Is Bitcoin strengthening the state instead of freeing the people?

Milton Friedman was among the first to predict that one result of the internet would be the development of digital currencies, making it harder for the state to collect taxes. Cyber-anarchists ran with the idea, and for a while, with the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it looked like the libertarian dream was becoming reality. But those that are more familiar with the history and see how things tend to repeat themselves, might have seen what was coming next. New technologies are a threat to the state at first –consider the threat posed by the printing press. But following widespread adoption, political bodies start using the technologies for their own purposes.

For all its liberatory potential, the Internet has now become an essential tool for China launching its own digital currency to rival the dollar, Middle Eastern autocrats seeking to stifle dissent, and regimes seeking to circumvent Western sanctions. El Salvador, for example, stands out among state actors adopting cryptocurrencies, and it has done so to dodge the restrictions imposed on it by the IMF and World Bank while pursuing authoritarian policies internally.

“What was once imagined as a tool poised to achieve a stateless global arena of contractual individualism is now in the hands of those who wish to free the state from the web of 20th-century liberal internationalism and its institutions."

We are seeing that blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies are once again the tools for the states to govern the people and use their digital mark, instead of having as output a worldwide space in which any people have the same chances to an open market. Maybe there will be solutions to circumvent state control, but if we are going to be real and if we don't want trouble in the country where we are living probably we'll end up offering transparency and reporting for our transactions. In the end, this is what regulation means, and is hard for me to see any way out of it.

I don't see one way to avoid the eyes of the governments, but one way to move the power from centralized institutions to decentralized ones and for me to be able to be part of that. Is it enough for my freedoms? Maybe not, but as long we are living in specific states we need to convey on the regulations from there. Alternative? Move into a more libertarian country if exists, but I think this is not an option for many of us. So I think we need to make the best of it with the tools and regulations we are under and be part of the change and participate in the decentralized revolution of a new financial system. I wonder what are your thoughts on this...?

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