How can we end the clash between government and crypto-currency?

The massive growth of crypto-currency in 2017 has given birth to a new war of words, a cold war of ideologies, between the crypto-fanatics and the established world order. The decentralised, alien world of the cryptocurrency has spooked the regulators, financiers and their governments, resulting in attacks from both sides on the workings of each others’ systems. On the one hand, crypto is deemed the dark-web of currency - financing criminals terrorists and drug-lords. On the other, governments under the capitalist model are accused of institutionalised criminality, feeding the pockets of an established elite, taking from those in need. What we require is a dialogue, so that an in-between can be formed in order for crypto-currency to fix the problems of corporate finance and establishment politics.

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The dirty ‘bubble’ of crypto-currencies is seen by regulators and established financial commentators as being all set to lose people all the money they’ve made in recent years. In fact, they are actively willing this to happen. Once the bubble bursts, they claim, the crypto-phase will come to a dramatic end. This stigmatisation of crypto has come across the political spectrum. The right see drug barons, terrorist groups and political dissidents as being fuelled by this phenomenon. The left see it as the end of regulated finance, where the anarchical free market dream is being realised at the expense of democracy and the majority of people. The centre tend to fall somewhere in between.

From the crypto world comes an equally dark tale. Government is stigmatised as the inhibitor of true liberty, enforcing the established world order of inequality and capitalist greed which perpetuates a world where many suffer for the benefit of a few fortunate individuals. The current ideal is a libertarian, completely deregulated world where IT buffs can make tidy profits from systems too complex for the rest of society to understand. Governments stand in the way of true liberty they claim, and crypto-currency is the foundation from which this liberty can be realised.

This war is destructive for both sides. The crypto-currency world is being shunned by many following warnings of bubbles and crashes, even though it is most likely to be more reliable and stable than the current system of global finance. On the other hand, supporters of crypto-currencies are rejecting governmental attempts to be involved and perhaps regulate the system, seeing it as a power grab designed to end the crypto-currency phase. In a situation where both sides have truth to their criticisms of each other, could a crypto-governmental system be the answer to at least some of the world’s issues?

It must be admitted by those who use crypto-currencies that the system does allow for the financing of murderous, perhaps even genocidal groups such as Daesh or North Korea, and being the spark that keeps the tyrannical nuclear-armed regime of Kim Jong-Un alive is not something which the crypto market should be proud of. Equally, governments themselves are just as guilty of promoting adverse groups, with the UK arming a murderous, indiscriminate Saudi regime and having given one-to-one training to the génocidaires of the Myanmar military. Both sides are guilty, but both sides can learn from each other to iron out each others' issues. Crypto could not exist without government rolling out of internet hardware for example, and governments could benefit greatly non-gold based currencies, taking the foundation of contemporary technology away from a reliance upon raw materials.

How this relationship could work is a question which will require time to develop and I would love to hear comments on how this relationship could be formed. Crypto is still at its fledgling stage (Streemit is still at beta, for example) and initially it is clear we need to form a bedrock for this conversation. Stop the slandering of crypto-currency, and equally stop the attacks on elected governments who genuinely fear crypto could kill democracy outright. Work with them to explain the benefits, and allow them to help building structures to remove some of the issues associated with crypto. Establishing a connection is the first step, and has the potential to form a relationship which would revolutionise not just finance, but cloud computing, communication and a whole raft of norms across the next century.