Can Bitcoin Save Political Conservatives? — Beginner Bitcoin
As the US Capitol fell into riots and chaos, which mainstream media outlets have labeled an insurrection , the consequences following January 6th have been swift and heavy. The US president, Donald J. Trump had his twitter account deactivated , following which several prominent conservative voices claim to have been silenced, and a new social media darling of the right has been cut off at the source , with Amazon removing the app from its cloud servers and Apple removing the app itself from their platform.Violence and rage are never the answer, and only exacerbate the issues in our country, however most conservatives appear to be peace-loving patriots who swiftly condemned the actions of January 6th and are now left reeling with what appears to them as a major infringement on their free speech.
As an avowed capitalist and social conservative, I saw the responses of “big tech” as not strictly problematic; a company, no matter how big or small, has the right to determine who it will be in business with or allow to use its platform, and we all have a choice whether to use their platforms or not. At the very same time, Facebook, Twitter, and the Iphone have become ubiquitous with information-sharing and for all practical purposes are a public utility that not many other platforms are able to be, and (in my opinion) therefore should probably be judged by a different set of standards than any other kind of company. In short; it’s complicated.
While conservatives across the country rallied to the inevitable conclusion that “big tech” is out to silence their voices and that anyone who cares about free speech should care about this issue, plans have been made to walk away from twitter, facebook, etc…but where will they go?
The solution, according to conservatives, is found in political action or wrestling with the powers that be; but what if instead the answer was found in the rapidly advancing tech known as blockchain?
Can cryptocurrency provide salvation for the millions of conservatives who feel disenfranchised by these recent events? I believe the answer is a clear and resounding yes.
The Problem
The biggest issues conservatives have in the aftermath of January 6th was the decision by Jack Dorsey to ban Donald Trump. Conservatives claim this displays 1) the control and power in the hands of a single company combined with 2) the inconsistency they see in their application of this company’s policies. Conservatives see this as a clear bias against conservative voices, and (in their view) a clear abuse of power by Twitter to regulate the speech of a sitting US President and subsequently their own voices.
As Amazon made its decision to pull the conservative favorite “Parler” off its servers, conservatives again cried foul, as Amazon owns nearly half of the world’s public cloud infrastructure leaving the app without a home. When the ability to engage in the public, do business and surf the web or build mobile apps are completely controlled by the hands of a few tech giants, conservatives fear they are headed for extinction.
Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, has noted the problems of the centralized and the lack of consistency Twitter has shown in its decision. To summarize, the problems appear to be the centralization of power in the hands of a few and perceived bias in application.
The Real Solution
While trumpers and right-wing enthusiasts may be convinced that there is simply no democratic solution to the problem of censorship without “their guy” in the white house, a real tangible solution exists outside of the political sphere with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Let me explain:
The Decentralized Antidote
Cryptocurrency projects on public blockchains are able to achieve what most regulated tech companies will never be able to: censorship-free and censorship resistant modes of working.
The nature of blockchain is to be public and decentralized, meaning no government or agency is able to control or restrict its activity. It’s perhaps for this reason that Bitcoin has been falsely labeled as a criminal friendly enterprise despite the extremely low amount of criminal traffic happening (more criminal activity is conducted with cold hard cash than anything else). Of course, any truly democratic tech can be manipulated or taken advantage of by bad actors, but this is no less true of any other asset, digital or physical.
But this decentralized nature of Bitcoin means that it is perhaps the truest democratic enterprise that exists; it is controlled by the people.
Blockchain projects like Ethereum provide app developers a decentralized platform to run a number of blockchain inspired projects that remain resistant to hackers, and, through their consensus protocols, keep the blockchain increasingly open source.
There are a number of cryptocurrency projects that have attempted to start the “web 3.0” world, applying the tech behind Bitcoin to solve the internet’s most glaring issues: privacy, security, and freedom.
Projects like Blockstack (STX ), Filecoin (FIL) , The Graph (GRT) , among a host of others are paving the way, building the necessary infrastructure (cloud data storage, domain name services, etc) to allow for internet activity to be truly democratic and decentralized.
While the world may be years away from this decentralized vision, social conservatives should care deeply about this development. If they truly desire a free, unregulated medium to share and receive information (like the internet), what we need are not new “conservative friendly apps” but an entirely new way of interacting with the web that is resistant to tyranny.
Eliminating Bias
By employing “smart contracts” that are directly written into the blockchain code, cryptocurrency projects are able to achieve outcomes based on a set of strict rules, eliminating the need for trust between two parties to execute a contract. This “trustless” system can easily be adapted for regulating policies in a fair way, using smart contracts to deploy rules and governance for any blockchain without the need of a human agent on the other side.
By using these smart contracts, no company can be guilty of censorship or manipulation: the nature of smart contracts literally prevents them from being able to interfere with the deployment of these rules, the code is simply operating as it was programmed. And what’s more, the terms of the contract are generally clear and publicly available, meaning no arbitrary or otherwise disputable interactions can happen.
Luckily, some (or most) of these blockchain projects (like The Graph and Filecoin) are available on major US exchanges like Coinbase or Kraken for conservatives to support. US citizens interested in Blockstack will have to wait for this crypto to be available for US users. Readers who want to learn more can sign up for reputable exchanges can do so by going here for Coinbase and here for Kraken. These two exchanges are notable for their desire to comply with currency US regulations, despite there being a current lack of clarity surrounding the cryptocurrency space. By signing up at the links above, you are actually supporting this site and the content creators behind it.
As the US Capitol fell into riots and chaos, which mainstream media outlets have labeled an insurrection , the consequences following January 6th have been swift and heavy. The US president, Donald J. Trump had his twitter account deactivated , following which several prominent conservative voices claim to have been silenced, and a new social media darling of the right has been cut off at the source , with Amazon removing the app from its cloud servers and Apple removing the app itself from their platform.Violence and rage are never the answer, and only exacerbate the issues in our country, however most conservatives appear to be peace-loving patriots who swiftly condemned the actions of January 6th and are now left reeling with what appears to them as a major infringement on their free speech.
As an avowed capitalist and social conservative, I saw the responses of “big tech” as not strictly problematic; a company, no matter how big or small, has the right to determine who it will be in business with or allow to use its platform, and we all have a choice whether to use their platforms or not. At the very same time, Facebook, Twitter, and the Iphone have become ubiquitous with information-sharing and for all practical purposes are a public utility that not many other platforms are able to be, and (in my opinion) therefore should probably be judged by a different set of standards than any other kind of company. In short; it’s complicated.
While conservatives across the country rallied to the inevitable conclusion that “big tech” is out to silence their voices and that anyone who cares about free speech should care about this issue, plans have been made to walk away from twitter, facebook, etc…but where will they go?
The solution, according to conservatives, is found in political action or wrestling with the powers that be; but what if instead the answer was found in the rapidly advancing tech known as blockchain?
Can cryptocurrency provide salvation for the millions of conservatives who feel disenfranchised by these recent events? I believe the answer is a clear and resounding yes.
The Problem
The biggest issues conservatives have in the aftermath of January 6th was the decision by Jack Dorsey to ban Donald Trump. Conservatives claim this displays 1) the control and power in the hands of a single company combined with 2) the inconsistency they see in their application of this company’s policies. Conservatives see this as a clear bias against conservative voices, and (in their view) a clear abuse of power by Twitter to regulate the speech of a sitting US President and subsequently their own voices.
As Amazon made its decision to pull the conservative favorite “Parler” off its servers, conservatives again cried foul, as Amazon owns nearly half of the world’s public cloud infrastructure leaving the app without a home. When the ability to engage in the public, do business and surf the web or build mobile apps are completely controlled by the hands of a few tech giants, conservatives fear they are headed for extinction.
Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, has noted the problems of the centralized and the lack of consistency Twitter has shown in its decision. To summarize, the problems appear to be the centralization of power in the hands of a few and perceived bias in application.
The Real Solution
While trumpers and right-wing enthusiasts may be convinced that there is simply no democratic solution to the problem of censorship without “their guy” in the white house, a real tangible solution exists outside of the political sphere with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Let me explain:
The Decentralized Antidote
Cryptocurrency projects on public blockchains are able to achieve what most regulated tech companies will never be able to: censorship-free and censorship resistant modes of working.
The nature of blockchain is to be public and decentralized, meaning no government or agency is able to control or restrict its activity. It’s perhaps for this reason that Bitcoin has been falsely labeled as a criminal friendly enterprise despite the extremely low amount of criminal traffic happening (more criminal activity is conducted with cold hard cash than anything else). Of course, any truly democratic tech can be manipulated or taken advantage of by bad actors, but this is no less true of any other asset, digital or physical.
But this decentralized nature of Bitcoin means that it is perhaps the truest democratic enterprise that exists; it is controlled by the people.
Blockchain projects like Ethereum provide app developers a decentralized platform to run a number of blockchain inspired projects that remain resistant to hackers, and, through their consensus protocols, keep the blockchain increasingly open source.
There are a number of cryptocurrency projects that have attempted to start the “web 3.0” world, applying the tech behind Bitcoin to solve the internet’s most glaring issues: privacy, security, and freedom.
Projects like Blockstack (STX ), Filecoin (FIL) , The Graph (GRT) , among a host of others are paving the way, building the necessary infrastructure (cloud data storage, domain name services, etc) to allow for internet activity to be truly democratic and decentralized.
While the world may be years away from this decentralized vision, social conservatives should care deeply about this development. If they truly desire a free, unregulated medium to share and receive information (like the internet), what we need are not new “conservative friendly apps” but an entirely new way of interacting with the web that is resistant to tyranny.
Eliminating Bias
By employing “smart contracts” that are directly written into the blockchain code, cryptocurrency projects are able to achieve outcomes based on a set of strict rules, eliminating the need for trust between two parties to execute a contract. This “trustless” system can easily be adapted for regulating policies in a fair way, using smart contracts to deploy rules and governance for any blockchain without the need of a human agent on the other side.
By using these smart contracts, no company can be guilty of censorship or manipulation: the nature of smart contracts literally prevents them from being able to interfere with the deployment of these rules, the code is simply operating as it was programmed. And what’s more, the terms of the contract are generally clear and publicly available, meaning no arbitrary or otherwise disputable interactions can happen.
Luckily, some (or most) of these blockchain projects (like The Graph and Filecoin) are available on major US exchanges like Coinbase or Kraken for conservatives to support. US citizens interested in Blockstack will have to wait for this crypto to be available for US users. Readers who want to learn more can sign up for reputable exchanges can do so by going here for Coinbase and here for Kraken. These two exchanges are notable for their desire to comply with currency US regulations, despite there being a current lack of clarity surrounding the cryptocurrency space. By signing up at the links above, you are actually supporting this site and the content creators behind it.
Originally published at https://beginner-bitcoin.com on January 14, 2021.
