Meritocracy Is The Endgame – Not Political Patronage

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Sucking up to politicians and the powers that be is the last thing crypto needs. It defeats the industry’s purpose and foundational vision of grassroots empowerment.

It’s supposed to make users autonomous, self-sovereign entities. Only a true meritocracy – powered by cutting-edge tech and user-centric innovations – can ensure this.

For most parts, political patrons won’t serve such interests, despite high-ringing claims during public campaigns.

Source: Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is ‘pro-crypto’ by Vitalik Buterin

Disrupting governance is among crypto’s main value propositions. It enables fairer and more efficient decision-making within systems that no single entity can hijack or manipulate for self-interest.

DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), for example, support a bottoms-up framework for community members – and their ‘delegates’ – to actively participate in decision-making.

This is a key shift from the top-down model of legacy organizations and nations.

For crypto to succeed long-term, builders in this industry must improve its core strengths, rather than waiting on external authorities to grant legitimacy.

It’s about freedom and freedom must be taken – not given.

The flip side of political attention

Politics has its own logic. Politicians have their own reasons. And neither usually aligns with the average citizen or end user’s interests as centuries of experience has proven.

There might be one or two or three good – even great – policies or schemes here and there, but that’s mostly it.

Little has come by the way of traditional decision-making and governance that ensures the holistic growth of communities.

But finally, we have the tools to solve this and bring forth genuine meritocracy – where action and active contribution trumps merely handed-down legacy.

It would be a disaster to underutilize them due to confirmation bias or simply blind political allegiances.

Crypto has been getting lots of political attention recently. Especially as it became a hot election agenda in the US with both factions trying to woo crypto voters.

Former US President Donald Trump and Senator Cynthia Lummis spoke at the Bitcoin Conference 2024.

They promised to sack Gary Gensler, use BTC as a ‘strategic asset‘ to offset the over $35 trillion US national debt, and so on.