DON'T FEAR THE BLOCKCHAIN: The Countercultures of Crypto

Speaker: Unipuff Why is progressive hacker-culture so afraid of crypto? The anti-crypto is discourse has been strong both in public consciousness and in activist circles. But as the author and podcast host of "The Blockchain Socialist" Joshua D'Avila supports in a recent video, "The left does not hate crypto". Behind the endless scams, opportunism and moral corruption of crypto, lies a history of rich experimentation with alternative forms of socio-economic "infrastructuring" inspired by multiple countercultural forces. One is the privacy-oriented ethos of cypherpunk that was the initial motivator for the deployment of Bitcoin, which aimed to capture the the tools of cryptography once monopolized by the US military and bring them to the masses. The other is the culture of cooperative governance and democratic self-management of workers that inspired the evolution of blockchain-aided decentralized organization on Ethereum. And the other is the ecologically-consious imaginaries of Solarpunk that bring hope and create tools to support social and environmental regeneration. However... despite the best attempts of hopeful protopian activists at the forefront, crypto at large has fallen prey to corporate and governmental capture that has repeatedly corrupted its core, leading even the optimists to ask "Is it worth is anymore"? The talk is aimed at addressing not the past, or present, but the future of blockchains and how we can reclaim it by first breaking away with the taboos that have kept away intelligent and sensitive people from engaging with it. The hope is to open up imaginative thinking for ways in which blockchains can be used for bettering society and helping others.