The Satoshi Revolution: A Revolution of Rising Expectations
Section 4: State Versus Society
Chapter 9, Part 5
Crypto: Other Than The Black Market, A Last Stand For Economic Freedom?
Money…is the economic area most encrusted and entangled with centuries of government meddling. Many people, many economists, usually devoted to the free market stop short at money. Money, they insist, is different; it must be supplied by government and regulated by government. They never think of state control of money as interference in the free market; a free market in money is unthinkable to them. Historically, money was one of the first things controlled by government, and the free market “revolution” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made very little dent in the monetary sphere. So it is high time that we turn fundamental attention to the life-blood of our economy—money.
-Murray Rothbard, “What Has Government Done to Our Money?”
Envisioning free-market crypto should be easy because cryptocurrency was created on the free market, and it remains unregulated in many places. How difficult is it for a person to envision what is standing in front of his or her own eyes? Coins like Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash are success stories for all to see.
Unfortunately, governments also see it. They recognize crypto as a fierce competitor to their own fiat monopolies, their tax systems, and a relatively untapped source of wealth. To control crypto, however, government cannot praise the phenomenon; government needs to demonize crypto by creating public hysteria over problems both real (fraud) and manufactured (links to terrorism). Rest assured, if crypto was an economic Satan rather than a business sensation, governments around the world would not be salivating and scheming about how to co-opt the industry. To do so, they paint crypto as
