Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Here come Canada’s crypto-conservatives

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This article is advocacy journalism, so read it very sceptically and ignore the partisan political points being made. The bulk of the rest is a fairly mainstream criticism of digital currencies, pointing out the obvious flaws (the scammers, the hucksterism, etc). The salient point here is made more tacitly: cryptocurrency is the privatization of money. That's why we see the lawlessness: there's no central government oversight (or any oversight, really) ensuring money flows are legal. And one clear danger alluded to here is that money of questionable (and often foreign) origin can be used to fund further privatization. If this were all decentralized, with some sort of genuine equity built in, then that wouldn't be a problem. But that, for the most part, is a service the government provides. Without government, wealth is concentrated, and we get rule by the oligarchs.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:07 a.m.

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