Rebellion

Micro-economies within the global infrastructure

Synopsis

2020. Planet Earth. The Year of the Rat? Or the Bat…? Or… Bitcoin?

The exciting and terrifying inevitability is digital currency, blockchain, and AI will reach to the farthest corners of Earth, watching everything you do, knowing everything you say, knowing everything said to you. It will be analyzed, categorized, stored, shared, and even stolen.

Walk with me down this dark rabbit hole until we get to the light at the end of the tunnel…

Money

Fiat money is dead. The central banks are tired of covering for the failing financial system that is beyond repair — essentially, there is too much debt to ever get repaid. A global reset is needed to avoid humanity margin calling itself back into the dark ages of famine and disease. We all know we have the tools to allow everyone to get by, if we can do one of two things:

1. Put away pride and have total debt forgiveness and start over from zero with better regulations (not happening).
2. Fully embrace corruption, print balance sheets to infinity, and rule people through fear of having their accounts frozen for dissent (or suspicion).

A standoff of power will begin in this decade, a war unlike any we’ve ever seen before. A tug-of-war, to be exact. With humanity as the rope. A four-sided rope. Here are the contenders for control:

1. Central Banks & Friends: The Federal Reserve, World Bank, IMF, Bank of England, European Central Bank, and others. They will bring their own interoperate digital currency that they can give and take directly to and from individuals and businesses. The days of the IRS are over. The days of going to the bank and depositing your paycheck are over.
2. The Other Banks & Private Enterprise: The capitalists that have really run everything from behind the scenes do not want to give up power. In the new structure, they’re all unnecessary middlemen and will be removed. To compete, their own currency will be issued in an attempt to convince the same people they’ve stolen from for centuries, to give them another chance. Libra is coming…
3. China & Friends: Anyone government who wasn’t included in the cool kids club now has to play ball with China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Look for two massive global systems that primarily work with one another, but also have interoperability for cross-border payments into the other side of the worlds’ systems when permission is given.
4. Decentralized money: Bitcoin, Zcash, Monero, and other privacy-focused, well supported Proof-of-Work chains may be the only way out of that madness that ultimately creates digital slavery. Choice of one’s master is not a choice.

Knowledge

It’s not only about money, though. It’s about knowledge. This is a match for who benefits most from the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Quest for Data. Eventually, a deal will be brokered that pits the top three powers all together against the rest of us.

Blockchain is version one of this immutable distributed data structure that will eventually store all things known to man. This time capsule will be what the Library of Alexandria could have been. Blockchain is slow though, so already coming to replace it are other structures known as block lattices, Direct Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), hashgraphs, sharing blockchains, chainwebs, and more.

“What are they going to do with all this data? No human can possibly pour through all that.”

Correct.

This data isn’t for man. It is for machine learning. Eventually, people in power (the real people in power, not the puppets on TV) will understand these amazing tools and be able to apply them to gather all the known knowledge, facts, and information about a topic, as opposed to the opinions, the feelings, and the agendas of lobbyists. It will tell us what the best decisions likely are for issues like climate change, population control, food scarcity, correlation between poverty and violent uprising (so they can keep us in that sweet spot of poor but complacent).

Who are the real people in power? There are several theories, but one thing can be sure. When a non-US citizen can be arrested in another country and tried in court (or just executed by American soldiers) for something that was not expressly illegal in his home country, borders don’t matter anymore.

When there’s no physical war, and governments are going to all play nice together, countries are merely states (the UK figured that one out with the EU). Whether you believe in the Illuminati, or take a more realistic approach and call the G20 Summit leaders the de facto world government, there is a one world government in place already. They just don’t declare it so the rest of us keep up our national pride and work hard to “be #1”.

Hold on a bit longer, we’ll find that tunnel with the light and cookies and stuff, keep going…

Post-Money

Back to money for a second… the US dollar, the Euro, the Chinese Yuan, the Japanese Yen… they’re all going digital. Right now.

“How is this different from the 1s and 0s in my bank account now?”

The government today can still see and freeze your money whenever they want, but it’s hard. They have to call up a bank or someone who actually has the keys and issue an order that is most likely complied with. But in situations like off-shore money hoarding (or laundering), they might not get what they want right away.

With a digital dollar, the government is in full control of it no matter where it goes. It’s no longer your money. You’re just renting purchasing power. Which can be removed for any reason, and quite likely by mistake as well. This macro power will be in the hands of the same government that can’t handle paper voting, takes months to issue stimulus checks in a pandemic, thinks climate change isn’t real, and lets trillion dollar banks repeatedly break the law and pay million dollar fines as if it’s some sort of punishment the public finds acceptable as justice.

Yikes.

Across the pond, the Belt And Road Initiative is creating a digital pipeline of commerce (and control) from China, through the Middle East, and into Europe. It’s open and shiny and new now, but eventually China’s rules (big and small) can choose who gets to thrive and who gets to starve, at a moment’s notice.

Oh, right. Forgot to mention, cash is going bye-bye. Some day there will be a notice that you have a year or two to turn in all your paper before it will no longer be honored and declared to be no longer legal tender (attached to some sob story of how cash aids criminals, human traffickers, blah blah blah).

Fuck!

Micro-Economies

Okay, we’re at the bottom of the rabbit hole. We skipped about 50 levels, for the sanity’s sake. Let’s get into the light and feel warm and fuzzy.

The light in this world is shining on cryptocurrency. Those who want to bring light into this world are flocking to build in the cryptocurrency industry. It will never topple the great system of power and dominance. There will still be bad actors in this space too. Crypto can serve as a useful tool at the local level, within the great big blockchain, to enable micro-economies. Starting with Bitcoin, an alternative system of a store of value has been created. You can’t be hauling rare art and gold bars through airports to exchange internationally. Literally. They’ll arrest you.

No matter how powerful the elite get, power remains a two-way street. One party has to say “these are the rules” and the other party has to be willing to play by them. This tug of war, it is never-ending. No side will ever truly get the win over the other.

Here’s where things get optimistic.

The government is a black hole for innovation. Outside of military science, the government is the last thing to make a change or try something new. After all, they have the most to lose, and things just need to work, even if they don’t work well. The open source software sector is driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and they are on the side of freedom for humanity. In this game of 4D chess, they are the masters. Right now, the government is still scratching its head and trying to understand the rules.

The underground will always have an edge.

Within that underground lies opportunity for survival in ways that the large system just can’t keep up with. Smaller systems emerge and change too quickly for Big Brother to keep up with. Truly decentralized networks can exist inside and outside of traditional infrastructure, even if one must communicate via their own satellite networks.

A micro-economy is great because it keeps the rules in favor of the people who are using it, as opposed to the ones who are designing it. It offers the same or similar tools for payments, exchanges of value and goods, without the invasion of privacy or tyrannical controls in the hands of individuals you’ve never met and don’t care about you (or computer algorithms).

If that micro-economy system ever gets corrupted (like if Venmo began charging $25 fees to wire money), the users could simply leave and find another system.

Hopium

These are some projects I have my eye on that might play a major role one day, the way Venmo has become our bank, and Uber has become our car. If not, they will inspire others to build the tools that do eventually become what millions of people use as a way to carry out inner-community commerce between their friends, family, church, town, club, whatever.

Digital Cash (Decentralized)

Bitcoin — The hardest money in the world. Fidelity now recommends 5% allocation to its clients.

Dash — Proven over time, lots of adoption in regions that need it most. Able to do transactions via SMS for countries without internet connection.

Elixxir — Quantum-resistant cash with zero metadata for absolute privacy.

Decentralized Infrastructure

Secret Network — Smart contracts with privacy.

Kadena — Infinitely scalable smart contracts platform powered by multiple types of Proof of Work.

Skycoin — Creators of Skywire, a decentralized wireless mesh network, and SkyVPN.

Merchant Payments

Bitcoin via Square App — Jack Dorsey has done tremendous things for Bitcoin adoption.

AMP Token — Merchant payment rails in any currency, with no middlemen.

Pundi X / Function X — Robust and unique encrypted hardware, including phones and payment terminals.

Micro-Economy Specialists

International Blockchain Monetary Reserve (IBMR) — Focused on micro-economies and incentives for small communities in Southeast Asia.

Bank Account Based Blockchain (BABB) — Focused on micro-economies and identity solutions for the unbanked around the world.

Fuse Network — “The WIX of Wallets” is focused on allowing anyone to spin up their own micro-economy in seconds, including fiat on-ramps and a $0.01 cent flat fee that never increases.

These are just a handful of hundreds of projects, companies, and movements that are underway to give humanity a way to opt out.

It might feel that the deck is stacked against us, but we are many. They are few. We can’t win a fight against the system. But we can ignore it, choose our own way.

Do not submit. Opt out.

Looks like we’ve reached the crust…

-PizzaMind

Disclaimer: I hold small amounts of most of the tokens in this list.