Libra, a Cyberpunk Nightmare in the Midst of Crypto Spring

Jordonk
Jordonk
Nov 4 · 3 min read

With crypto winter finally over, I’ve turned my heart to the green shoots of spring. But my thoughts are not warm in this first article in the Dreams of Crypto Spring series. I break down the most talked about digital currency in history, Facebook’s Libra, and the dark shadow it casts over the future.

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Facebook finally took the wraps off their long-awaited digital currency platform, called Libra.

They released a whitepaper, a testnet and the breakdown of their digital wallet Calibra. The announcement generated big buzz in the crypto community and in the mainstream press, with reporters rushing to cover the details.

Nearly every luminary in the crypto community chimed in right after the announcement. The initial reactions were cautiously optimistic.

Most folks, including me, felt it was bullish for crypto even if Libra has absolutely nothing to do with open, permissionless cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Radix, Monero, Zcash and Bitcoin. Almost across the board people felt it would raise crypto awareness, get regular people (aka normies) socialized to using stateless money and upgrade the awful user experience.

Lawmakers reacted as they usually do to new technologies they don’t understand, with fear. Rep Maxine Waters, Chairperson of the House Financial Services Committee, called on Facebook to halt development. Governments want to make damn sure that no tech startup dares threaten their power to debase currency at will.

Even crypto focused lawyers rang in, questioning its legality.

But now that the knee-jerk reactions are in, more detailed and nuanced analysis is starting to appear. At first, I thought I might stay above the fray. With everyone commenting, what else was there to say? There was plenty of press out there. I was too late.

But the more I dug into the write-ups and hot-takes, the more I realized how many folks were missing the real threats and possibilities of this big announcement. People had the tech details down but they missed the grand picture.

And make no mistake, love it or hate it, this is a big announcement.

A few years ago the idea that a major corporation would release a cryptocurrency was laughable, much less a consortium of gigantic multinationals releasing one, including stalwarts of the old world financial system like Visa and MasterCard.

But it’s bigger than that. It’s a turning point in monetary history.

It’s an ELE, an Extinction Level Event for the old financial world order. When historians look back they may just point to this moment as the catalyst.

But what does the future look like? How does it all play out?

Are we racing towards a financial renaissance or a cyberpunk nightmare of oligarchical mega-corporations ripped from the pages of William Gibson?

To find out, I do what I do always do, dive in head first and start reading and listening. I connected with people all over the community, asked my patrons to send me the best articles they could find, and I read the whitepaper and corporate propaganda (aka marketing).

What did I find?

Come with me as I show you a brave new world of digital currencies and an all-out war between the titans of industry and the massive nation-states of the modern world.

Eyes Wide Shut and Empire of Tomorrow

To start with, while I’m not afraid to eviscerate what I despise about Libra, I absolutely refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Just because I hate many aspects of this platform, doesn’t mean there’s not a lot to love.

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