 

Before joining, I had a call with one of the co-founders, and he was selling me hard on the job. I asked him to explain his vision for the company and for this new Internet. He said, “I want to build the team that builds the team.” He continued: “And then, if all of us die, I want the protocol to live on.”

At the time I thought this was someone who wanted to create a legacy, to build something immortal even though he can’t be. That’s natural, especially among these tech CEO types who have this greater-than-god complex. But another piece of me wondered why one would want to hire a team and then openly fantasize about their death. I must have paused mid-conversation, because he then interjected to break the silence with a nervous laugh: “Death may be the wrong example! I mean, if we were all to retire on a beach, the protocol would live on.”

“If we all died… ” was not an uncommon topic of conversation at the fledgling blockchain project. People frequently used the terms “self-combusting” or “self-destructing.” One day, the blockchain engineers sat around a table wondering whether the project would be able to continue on if any of them died. Some in the room joked about freezing the engineer’s brains, just in case.

“Decentralizing” the network was the mildest catch-phrase to describe their ideology. The idea of decentralization of power was a popular one: beyond the Cambridge Analytica scandal, society was still reeling from Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance, and the financial crash of 2008. Mistrust of government continued to permeate the culture – which meant it had never been a better time for magic internet money without any sort of central power controlling it. It was the ultimate symbol of freedom.

Self-combustion aside, my interest lay in the decentralized applications themselves, and whether they could fulfill the prophecy that Web3 would allow people, not centralized companies like Meta, to own their online data. Could there be decentralized exchanges that allowed people the ability to seamlessly transfer money to those living under the rule of despots or fascist states? Could journalists use private messaging apps without needing to worry about subpoenas, because all their data was stored on their devices rather than on a company’s servers? I saw developers beginning to work on apps like decentralized messaging apps and decentralized Google docs. This was before the company's token STX was introduced, but I thought that the value of the token was tethered to the ecosystem, or the usage of the apps. 

Strangely, there was little emphasis on any marketing to attract users to these “dapps.” At the time, tens of millions of venture dollars were being poured into these projects, yet some projects were only seeing 500 users a day. When I pitched a partnership with the Human Rights Foundation to bring some of these use cases to people in need of them, I was told I was not being developer-centric enough. What was the point of the code and the apps, though, if no one was using them?

This takes us back to MiamiCoin. The same group that eschewed use cases for real people is now somehow being put in charge of deploying funds for cities, and creating a human-centric user experience for citizens who may have never even heard of the one exchange where MiamiCoin is listed, and likely have never spent hundreds of dollars to win a block (nor do they probably know what a block is). How are a group of libertarian software developers going to solve problems that have plagued cities for years, whether housing affordability or mental health crises or climate change? Certainly not by fantasizing about human obsolescence.

There are many fascinating use cases for the blockchain to enable transparency or allow for redistribution of wealth. Pair sociologists and community leaders with technologists, and perhaps we can really deploy funds where they’re needed, and accustom people to using the new currency itself. But people with a vested interest in simply pumping a token – or a desire for their own self-combustion – should not be the ones pioneering that.