Crypto-Nations, as opposed to Nations-Crypto, could be the new forms of organisation that emerge over the next 10 to 30 years.
Blockchain technology is a disruptive technology. It effectively separates money from the state, information from the state and property from the state. New legislation is being built around crypto culture, through the certification of information, its incensurability, transparency and the decentralisation of power. All 5 powers are involved: legislative, executive, judicial, media and monetary, but we'll come back to that later.
Crypto-Nations, as opposed to Nations-Crypto, could be the new forms of organisation (the will to live together) that emerge over the next 10 to 30 years. One attempt by governments could be to converge towards a crypto nation whose aim would be to centralise, standardise and globalise exchanges and currencies (e.g. CBDCs or central bank cryptocurrencies). From my point of view, it is more likely that different interests, different companies or different groupings will form around their own currencies and DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations), thus creating the basis for a Crypto-Nation.
A DAO is an entity run by a computer programme, scripts, which provides automated rules of governance to a community that can interact through self-executing contracts. The members of the DAO will then meet virtually in a Metaverse to debate, work and have fun. In fact, a metaverse is a meta-universe, a virtual and/or artificial parallel world where property exists in these universes thanks to NFTs, based on a blockchain.
Metavers could allow people to come together and express themselves in a new way. Needless to say, private metavers could censor certain users. As a result, many initiatives are tending to create transparent, uncensorable metavers.
Yes, it's complicated.
I think that Crypto-Nations, through the use and values that we have of these new tools, will be the future forms of organisation.
I'll take Bitcoin as a reference, which today represents this technological advent comparable to writing in relation to painting for the Blockchain and the Internet in terms of the upheaval in technological usage.
Yes, writing arrived almost 5,000 years ago, primarily for accounting purposes, in the form of the seal that indicated the contents of amphorae in commercial transactions. Writing arrived tens of thousands of years after the first cave paintings, and this is where we need to introduce the notion of exponential growth, a curve with an acceleration that increases continuously and very rapidly. Nearly 40,000 years passed between the first drawings and writing, and around 100 years for computing and the internet, and then blockchain. It's easy to see that this exponential evolution in technology has been accelerating constantly since the appearance of the first civilisations.
Blockchain is a technology for decentralising information. Bitcoin is simply the first manifestation of its expression. And as many will have noticed, it remains the only viable representative of this new technology (truly decentralised, undistorted because it is not pre-mined, and evolving naturally and not induced by the markets, transparent and evolving by consensus). So what makes bitcoin what it is?
Bitcoin, contrary to what you might think, is not set in stone, it is evolving, but its evolution is slow, orderly and adopted by real consensus. The simplicity of its use, the anonymity of the founder, the transparency of the register and its economy. It would not be surprising if Bitcoin were to become the world's standard of value and Satoshi Nakamoto were to become a prophet for some religion in 500 or 1000 years' time.
To return to the subject of powers, there are 3 traditional types: executive, legislative and judicial. Today, there are two established powers: media power and monetary power, and money has a media dimension (it contains and transmits information). The media dimension is reflected in the price of a product traded or a service sold in a free market that is stable in monetary, judicial and legislative terms (stable quantity of money, independent judiciary and stable minimum implementation times for each reform), which is not the case today. Given that our elites and governments have clearly resigned from their policies, how are they going to resist this economic and political advent?
It's not bitcoin that will adapt to nations, but nations that will adapt to bitcoin. This is due to its rigidity, its culture and the radicalism of its developers, economists, investors and other followers. The determination and will to live together of all those with Bitcoins could give rise to a new form of nation, the Bitcoin Nation. So what are the consequences? What economic and physical basis should this create? What impact will it have on our lifestyles, customs and practices? How will states defend themselves? What about private consortia?
BTC has a high of $73,000 and a low of $29600 in 2021. How much is 100,000 bitcoins? Between 6.9 billion and 2.96 billion in 2021. That's a far cry from the $120,000 billion global GDP and the $550,000 billion financial sphere. By the way, shadow banking is worth 11,000 billion a year and bitcoin represents just 0.015%. But where does this dark and dubious financial sphere go? The traditional banks, led by Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas. Every day, the crypto sphere conquers micro-market shares in both the economic and financial spheres. Among the institutional investors heavily involved in bitcoin and owning hundreds of thousands of BTC are :
On a different note, there are countries like El Salvador that have gone all-in on bitcoin. This makes them bigger risk carriers, but with considerable potential for disruption, innovation and investment. Legally, bitcoin is no longer an issue, as it is now regulated in a large number of countries. So can we already talk about the creation of future crypto-nations?
Bitcoin is a more reliable, transparent and easy-to-use standard of value than gold. Friedrich Hayek said that we won't have a good currency until we take it out of the hands of governments. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Bitcoin is the first form of currency to escape from governments. From now on, this secular tool will make it possible to separate monetary power from the state. It restores value to the things in life and will become the standard of value that our societies have been lacking in order to organise themselves harmoniously and get back to projecting themselves over the long term, unlike our economy and its leaders who are unfortunately in the process of destroying our instruments of arbitration. In particular, interest rates, exchange rates and the velocity of currencies. But do they really have a choice?
Given the general atmosphere, how can we say that Crypto-Nations cannot be formed? Will bitcoin be a component of some of these crypto-nations? Is it ridiculous, dangerous or obvious?
