Thread by @buchmanster

My thesis on crypto has been effectively unchanged since early 2017. Consider this a summary of my "Why?" 👇

The international financial system, at virtually all levels, is structurally unsound and unsustainable.

This is primarily the result of how we approach money and banking. The highly centralized bank-debt structure of money; the way money is so inequitably issued and distributed; the astonishing gap between financial flows and ecological flows.

Soundness and sustainability are strongly associated with localism - with greater self-sufficiency in communities, with smaller radius supply chains, with more democratic decision making and ownership.

There have always been more localist alternatives: mutual credit systems and credit unions, complementary currencies, time banks, lending circles, mutual aid, etc., but historically, they've struggled to scale.

Scaling a financial system is a matter of scaling trust across communities. Money is a vehicle for, and reflection of, this process (the medium is the message!)

Blockchains and cryptocurrencies provide the most credible foundation yet for attacking this problem, of formulating and scaling new money systems.

That is to say, money is the killer app.

Our goal with this technology must be to evolve a more sound and sustainable international financial regime that bridges the gap from local to global money and back.

We are in the very early days of this revolution. We're working our way from simple, global cryptocurrencies to more application specific and local ones. We don't quite know what this should look like yet, but here's a few thoughts:

Bitcoin is the definitive store of value of the 21st century. It will either break completely or vault above $100k/BTC, if not much, much higher.

Ethereum is a scam. Just kidding. Ethereum is a materially transformative technology that has unleashed invaluable experimentation in political economics.

While much of it today quacks like a casino scam, mechanisms being pioneered on Ethereum will revolutionize financial, economic, and political institutions. DeFi is squaring the Impossible Trinity.

Cosmos makes Ethereum's transformative tech more accessible through interoperable sovereignty. It provides the philosophy and tools for building, operating, and interoperating more local financial infrastructure.

https://twitter.com/buchmanster/status/1248847725350846469

Localism is necessary for both technical and social scalability

https://twitter.com/buchmanster/status/1199106798080409600

Or as @sunnya97_bot's ground truth put it:

https://twitter.com/sunnya97/status/1303000323338969095

There will be many, many blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Thousands that matter over the next 10 years. Millions that matter over the next 50.

They will form an Internet of Blockchains with a dynamic topology. Chains and moneys will be created and destroyed, grown and shrunk, split and merged.

Each chain or cryptocurrency represents a different community and set of values. They provide a mechanism for stakeholders to coordinate via an explicit state machine to scale trust across their communities, and compete with incumbent, centralized powers.

Global stablecoins and CBDCs are an important step in the right direction, but also a distraction. More important will be municipal and neighbourhood currencies, currencies tied more directly to local sustenance, currencies generated by local mutual credit reflecting real trade.

Projects like @grassEcon are most inspiring in that regard, but others like @CirclesUBI and @unionprotocol seem to be on the right track

There remains tremendous potential for R&D in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Problems around privacy, scalability, economic design, developer UX, security, correctness, etc.

But as we witness the current proliferation of new blockchain platforms, applications, and bullish sentiment, we must not forget the goal: to evolve a more sound and sustainable international financial regime, to bridge the gap from local to global money and back.