Does corporatocracy really believe in crypto?
The existing banking system is a bottomless feeder for the bureaucratic elites of consumer society. As long as “bubblenomics” allows to milk herbs of the silent majority, the elite will do its best to convince plebs about the reliability of banks, wisdom of presidents, efficiency of the UN, strength of dollars as well as in all other attributes of the liberal world order.
The silent majority in their turn won’t be against it since they see how the elite (reference citizens and carriers of a discourse of consumer society) is reluctant with a transition to a new paradigm. Once the order of relationships in postmodernity threatens to change the existing social stratification, nobody from the present powers-that-be is in a hurry to adopt any technology associated with the postmodern horizontal post-society.
However reluctant the corporate flagships are towards cryptoeconomy today, the ongoing transition to a post-economy makes large business structures follow post-liberal trends. Otherwise, they risk lagging behind in the future wealth distribution.
Some transnational techno-giants have recognized the way how to untie their businesses from national currencies. Telegram, Facebook, Amazon along with some other digital behemoths are developing their own crypto assets capable of changing the rules in the global financial markets. Crypto attracts corporations with its spirit of real freedom. If you run your business in the US dollar zone, the Fed as the issuer of dollars controls your transactional activity.
However strong your business model is, the very issuer of the currency with which your customers pay for your products is always a core point of failure in your business. Freedom of entrepreneurship is a pure convention is such a case. An exemplary use case is a world petroleum sector in which all players dance to the tune of petrodollars. When a company supplies a product and issue a currency to be paid for the product simultaneously the business starts circulating under the full control of the company’s owners. Do you feel the difference?
If the world techno leaders change national currencies for their own crypto, the banking sector as a middleman will appear in a tough situation. It will be necessary to adapt to new conditions urgently not to be left with nothing. By the way, some banks have already issued their own crypto products for internal use. This indicates that the banking sector is moving quietly towards the cryptoeconomy. When it is about survival, obedience to traditional values takes a back seat.
Nobody knows how deeply banks dove into crypto actually. Of course, this is not about Bitcoin which cannot be taken over. But such crypto as XRP issued by a bank cartel R3 demonstrates a deep understanding of the subject. Maybe in a decade or so namely banks will become the most ardent supporters of blockchain once they feel that fiat currencies are getting less reliable than crypto. Nothing contradicts the very logic of competition in it.
Blockchain has been under public testing with enthusiastic startups for 8–9 years when some large financial institutions took this technology up. The situation was similar to what happened with EVs — not a voluntary interest, but the very impossibility to ignore blockchain any longer made such banking sharks as JP Morgan Chase (whose private blockchain has already included about 300 banks all over the world) take this train. Can’t beat them, join them, as they say.
For many crypto enthusiasts, only one thing remains unclear about the global adoption of crypto: who will gain leadership in this race: national governments or transnational corporations. What should be understood under “mass adoption”? It does not mean that cryptocurrencies must replace fiat money. At least in the nearest perspective. There are enough highly specific niches where both types of currencies can compete through a mutually beneficial balance.
We have to cool the ardor of crypto idealists. Banks and corporations are moving toward cryptoeconomy in a specific way about which common people have no idea most probably. The thing is that all corporate crypto assets along with upcoming national cryptocurrencies (Crypto RMB is to appear any day as the Chinese central bank states) imply a simulacrum in fact. They all are to be created under the principle of a centralized economy of modernity. The only difference is in the form of a carrier — not paper, but a blockchain technology.
Thus, this is just about a more flexible edition of the same centralized money. They will be deprived of the very spirit of the decentralized postmodern economy — the absence of any owner like in the model of Bitcoin. It means that neither Facebook’s Libra nor Chinese crypto-RMB will get rid of their central points of failure since they have centralized managerial authorities with all inherent vulnerabilities. In contrast to them, Bitcoin limits nobody’s freedom once there is no central master who controls Bitcoin.
This is not postmodernity, this is the same “bubblenomics” of modernity shifted into a bit-standard. The value of any centralized crypto is limited by the capabilities of its issuer. That’s why the value is conditional as in the case of any conventional money. If something wrong happens with the owner of Libra — Facebook, it will automatically affect Libra up to total zeroing its value (remember Reichsmark).
However, a more clear marker of liberal modernity in all centralized currencies (no matter fiat or crypto) is that all of them imply another form of a collective identity. And this is exactly what a fully independent individual of postmodernity cannot accept. Postmodern individuals hate the potential dependence of their own private economies from any owner of means of payment no matter whether it can be a national bank or a transnational corporation. Postmodern individuals do not need any form of a collective identity including money the destiny of which depends on the arbitrariness of those who issue the money.
