What if Bitcoin and crypto folks HAD to solve poverty? - I previously wrote about Bitcoin and eradicating poverty and why bitcoin and crypto is not enough to fix many of the world's biggest issues. I've also written about money liquidity and hunger which is tangentially related, and one of the newsletters, the Magic Money All The Way Down issue, explored why I see the basic notion of interest as problematic. Admittedly my thoughts on this topic are still somewhat disorganised, but I think it's really important to get this right, we might not have another opportunity.
Another way of thinking about it is incentives. It's clear at this point that when there is no incentive for a particular outcome to occur at the societal level, it simply won't happen. In a world were no debasement is possible, not only is there no incentive to fix poverty, as people no longer need to fear losing their money for acting in a way that makes things worse for some, the money is now programmable, read more efficient, the incentive is actually to steal even more from the poor and then murder them. When all is said and done, that's basically what happens now.
Indeed I don't think it's a huge exageration to expect that the incentive will actually be in the opposite direction to fixing poverty. It pains me to say this because I'm a big proponent of Bitcoin and crypto. I want it to succeed. However if that means trapping some people in eternal poverty, that's definitely not an acceptable tradeoff.
Bitcoiners and crypto already have an uphill battle, and I sure don't want to add to that, but if there is a chance of eternal poverty for some in a crypto world, perhaps fixing poverty should be a pre-condition for the introduction of this next phase of money, for the mainstreaming of crypto and Bitcoin.
Realistically how else is poverty ever going to get solved once and for all? #