The Netflixification of digital money

I think crypto is past the PGP point, where individuals controlled how to communicate with and how, but it’s still at the Bittorrent stage of chaotic yet mostly permissionless exchanges.

Its core tech might end up reaching the markets only as CBDCs, however.

This would mean that the majority of people limit themselves to what organizationally centralized services offer them, while the properly decentralized alternatives get more and more walled off.

In a worst-case scenario, crypto has a value in a closed economy. You use your ZCash to pay for decentralized hosting services, but you have to access it all through a VPN to avoid giving yourself away. You don’t generate these coins through fiat onramps, but through providing services to others, such as shared access or a mesh network relay.

Meanwhile, most of the world welcomes Netflix, where you only have whatever rights the company gives to you, for as long as you continue to pay them.

Published: 2021-05-14