Left-wing criticism of cryptocurrencies is usually about cryptocurrencies presented as neoliberalism and capitalism. But such criticism is incorrect and mythological. Also, it misses the fact that cryptocurrencies are historically linked to various anarchist ideas. Anyone who wants to understand cryptocurrencies needs to read about crypto-anarchist and techno-libertarian ideas during the 1990s and 2000s.
In connection with the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of cryptocurrencies has increased globally. That's partly because more people could be at home in front of the screen and learn more about digital currencies without any government or central bank. In other cases, it has been, for example, about wanting to avoid economic and other decisions made by brutal and authoritarian governments such as in Venezuela, Iran, and Afghanistan.
In different ways, cryptocurrencies are about values such as democracy, freedom and community. At the same time, there is a lot of criticism. One example is the criticism often created by ecologists and climate activists, who believe cryptocurrencies use too much energy. There is already some research about it as well as the fact that there are cryptocurrencies that use less energy during transactions than, for example, payment cards such as Mastercard or Visa do.
Another criticism that often comes from left-wing individuals is that cryptocurrencies are about neoliberalism and capitalism, i.e., more people making big money, "the rich getting richer," and the support for the public systems being undermined. In addition to that, as in the case of the left-wing economist and Greece's former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, many left-wingers are negative to cryptocurrencies because they believe that the state and centralized institutions are a must to achieve some kind of Marxist model of society.
Opinions like cryptocurrencies being some kind of neoliberal invention are not entirely unwarranted because neoliberal thinkers such as Fridrich Hayek and Milton Friedman have said things like that money should be denationalized and that people could create their own non-governmental money. In fact, one can read about, for example Hayek, during courses on cryptocurrencies organized such as at Cambridge Univeristy and Stanford University. But what left-wing criticism, and often left-wing authoritarian ones, misses is that cryptocurrencies are much more about anarchist ideas and behavior in practice.
You can summarize the whole thing in the following joking way:
Neoliberals in the 1970s: people can create their own money in the future, without states and central banks, trade and cooperate globally.
Socialists, progressives, and others in the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s: Hahaha, neoliberalism is dead, capitalism doesn't work, now we're going to create a big-state post-capitalist social system.
Left-wing anarchists, right-wing libertarians, green cryptoenthusiasts: We use cryptocurrencies to create our own systems, communities, and markets as alternatives to capitalism and other systems.
If you read the history of cryptocurrencies, you come into contact with thinkers and ideas such as within the framework of the early 1990s cyberpunk movement in the USA, as well as 21st-century techno libertarians and modern left-wing anarchists.
It partly explains why international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are against crypto-currencies being legalized and recognized as money, defending the current system of government money, central banks and easy credit that more often favors the middle class as well as large corporations and banks. Because one of the most central points of decentralized technology is that people can collaborate with each other directly and without "middlemen" such as banks, companies, and governments. One can arbitrarily and mythologically choose to see it as "neoliberalism." Still, fundamentally seen, cryptocurrencies are much more about anarchistic behaviors and ideas that enable better democracy and fairer economics.
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Sources:
https://csgs.kcl.ac.uk/friedrich-hayek-prophet-of-cryptocurrency/
https://diem25.org/yanis-varoufakis-crypto-the-left-and-techno-feudalism/
https://www.algorand.foundation/news/carbon-neutral
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YEotCxF48I
