What I find interesting in crypto isn't really crypto itself. I've never bought or sold any and don't think it's accomplished much as a technology. It does however embody and evangelize a worldview about relationships and values that I find fascinating and troubling.

Crypto — and more generally the world of digital high tech — is strongly motivated by the idea that we can optimize and perfect things with technology. This both idealizes code and algorithms and discounts the complexity of human life.

Crypto folks are entirely right to be suspicious and cynical of governments and institutions. But the alternative they offer actually seems worse in almost every way, because it's credulous about technology and seemingly ignorant of politics, history, and sociology.

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