Talk to your average Twitter bitcoin stan and they will tell you, in line with right wing libertarian ideology, the government is at fault for most if not all of the world’s ills and only bitcoin can help us create a more fair world. The problem here is that if you read a bit more underneath the surface of what they’re saying, it’s clear that their reasoning comes from a very neoliberal point of reference with a touch of Austrian flare and cyber-utopian dreaming. If markets were just “more free” from the government (small-“s” state), they would create the most efficient and equitable way for allocating resources to everyone.

I’ll save my full critique of their reasoning for another time. For this article, I actually want to focus on the things we can sort of agree on. As Leftists, we should also be against the encroachment of the government (big-“S” State) as a vehicle for the legitimation of capitalism and its monopoly on violence used overwhelmingly against the working class and poor. The truth is that as it stands, cryptocurrency can act as a legitimate alternative to establishment financial and State institutions if you’re willing and committed enough to do it. The entire decentralized finance (DeFi) and open finance movement has the explicit goal of creating a dual power structure to the traditional finance system so that people no longer need to be dependent on traditional banks.

However to think that these alternatives are good enough for Joe the Plumber to start a decentralized lifestyle at this moment is foolish at best. Let’s entertain the thought that blockchain technology becomes advanced enough so that Joe the Plumber can start paying his rent, buying food, and receiving his salary in cryptocurrency. The State has quite a lot to lose if all the Joe the Plumber’s use a currency which is not controlled by State institutions to receive taxes, exert their control through monetary policy, and legitimate their violence towards its citizens. Even Investopedia understands the reasons why some governments would be opposed to cryptocurrency adoption. Let’s not be naïve though, the shareholders of the Capitalist State won’t sit there and just let it happen. This behooves us to know, how exactly can the State try to destroy blockchain based networks like bitcoin and others.