This post raises good points. I think crypto is a very neglected cause area with enormous upside potential, especially for developing countries. There’s much, much more to the crypto industry than just Bitcoin as a ‘store of value’, or crypto trading as a way to make money.
There are tens of thousands of smart people working on blockchain technologies and protocols that could offer a huge range of EA-adjacent use cases, such as:
much faster, cheaper remittances
protect savings against hyperinflation by irresponsible central banks
secure economic identity that allows poor people to get loans, buy insurance, receive gov’t vouchers, prove educational credentials & work histories, etc
voting systems that are more secure, inclusive, hard-to-hack, and easy to validate
secure property rights & land records in areas where governments are often overthrown, and lands are confiscated
access to reliable, validated, uncensorable data through oracle apps—e.g. weather data that can support crop insurance for poor farmers; inflation statistics that can’t be biased by government economists
social networks that can build in consensus mechanisms for quality control, without centralized censorship
smart contracts for royalty payments that allow creators to receive a share of any increase in value of their unique art-works
Projects that could support these use cases include Ethereum, Cardano, Chainlink, Algorand, Polkadot, and many others. Many use Proof of Stake consensus protocols (low energy consumption) rather than Proof of Work (like Bitcoin, which requires higher energy consumption).
Also, there’s a lot of overlap between EA and crypto in terms of culture, personalities, and values. Apart from the ‘toxic bitcoin maximalists’, most people in the crypto industry pride themselves on their rationality, openness to evidence, long-termism, global outlook, optimism, and skepticism about virtue signaling.
This post raises good points. I think crypto is a very neglected cause area with enormous upside potential, especially for developing countries. There’s much, much more to the crypto industry than just Bitcoin as a ‘store of value’, or crypto trading as a way to make money.
There are tens of thousands of smart people working on blockchain technologies and protocols that could offer a huge range of EA-adjacent use cases, such as:
much faster, cheaper remittances
protect savings against hyperinflation by irresponsible central banks
secure economic identity that allows poor people to get loans, buy insurance, receive gov’t vouchers, prove educational credentials & work histories, etc
voting systems that are more secure, inclusive, hard-to-hack, and easy to validate
secure property rights & land records in areas where governments are often overthrown, and lands are confiscated
access to reliable, validated, uncensorable data through oracle apps—e.g. weather data that can support crop insurance for poor farmers; inflation statistics that can’t be biased by government economists
social networks that can build in consensus mechanisms for quality control, without centralized censorship
smart contracts for royalty payments that allow creators to receive a share of any increase in value of their unique art-works
Projects that could support these use cases include Ethereum, Cardano, Chainlink, Algorand, Polkadot, and many others. Many use Proof of Stake consensus protocols (low energy consumption) rather than Proof of Work (like Bitcoin, which requires higher energy consumption).
Also, there’s a lot of overlap between EA and crypto in terms of culture, personalities, and values. Apart from the ‘toxic bitcoin maximalists’, most people in the crypto industry pride themselves on their rationality, openness to evidence, long-termism, global outlook, optimism, and skepticism about virtue signaling.