Colombia, Borges and Bitcoin
Bitcoin and the current discovery of the New World 2.0
Imagine being alive in 1492 (AD): the printing press is only a few decades old, things are changing, and a “New World” is now connected to the old one. Opportunities abound that didn’t exist previously and the world is about to experience total transformation.
Now imagine living in the year 2021 (AD). Oh wait, we do: the digital printing press is only a few decades old, things are changing, and a digital “New World” is now connecting to the old one. For those with eyes to see, opportunities abound that didn’t exist previously and the world is about to experience total transformation.
And this is wonderful. Let me illustrate.
South America and the Problem with Money
The above picture is one I took while living in the “New World,” Bogotá Colombia—the place where I learned (out of necessity) to count in Spanish in the 1,000s.
At the time (2010), the Colombian Peso to USD was about 2,000/1, or .50¢ per 1,000 peso bill. Today (August 2021), the ratio is 3,967/1 (and climbing), or about .25¢ per 1,000 peso bill (see image below). This means that in 2010 a 1,000 peso bill would buy about 4 little rolls from any panadería. Now, for the same, price you can buy 2.
Only 35 years prior (1972 in this case, see image below), you could buy the same rolls with the lowest denomination of bills: 1 peso. So, if you saved 1,000 pesos in 1975, hoping to give it to your kids or grandchildren in 2010, it now would only buy a few rolls as opposed to a semester of college tuition. Quite the jump.
These numbers are hard for US (or UK/younger European) citizens to understand. But imagine a 1 dollar bill going out of print and becoming worthless, something to be sold on Etsy (perhaps not that far away, we are experiencing a “coin shortage” in the US). Yet, this is reality for much of the world, particularly in South America. What once was the New World, full of gold and opportunity, now sits in the hands of centralized corruption, leaving the poor with less options and less hope for a better future.
But today, in the age of the internet, we are discovering a new world: a New World 2.0 powered by decentralized blockchain technology wherein commerce no longer need be bound to physical barriers or borders; a new world where one can transact across the globe, free from linguistic restrictions or gubernatorial regulation (at least for right now). This is the New World 2.0 of Bitcoin.
Crypto and America
For most of modern history, centralized powers controlled the supply and flow of money, i.e. Colombia. The centralized power of a few allowed (and allows them still) to make major, impactful decisions for their benefit in the short term that hurt the majority in the long term (i.e., the money supply in Colombia). The history of Modern America as the New World (from North to South) directly stems from the tension between the many and the few in centralized power. The United States was founded on the idea of decentralizing gubernatorial authority (checks and balances) away from the centralized control of the British crown and anyone who might want to anoint themselves King. This was especially true in regards to money and taxation. At least in theory, the intension was to allow the people a choice as to how their money was taxed. One could argue that much of the American Revolution’s bloody conflict spawned from high taxes and wanting to preserve one’s wealth in the name of freedom. The desire for freedom from centralized taxation/control of money outweighed the cost of life. Because without freedom, there is no life or living.
And this change from old world to New World took a similar form in Central and South America. Many of the great thinkers of the day, including Cervantes, looked to the Americas as a place of new-found opportunity away from the centralized grip of the Spanish monarchy (perhaps one of the strongest in modern history, the dominance of the Spanish language as evidence). Roberto González Echevarría writes that “the New World [was] an escape because of the very freedom afforded the new as something not yet codified” (57). Many were willing to leave Spain and Portugal to seek after even the idea of freedom, a system wherein bloodlines and a few in power didn’t define one’s status within society.
Now, in the digital age, as the boundaries of online commerce continue to shrink, we are becoming global citizens of a New World 2.0—only very few are aware of it. In this New World 2.0 of Bitcoin, we seek the same thing as did our forefathers: freedom. We want freedom from the centralized power of the few, freedom from central banking, freedom from corruption, freedom to choose where we store value, freedom to live. Colombians, Venezuelans, Salvadoreños etc., want freedom from a government that debases their currency and destroys their life-savings (it’s not for nothing that we call it that, much of our lives — or ability to live — are stored therein) in days . The people of South America are looking for a new life, a place “not yet codified” wherein the pursuit of happiness can truly take place. They always have; everyone always has. And, in this case, the New World 2.0 of Bitcoin gives us this.
Tlön and the Real New World
South Americans have always sought after a better world, with better options away from the corruption of government. In his short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1941), the proleptic and visionary Jorge Luis Borges wrote, in his own unique way, of a South American longing for “freedom not yet codified.” He writes of a fictional secret society existing in a fictional universe (think of the internet) known as Tlön, which, mapped onto reality, transcended the centralized kingdoms of the world. In essence, this society found that place “not yet codiefied” in the secrecy of fraternity and aimed for the Ideal, seeming to have found it outside of centralized governance. Borges also wrote of a similar decentralized society called “The Sect of the Phoneix,” (1952), in which knowledge between members (a kind of store of wealth) survived for thousands of years and continue to this day based “a secret” transposed through generations in a ritual. Both of these stories, to some extent, show a South American penchant for a life beyond the gross powers of government and the beauty that springs forth from the people when they govern themselves. In a way, Borges foreshadowed the coming forth of the New World 2.0: a world where people are free to act for themselves based on a set of sound principles that knit them together.
And, of course, Borges is not the only one to express this South American longing for change. Camila Russo writes on this sentiment in her delightful book The Infinite Machine. In the book she narrates the story of Argentine hyper inflation in 2001 in which the argentine peso devalued over night by 40%. In simple terms, that would mean that one night you held $1,000, and the next night you held (essentially) $600, with nothing you could do about it. On top of the debasement, no one could access their funds at the bank, so, in reality, it didn’t matter if you had money in the first place. The problems implied in this scenario (not unique to Argentina, nor South America in general) are infinite, but we won’t get into them.
The point is that now, in the age of this New World 2.0, there are other avenues for economic engagement. There is a better way to live in the world lacking trustworthy stores of value: crypto. And by better, I mean significantly better—but that too is for another article.
Conclusion
During my time in Colombia, I lived in Yopal, Casanare. In the heart of the city sat a block-sized pile of rubble as if from another life; some type of construction overgrown and abandoned under the weight of Nature. I asked a woman there what happened to the area as I was frequently drawn to the spot. She relayed that only 10 years prior the block contained the beginning stages of a world class water park in Colombia. The politicians promised to build it, and began, prophesying an influx of jobs, economic stimulation and growth. When the funding came through, it immediately dried up with the dusty tracks of the same politicians who disappeared with the money and left the project incomplete.
While I hold no illusion that crypto will fix any of this directly, but I do expect it to help indirectly. The decentralization of money and all things economic will allow the little guy some semblance of propriety in the face of the moral corruption of politics and begin the process of eliminating power from those unworthy of it.
If you go back to the header image, you will see only half of Colombia’s capital Bogotá, home for nearly 7.2 million people. Each of them deserves a chance to build a life of freedom. This requires sound money. At the time of writing there are nearly 422.5 million people who live in South America alone—these people deserve the same. Each one of the nearly billion people living in the Americas (from North to South) deserves a life where money incentivizes long-term building, long-term planning and long-term living: a life in the New World 2.0.
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