It was supposed to be a financial revolution. Instead, crypto has become an environmentally disastrous gift to con artists
Cryptocurrencies, according to their most ardent supporters, are supposed to supplant nations’ existing currencies and end central banks’ control over the money supply. Instead, individuals will be able to trade with each other in a decentralised, digital financial ecosystem. This is a good thing, they promise, because unlike states and their central banks, technology is incorruptible. Crypto-evangelists imagine technology as a replacement for social and political institutions.
But technology never replaces social and political behaviour; it merely alters the rules and norms we follow. To see this in action, one need only look at the plummeting value of Terra Luna, a crypto token that crashed by 98% in a day, causing some investors to lose their life savings; the plunging value of Bitcoin and Ethereum; or the countless scam victims whose non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been stolen. NFTs use the same blockchain technology as cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to trade algorithmically generated illustrations that riff on a theme. On offer are cartoony Bored Apes, Lazy Lions and “CryptoDickButts”. Although NFTs are aesthetically uninspiring, they can sell for as much as $91.8m – and as they have grown in value, scams involving stolen NFTs have abounded. Just last month the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Instagram account was hacked, and the perpetrators stole about $3m worth of NFTs by directing followers to a fraudulent site.
David A Banks is the director of globalisation studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and is the author of the forthcoming book The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
