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March 15, 2022March 15, 2022
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BORDERLESS CITIZENS AND BLOCKCHAIN CITIES. “Anything different is good.” —Phil Connors, from the movie Groundhog Day.
Young people want something different. And looking at the current sorry state of world affairs, who can blame them?
It may sound pie-in-the-sky (or maybe that’s blockchain in the ether), but younger people see the crypto revolution as more than just investments. It represents a new way of doing things.
They see cryptos as enabling a type of life and world they want to create. It’s not a world of lockdowns and elite driven wars, though there hasn’t exactly been a youth rebellion against the COVID War, or U.S. led manipulations and blunders that fomented the Ukraine disaster.
Dial back to 2019, and a picture of young people prioritizing travel, flexible kinds of work and education, and flexible means of exchanging goods and services, all were key descriptive points of 20-somethings.
They present an odd mix of “classic” liberal and conservative traits. They’re less nationalistic and concerned with borders. But in many ways, they’re more individualistic and self-directed. They like the idea of collective action—but they want the freedom to enter or exit ad hoc and digital global spanning initiatives and causes.
How does crypto technology fit into all that? The answer lies in the solutions that things like DeFi, DAOs, NFTs, and even the dreaded oncoming metaverse can supply.
A recent Cointelegraph.com article (written by a millennial) noted that decentralized finance fits with the type of lifestyle and world younger people want.
It opens up financial and banking participation, and opportunities for wealth accumulation that aren’t typically available to people just starting out. And with the days of securing a lifetime job at a paternalistic large employer long gone, having options with little to show in the way of collateral or stability is important.
What DAOs Mean to The New (and Old) Orders
DAOs, or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, give people a chance to connect with others around the world to share and contribute in an endeavor or cause, while also seeing a return on investment.
DAOs seek to organize productivity, rewards, and participation differently than traditional companies and even traditional government entities.
They are highly disruptive. The legitimate ones also operate via communities that are committed to transparency, and operate smart contract code that all can inspect and see. 
Even bonafide fuddie-duddie John Naughton recently observed in The Guardian that DAOs are “member-owned communities promising transparency, democracy and security,” though he adds that “the financial reality doesn’t always stack up.”
In his article on DAOs, Naughton seemed to relish a case where the SEC cracked down on a Wyoming based DAO, American CryptoFed. That DAO had been designed as a monetary system with zero inflation and deflation, and zero transaction costs (see Trends Journal article “WYOMING OKAYS NATION’S FIRST DAO ‘CRYPTO LLC’,” 13 Jul 2021).
Naughton declined to mention the rapacious plundering of the traditional banking and financial system, which has sent the world into its current chaos of overwhelming debt, spiraling inflation, and gaping, ever widening inequality of wealth and power between the cabal that controls it, and the rest of humanity.
Instead, Naughton makes would-be wry observations like:
It’s difficult to see how any DAO could actually meet the requirements of any financial regulator, anywhere, at the present time. There’s a lovely passage in the [SEC] ruling that illustrates this. It reads: “The individuals and entities to whom American CryptoFed planned to distribute Locke tokens are not employees of American CryptoFed, as the Form 10 [a filing with the SEC] itself said that American CryptoFed will not have any employees but instead ‘will be operated automatically by smart contracts and direct voting by Locke tokens’.” The regulator and the regulated inhabit different legal universes.”
Yes, the old guard that pretends to moral authority while presiding over a system that sees Central bank presidents, Congress members, Presidents and judges play the rigged system for all the rest of us are worth, does live in a particular legal universe.
But they have thoroughly screwed the pooch, as all noble classes do sooner or later. Their universe is crumbling and meeting resistance. And it isn’t the 1960’s or 70’s anymore. The West is out of gas, literally and figuratively. 
Drastic change of some kind is in the wind. Better it be with DAOs and greater freedom for a new generation to try to make a fairer financial and social world peacefully, than for them to be crushed to the point where they see no future except to take up arms (and pitchforks).
Blockchain Cities
Seoul, South Korea, is one city leading the way in creating a crypto friendly environment. Years ago they devised a plan to become a worldwide leader in blockchain technology by the year 2020, as noted by Cointelegraph.
At this point, the city has adopted blockchain technology not only in terms of attracting talent and business, but in governmental functions including direct democracy via blockchain voting, online blockchain verification, and even mileage management through S-Coin, the Seol Citizen card.
In Nevada, bitcoin billionaire Jeffrey Berns has been trying to establish a blockchain principality that uses blockchain voting and other initiatives similar to Seoul. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he’s met opposition from politicos.
Dubai is another city, along with the entire UAE, that has embraced blockchain technology, with a recent initiative to move 50 percent of government transactions to blockchains.
Other cities like Miami and even New York have created their own crypto city coins to attract investment in initiatives that city dwellers can choose to support by holding tokens.
Of Digital and Physical Stuff: NFTs
As a previous article in this section noted, tokenization goes far beyond digital art and collectibles.
But even in the area of status symbol, art and fashion holdings, it’s easy to see why a younger generation might be drawn to digital rather than physical objects. 
No one complains anymore that whole libraries of books or collections of music exist in digital form. There’s an advantage to not having to store and lug around thousands of CDs, record albums, or physical books.
And as much as an older generation may treasure their collected antiques and artifacts of a lifetime, any estate sale will serve as a ready reminder that one person’s treasure, even physical, is another person’s junk.
For a generation looking to be mobile practically to the point of borderless, to travel light and live in mobile dwellings or “tiny houses” (and let’s face it, they’ve been effectively priced out of the American Dream of home ownership anyway), NFT ownership is certainly an understandable phenomenon.
Voting For Blockchain With Their Digital Feet
In one sense, participating in blockchain technologies, with their permissionless, decentralized access, that surpass nations and borders, is a way to circumvent locally imposed miseries.  It’s a kind of moving with digital feet.
And the adoption of bitcoin, the first world-spanning crypto network asset, as legal tender in El Salvador, has been perhaps the most disruptive statement to date about trying something different.  
Add it all up, and it’s apparent that, like it or not, the blockchain and the kinds of things it already offers a younger generation that sees value differently than many older people are able or willing to wrap their minds around, is a key part of just maybe creating a different world than the present one.
And looking at the present mess the world is in, that may not end up to be a bad thing. Yes, present powers will do all they can to hold onto their private money printing press, via CBDCs, and crypto regulations disguised as “protecting consumers.” 
Some regions, nations and states will be more welcoming. This column predicts they will gain commensurately, since freedom of action of the many to decide their own interests trumps authoritarian control of the few.
The authoritarian elite may wage further wars and plagues to serve and protect their own power. 
But the death may well be of an old system that clearly isn’t serving wide swaths of humanity. 
At least the crypto punks who planted the seeds of it all a mere decade ago were striving for something better than the meager gruel being handed to them by governmental and financial elites.
For related articles, see:

AS NY CONTINUES TO RESTRICT CRYPTO PLATFORMS, ONLINE GAMBLING SPIRALS
As previously noted, the same regulators in New York making it incredibly onerous for residents to trade cryptos, are literally promoting and profiting to the gills off of online sports gambling.
“It is an epidemic in the making,” Felicia Grondin, the executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey (CCGNJ) has noted. New Jersey was the first state to offer legalized online sports gambling, after a favorable Supreme Court ruling in 2018.
New York followed suit in 2021. 
According the CCGNJ website, which observes that thousands of NJ residents struggle with a gambling addiction every day:
“Gambling disorder – frequently referred to as “gambling addiction” – refers to an almost uncontrollable urge to gamble, despite the consequences it has on one’s health, happiness, or financial security. Activities that involve gambling trigger the brain’s system in much the same way alcohol and drugs do. If left untreated, problem gambling can lead to bankruptcy, imprisonment, or even suicide.
“Disordered gamblers can range from military veterans with a gambling problem in Freehold, NJ to elderly folks who spend their life savings on gambling in Monmouth, NJ. Anyone could potentially become a problem gambler; however, there are certain factors that can increase their vulnerability to such behavioral disorders. People with this disorder often use gambling as a respite from the symptoms of mood disorders like depression and anxiety.”
While New York has actively aided in gambling operations and wall-to-wall gambling advertisements enticing sports fans into betting, they are one of the least friendly states to crypto exchanges.
As a recent vox.com article reported, gambling giants like MGM, DraftKings and FanDuel are pouring billions into advertising, all with the blessings of state governments sharing in the spoils.  As the current March Madness basketball is underway, so is the madness of throwing money away on a proposition that almost never pays off.
Meanwhile, New Yorkers have few options beyond Coinbase, a compliant but decidedly limited crypto exchange, for purchasing and holding crypto tokens.
The list of utility-driven tokens not available on Coinbase is plentiful: Ripple XRP (the sixth-ranked crypto asset in the world), Hedera HBAR (the leading DLT used by enterprises around the world), Xfinity XDC, Terra LUNA, Constellation DAG, (used by some U.S. Federal Agencies)… the list goes on and on.
Yet some of the world’s largest exchanges, that could offer wider investment opportunities to New Yorkers, have either not met, or chosen not to try to meet New York’s highly restrictive “BitLicense” regulatory requirements.
Among those exchanges include Binance and Etoro.
New York’s hypocritical doublespeak concerning looking out for the interests of its residents is just one more reason why the state is losing long-time residents to freer pastures.
For related information, see “SPORTS GAMBLING IN NEW YORK EASIER THAN BUYING CRYPTOS,” 1 Feb 2022.
 
RIPPLE (XRP) A STEP CLOSER TO REPLACING SWIFT? Alright, that headline may be just slightly optimistic. Entrenched government-tied banking interests make huge amounts of money off the relative inefficiency of the legacy international currency settlements system.
But Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse does believe the recent Biden administration order regarding cryptos actually helps Ripple technology and the crypto sector in general.
Garlinghouse tweeted on 9 March:
“First and foremost, [the EO] is an affirmation that crypto is here to stay. Thoughtful policy involves timely input from players (and there’s a lot!) across the federal govt. I don’t want to mistake activity for progress, but this does feel like it could be a turning point.”
Ripple has been embroiled in a litigation with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for years. He sees a whole government approach as rightly taking some of the power away from the SEC and broadening perspectives and possible regulatory frameworks around blockchain technologies.
Ripple’s network token XRP saw a brief spike following the release of the Biden EO, before settling back around 76 cents.
What does Ripple technology do? Very briefly, it allows banks (and governments) to exchange local currencies using the intermediate Ripple token, near instantly, and at a fraction of the transaction fees of the legacy SWIFT system.
Easy to see why certain interests might not be quite ready to see that kind of technology take-over, even though the liquidity Ripple brings has enormous financial upside.  Asia certainly recognizes it, and Ripple has continued to gain institutional adherents there despite the dragging on of litigation in the U.S..
If the SEC suit is settled favorably…and if the Russia-Ukraine conflict can be de-escalated via negotiation…it could boost the whole crypto sector. Significant and major if’s, but that’s the way the world works.

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