Bitcoin and crypto have up to now been driven by narratives. Essentially, this means that stories are told about what crypto can do, or is just on the verge of doing, and then hype builds around these concepts, driving interest and pushing up prices.
In the case of bitcoin, this has worked particularly well due to its neutrality, and the financial/historical literacy of its advocates, who can quickly identify the societal gaps into which bitcoin slots most easily.
Whatever the crisis of the moment that is grabbing headlines, or being circulated on social media if it’s an angle mainstream news channels won’t cover, bitcoin is frequently presented, plausibly, as a solution.
So when the issue is walking-dead, bailed-out financial institutions, bitcoin is an independent network that cannot be corrupted. When private individuals cannot access their funds (see the truckers’ protest in Canada, when citizens’ bank accounts were frozen), bitcoin is presented as a decentralized, bank-free alternative.
When war breaks out in Eastern Europe, bitcoin is shown to have utility for both sides in the conflict (as a potential off-the-shelf alternative for a country, like Russia, that’s locked out of the global banking system, and as a way of quickly transferring money to war-threatened Ukrainians in need of relief, and also as a means for those fleeing danger to transport their monetary wealth).
Bitcoin as a Trojan Horse
Commentators including Alex Gladstein, of the Human Rights Foundation, have put forth the concept of bitcoin as a Trojan Horse, smuggling in freedom. The idea goes something like this: investors are attracted to bitcoin because of its ‘number go up’ characteristics. Meaning that they see how much its value has risen over the past decade, and correspondingly, how much the purchasing power of fiat has declined, and figure out that it might be a good idea to change some of that fiat into bitcoin.
They’re driven by self-interest, rather than noble intentions around the betterment of society, and that’s fine, because the socially beneficial aspects of bitcoin are advanced simply through having people at first hold it, and then, hopefully, transact with it.
Essentially, bitcoin contains within it freedom, decentralization and a shift away from top-down…
