When will crypto be useful/usable for the majority by Balaji Srinivasan TECHNOLOGY VS IDEOLOGY Well, crypto a…

When will crypto be useful/usable for the majority by Balaji Srinivasan TECHNOLOGY VS IDEOLOGY Well, crypto already has product/market fit for hundreds of millions of people for store-of-value (Bitcoin) and stablecoins. And for millions of users for tools like ENS. But it’s quite possible that crypto wins like Christianity as opposed to winning like the Internet. Meaning: it gains billions of supporters worldwide, and changes the world, but also has committed ideological opponents that won’t adopt it. Because cryptocurrency isn’t just a technology, it’s an ideology. And there are at least three different strains within the space: 1) Bitcoin maximalism (monocoinism) 2) Crypto pluralism (polycoinism) 3) CBDC-ism (acoinism) Those correspond respectively to being a coin monotheist, a coin polytheist, and a coin atheist. A coin monotheist or monocoinist believes in only one coin. Everything else is a scam, a false idol. It maps to the Abrahamic way of thinking. One coin, like one god. A coin polytheist or polycoinist believes in multiple coins. The advantage is flexibility, the disadvantage is the lack of zealous commitment. This maps to the Dharmic way of thinking. Many coins, like many gods. Finally, a coin atheist or acoinist believes in the primacy of the centralized state over the decentralized network. These are the CBDCers. By centralizing control, they have the form of a coin without the substance. This maps to the way of thinking of statists and communists. They are against decentralization in principle, they are nonbelievers. If you add up all three factions — maximalists, polycoiners, and CBDCers — I think you do get to all 7+ billion people on the planet. After all, China has rolled out its digital yuan, the Fed has pushed out its dangerous FedNow, and just about every central bank in the world is working on a CBDC equivalent. Of course, the CBDC represents a corruption of the decentralization ideal. It’s acoinism. But it’s also a form of grudging respect. Every bank, central bank, and government in the world now knows what Bitcoin is and has had its plans changed by Bitcoin, because CBDCs are a response to Bitcoin. CBDCs are like a Counter-Decentralization launched in response to Bitcoin’s Decentralization, much like the Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation was launched in response to the Protestant Reformation. The thing is: even causing a response like this is an enormous impact for something that started anonymously on a message board. Every government reacts to Satoshi’s act. Anyway, I could write more, but in the narrow sense of “monocoiners plus polycoiners” we already have several hundred million supporters and are on track for a billion-plus. That’s traction on par with Christianity. In the broad sense where we also include acoiners/CBDCers — even though they represent a corruption of the decentralization ideal — then yeah, aspects of the tech will eventually get to everyone on the planet and will be traction on the scale of the Internet.