ALTERNATIVE ECONOMY/PARALLEL SOCIETY

Gregg Braden YouTube videos below ⬇️
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REPRINTED FROM THE ARTICLE ON MEDIUM
Cardano has sound technology and community.
by cardanians.io

Cryptocurrency communities are a new phenomenon, unlike anything we have known before. What is it like, how does technology relate to it, and what does the future hold? Let’s try to answer these questions.

​How to define the cryptocurrency community?
Bitcoin represents an attempt to create non-state global money. Anyone who agrees to it owns bitcoins.

Cardano and some other projects take the original idea further and want to create an alternative financial system that is not dependent on governments.

It must be acknowledged that there are many speculators in the space who are only looking for value growth and don’t care about the ideals or message of cryptocurrencies. However, anyone who holds a cryptocurrency is giving some signal to others, including governments, that they know about the blockchain industry and share at least some of the ideals that are attached to it.

If an alternative independent financial world is to emerge, it necessarily competes with governments that need national fiat currencies to function. There is a direct link between fiat currencies and governments, and it is hard to imagine governments giving up their national currencies. The blockchain industry is a kind of unwanted competition that has grown up fast and is here to stay. Who exactly are the people who share the ideals of decentralization?

These people cluster around blockchain networks, which are inherently ubiquitous. Cryptocurrencies know no national boundaries and fans of specific projects are literally all over the world. Your neighbor may not know about Cardano, but you may be chatting about it on social media with someone from the other side of the planet. Today it is in the order of millions to tens of millions of people, which is more than in a small European country.

Some people say that cryptocurrencies are a new religion born around technology. Money only works on the basis of trust. Anyone who uses fiat currency has to trust them, just like they trust the country they live in. People know the rules associated with the use of currency and the rules of the state at the same time. The use of fiat currencies is controlled by the state. If someone voluntarily decides to use cryptocurrencies instead of fiat currencies, it can be interpreted as a loss of trust or a kind of revolt against the state.

In many Western countries, the laws and rules of the state are separate from religion. States have created new social contracts that in many ways have replaced religion. Religion is tolerated, but usually does not interfere with the governance of the state, and certainly not with fiscal or monetary policy. We, therefore, do not think that religion is the best term for cryptocurrency communities, although it must be admitted that some commonalities can be observed.

In democratic countries, different political parties fight for power. They present their political program to the citizens and the people decide in elections what direction the state should take. Governments have a direct influence on the stability of the country, and therefore also on the stability of fiat currencies. European countries, for example, have had to decide whether to adopt the euro as their new European currency.

​Can we consider cryptocurrency fans as new political parties? We see two reasons why not.

First, these parties are global and do not fight with specific political parties in any particular country. On the other hand, if a significant number of citizens of a particular country decided to switch to cryptocurrencies and the country in question tolerated it, it would be a kind of competition for the political elites.

Secondly, every political party has its leaders. Blockchain networks are decentralized and have no leaders. A decentralized network is maintained by a group of independent people. However, each project has its prominent face. In the case of Bitcoin, it is Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey, Adam Back, and others. For the Cardano project, it is Charles Hoskinson.

For the Ethereum project, the prominent face is Vitalik Buterin. We mustn’t forget the teams that are responsible for editing the source code and have to interact with the community from time to time. We also have major pool operators, miners, influencers, and others. There are usually multiple prominent figures in each community who together form significant currents of thought, but also counter-currents. Even if these prominent personalities do not influence the functioning of the network and cannot, for example, switch it off, they form natural leaders for the community.

Some influencers may play a fake game with the community just as some political parties play it with citizens. For example, representatives of VC funds try to promote a project in which they themselves have invested at the expense of another project. To promote their investment they are able to lie openly about their competitors. This behavior can be observed frequently.

Haseeb Qureshi may tell you that Cardano only has religion and not technology. Mark Cuban will claim that Dogecoin has more applications than Cardano. Just as in politics, in the world of cryptocurrencies we see a lot of lying and trying to swindle others out of money.

In our opinion, cryptocurrency communities are something between a religion and a political party. They are people who must first and foremost believe in the technology, i.e. a particular project. Next, they need to understand the mission of the project, see it as real, and share the same ideals as other members of the community. Cryptocurrency communities are based on belief in a project, social belonging, and a particular line of thinking or views on monetary policy. However, there is one thing that complicates this view.

With religion and political parties, we usually choose only one. In the world of technology, this is not necessary and an individual can choose multiple protocols to use. Some members of the community try to force others to make a choice of only one project and consider the others as competition. The question is whether the competitive struggle will prevail and the individual communities will compete with each other like political parties, or whether the technical aspect will prevail and people will use individual projects in a similar way as they use Meta, Twitter, Amazon, or Google. That is to say, they will mainly deal with functionality and not ideology.

A pragmatic approach to the use of individual projects does not necessarily mean that the desire to decentralize our world more is weakened. It would still be the case that the principles of decentralization need to be introduced into the current political and financial environment, which has little transparency, politicians are not directly accountable for their actions and the whole system is prone to corruption.

With higher adoption, communities will be more transformed and further changed. Communities are beginning to vote on important issues, more akin to a political party than a religious movement. In Bitcoin, major protocol changes are being voted on. In the Cardano ecosystem, people are voting in Catalyst to fund projects to be implemented. The first DAO experiments are underway. While there is an emphasis on the independence of individual members, they all need to communicate with each other and occasionally come to a decision.

We can imagine that in the distant future there may be project leaders or spokespeople who will talk to politicians. Indeed, this is already happening today, with fans of individual cryptocurrencies talking to politicians and legislators. They usually lobby for their project or against another project. These people don’t necessarily have any mandate from the community and everything happens organically. Do you think communities will one day have elected or informal leaders, or would that somehow undermine the principles of decentralization? We don’t have a clear opinion on this ourselves.

It would be nice if all the cryptocurrency fans got together and formed one big strong group of people to speak out in unison. Insisting that this happens around one specific project is a form of centralization. It is already clear that this will never happen, and people reject it. Unfortunately, we don’t think that individual communities will stop competing with each other.

In any case, there is no point in looking for a precise definition of the cryptocurrency community. At the moment, it’s probably best to think of it as a group of people building technology together and sharing the same view on the future.

Cardano has sound technology
We said that communities come together around specific projects. This can be seen as a form of vote of confidence in a given project. What attracts people in the first place is the existing community. Then they have to be interested in technology, but not everyone is an IT expert. It is necessary to trust someone else, ideally independent experts.

An individual has almost no chance to understand the individual blockchain protocols in detail. Today, this is done by teams of experts who analyze individual projects and give their opinion. It is natural for people to go where a community already exists and is willing to openly discuss the details of a project. They can also rely on personal experience of using the network. They can set up a wallet, send coins, or try the DeFi service themselves.

If a project has a large community, it means that people believe in the technology, understand the mission of the project and share most of the views with the community. This definitely wouldn’t happen if Cardano didn’t have sound technology. Experts would point out the flaws. There would be network restarts, hacks, and many other problems. Cardano fans know how the team is building the technology and have accepted it. The community prefers security and decentralization, knowing that the team is working on scalability.

Choosing Cardano may be a pragmatic choice that does not necessarily have an ideological basis. On the other hand, it is the mission of the project that is attractive to many people.

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Gregg Braden on the coming decentralized parallel society:

​FINANCIAL NEWSLETTER REPRINT

On March 9, President Biden quietly signed his Executive Order 14067.

The Order requires the government to explore…

A digital “spyware” currency I call “Biden Bucks”.

Which I predict will RETIRE and REPLACE the US DOLLAR for good.

If that happens, Biden Bucks would allow for:

1. Legal government SURVEILLANCE of all US citizens…
2. Total CONTROL over your bank accounts and purchases, and…
3. The ability to SILENCE all opposing voices for good.

Most Americans don’t know about Biden’s Executive Order 14067.

But when WE spread the word,

I predict this attack on our freedoms…

…will turn ALL Americans against him.

And will cost Dems the 2024 election and beyond.

But we must act NOW.

Biden’s plan is already underway.

AOC has tweeted her support.

While we still have time…

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CLIMATE AND CRYPTO IN THE U.S.
https://youtu.be/TEpC2PN2IGY

COFFEE AND CRYPTO WITH CHARLES HOSKINSON
https://youtu.be/wwJENgmMVhA