Kayfabe, Fiat Currency and the Purpose of Cryptocurrency

Kayfabe is a concept in professional wrestling. It is a term expressing the illusion of reality that wrestling organizations use to sell their story lines and maintain their connection with their audiences. This requires buy-in from these audiences to accept the value offered by the storyline as a form of entertainment. Over produced video packages, loud rock and rap songs, catchphrase-laden promotional speeches and signature moves are all a part of the package used to sell the story lines. This allows fans of these shows — these days WWE, AEW and ROH — to sell merchandise and build fan communities using internet promotions and live events. This is the business of selling a fiction to a willing audience. An audience that is looking for a tribe to belong to. A tribe that exists outside of the family unit and separate from society.

Professional wrestling storylines use the concepts of the baby face (a representative of good) and a heel (a representative of evil) to appeal to this general need for humans to belong. Alexander Solzhenitsyn purportedly said that: “…the battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man”. It is this battle that the average audience member projects onto the characters portrayed by the wrestlers in the ring. Every week, they pay money to see this battle play out in real time.

Kayfabe or maintained illusions however, are not only present in professional wrestling. This phenomenon is maintained throughout many fictions that humans buy into in order…