New Words for a New “Year Zero”
Many people see blockchain as revolutionary. Others see it as a passing fad.
For one, I see a sign that it’s a real revolution: the appearance of new words and phrases. The more I grasp that crypto is a world of verbal creativity the more I’m interested. It is messing with our language every day. The new terms come from all over: from the programmers and network engineers, from people branding and marketing projects and from traders.
As with more political revolutions there are new categories of people. Are you a “Bitcoin maximalist” or “Bitcoin minimalist”? Some of it might seem silly–but crypto-speak is also useful. It labels things in a fast-moving space where people are searching for angles and where new trends happen every day. Those who speak the slang want to swap meaning in a way that keeps pace with events.
Social media platforms have become the bustling corners of this new marketplace. The Genaro Official Telegram group is one of the busiest channels that our community team manages, with nearly 10,000 members. Add in the others (Chinese and Western) and you have a growing East-West village with tens of thousands of voices involved.
Many of the snappier examples of crypto-speak refer to investing. A whole generation of geeks are becoming miniature Gordon Gekkos– the aggressive financier character played by Michael Douglas in the 80s movie Wall Street. It is a symptom of social media that many of the terms are capitalized contractions: FUD, FOMO. You can easily imagine a Gekko shouting one of these into his phone before slamming it down.
By contrast many developers of technology show a love of words that reveal their awe and idealism. It is a feeling similar to what we feel looking at the universe and the night sky (“Genesis Block” and “Ether”). They also show an interest in the arcane and puzzles: the “Satoshi Nakamoto” pseudonym and the idea of “Mining” machines that seek hidden numbers…
There is also a pattern that recalls democratic activism. That is noticeable in many IRL (“In Real Life”) projects. “Sharing” and “Distributing” are not just for networks–they are to be applied to resources out in the world. Civil for example, powered by Ethereum and Consensys, is a platform that will target issues like bias in the media.
In this politically active worldview “Decentralization” might mean targeting monopolies with unsustainable practices or getting past governments that are hard to call to account. New examples are never hard to find. Many of these projects involve the launching of a “Utility token” to back up the real world service they want to provide.
Between trading for individual wealth and the desire to change society for the better there seems to be a big gap.
Yet it is here that confidently adopting crypto will build connecting paths between wealth creation and new social norms.
Making a new culture and slang can look like a desire to be exclusive. It can also be a show of collective imagination. It can encourage participation in something new. When we are talking about changing fundamental stuff like money and words… then yes, we are looking at a revolution, one that is still at an early stage.
Earlier revolutions likewise involved complex intermixing of base human instinct with ideals: land-grabs, power-grabs and profiteering appeared at the same time as constitution-writing, armed rebellions against tyranny and unbridled freedom of expression.
In fact, the complexity of blockchain can sometimes deter people and having a mischievous language may provide a good way in. Learning the words is one way to join the party. It is remarkable how important small new words and catchphrases can be. The French Revolution had a three-word slogan: Liberté Egalité Fraternité…
Let’s look a little more closely at the historical example in France. The immediate aftermath of the revolution there is a collection of economic disasters that show us how aggressive centralized control can worsen a crisis. After the uprising removed the monarch in 1789, the Assembly that now ruled the country issued a new paper fiat currency, the Assignat, in part as a means of solving a massive sovereign debt crisis left over by the king. Here, an Austrian Economist (a school of thought influential in crypto circles) outlines how the Assignat “promptly depreciated… as measured against gold.” The currency was not convertible, the supply was strictly controlled and the value of it was essentially backed up by properties seized from the Church.
We could draw parallels here with the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, where the government has just announced a series of measures intended to curb runaway hyperinflation. One element of the reforms, alongside a new paper currency, is a cryptocurrency whose value will be pegged to the international price of oil, which the government of Venezuela is unable to move past reliance upon. Most commentators judge that these measures will be insufficient to stop the depreciation of the new currencies and that the crisis is likely to get worse. All of this of course, occurs in the context of a local “Bolivarian revolution” which also saw the nationalization of many resources by the state.
By contrast, most cryptocurrencies are designed to be transferable internationally. While they began with peer-to-peer experimentation, a fundamental support structure for users now is the exchange platform layer. Exchange platforms are like the engine rooms inside the new crypto machines driving this revolution along. Yet regulators around the world have puzzled over how best to approach them. Some exchanges, such as Kraken and Binance, have moved country several times. Others have suffered hacks and collapses. Overall the market for exchanges continues to grow even as the market cap for cryptocurrencies has depreciated steeply in 2018.
Allowing for big growth while obeying the law is also vital. A secure exchange can promote adoption and open more channels for transfer of value.
The French Revolution and the invention of the Gutenberg press produced side effects very rapidly. So much so that it went beyond the capacity of central powers to understand or direct events in well-reasoned ways. The panic arising in France in the 1790s (the “Terror” episode in particular, which saw mass executions) led to the need for a strong leader, and Napoleon’s military dictatorship was the result.
It would be a pity if the fluctuating values of cryptocurrencies and other flaws led to their total abandonment or to stifling over-regulation that would crush out the potential in them.
Last thing. I want to propose a new term of my own. It is for those who enter crypto with the intent to stay within the space and guide it towards a useful state. They want to give their attention as well as invest.
They adopt projects for their value in real life. Like some guests in hotels, they are LTRs: Long Term Residents, validating it by their engagement.
