Watch Out for This Establishment Countermove Against Dissident Tech — And Why It Isn’t All Bad
Dissident tech, a term coined by Maya Zehavi, has been all over the news for the last couple of weeks. Check out Nathaniel Whittemore’s latest edition of Long Reads for a good summary of the big stories.
This topic is near and dear to our hearts. We’re about to release of BlockStamp Communicator, which definitely falls into this category :)
We think it’s great to think about tech — especially crypto -related tech— in terms of a social movement. In particular because it gives some perspective around a long-run “flanking” countermove that the establishment is taking against dissident tech. And we don’t think this countermove is all bad!
Let’s start with some background.
Social movements and tech adoption — including dissident tech adoption — both have a lot to do with network effects.
That’s pretty obvious in the case of social movements. Activists need to hear about the movement, spread the word, and so on. Success depends largely on how many people get involved.
Also reasonably obvious with technologies like social networking or online market platforms. Whether these tools are actually useful depends largely on how many other people are using them.
And cryptocurrencies and dissident tech are no exception to this rule. Dissident tech is still tech!
Consider this interest research shared by Cedric Dahl on the WhatBitcoinDid podcast about how darknet market vendors overwhelmingly prefer Bitcoin over — somewhat counterintuitively — privacy-focused alternatives like Monero.
Why? He suggests that Bitcoin, as the “first mover” in the space, has the most global traction and good enough privacy via CoinJoin — even though you can really only use CoinJoin via the Wasabi wallet.
So this is not purely a story about technological features. Network effects also play a big role here insofar as they contribute to building a workable solution that people use because other people are using it.
If you were the Man, how could you use that information to your advantage?
In the short run, the Man can encourage adoption of “conformist” tech for uninformed users.
We have already suggested the main ways the establishment is currently fighting dissident tech, namely:
- Negative PR, especially with over-simplified statements like “Bitcoin is only for buying drugs.”
- Sowing seeds of internal discord in the cryptosphere. We don’t expect everyone to just get along; it isn’t human nature. But we’ll keep our fingers crossed for more constructive criticism :)
But we don’t think those methods are going to hold up for long in the information age.
In the long run, the Man can “flank” dissident tech by piggybacking on it.
There’s an important distinction here between what we think of as dissident tech, e.g. Bitcoin and Tor, and tomorrow’s dissident tech, which we’re not really sure what to think of yet.
For example, China’s sovereign crypto projects can’t really be classified as dissident can they? Maybe yes — if you are trying to maintain the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
And there are rumblings that today’s dissident tech is not dissident after all. Consider the question of the role that government financing plays in the Tor privacy network. Or whether the CIA is actually behind Bitcoin!
We keep an open mind — but we’d say it is pretty darn difficult to astroturf a dissident tech project from the ground up. It seems more plausible that the Man would wait for a certain technology to get a little traction and then attempt to co-opt it somehow. Supposedly, that’s spooks’ favorite modus operandi for furthering agendas via social movements like color revolutions.
The takeaway here is that the Man’s best countermove against dissident tech — regardless of its source — is to flank it.
That means coming at it from the side, indirectly. Even embracing it to a certain extent.
That’s actually what we see China doing with their sovereign crypto projects. They don’t appear to be counting on eliminating competing crypto projects like Bitcoin. Rather, pushing an alternative that works better for different purposes, i.e. everyday transactions for people not too concerned about privacy.
Remember that rock-solid privacy — or at least the promise thereof — is not the main reason darknet vendors choose Bitcoin over Monero as above. There are other factors involved like having adequate liquidity.
The good thing about this countermove is that it isn’t intended to crush the competition. It’s intended to outcompete it.
Check out this great tweet from Neil Woodfine:
Well put!
We’d say that with a Chinese-style flanking countermove, the establishment recognizes that this enlightenment is real. Normal folks will be less likely to stop using Bitcoin (or any other crypto tool) just because someone — e.g. a regulator or a hack journalist — told them to.
Instead, normal folks will be more likely to ask questions and think critically about what is going on in their financial lives and beyond.
And the great thing about a tech-based enlightenment is that you can — or should be able to, anyway — look at the source code. That isn’t always so easy with social movements :)
In the meantime, stay tuned for the release of BlockStamp Communicator, our latest contribution to today’s dissident tech ecosystem!
Make sure you’re part of the BlockStamp social community and feel free to ask any questions there!
About BlockStamp:
BlockStamp is a Bitcoin blockchain fork hosting an ecosystem of fair play apps, including a true-odds multiplayer crypto gambling platform, a decentralized marketplace listing optimizer, and a private messenger with sword-in-the-stone encryption (launching soon).
