| If free to evolve unrestrained, crypto would likely eventuate in a future where governments are less relevant, less powerful, and smaller. A government structure concerned more with self-preservation, will - accurately - perceive crypto as a threat to its antithetic hegemony, through a diminished ability to, for example: - conduct itself without transparency. In a functionally-crypto world, government transactions would be immediately and openly public and auditable by anyone, and likely so automated. Currently, months long latency and bureaucratic obfuscation work against accountability. - unfairly freeze assets for the purposes of self-preservation or power. In many cases there could well be no ability to freeze assets at all. (Private keys can be stored in minds, and this can be plausibly denied.) - control the economy, and so ultimately, manipulate every aspect of a populations direction. A sufficiently smart-contract operated world could decentralise and democratise economic "policy" so much it may no longer fit inside that definition, as it may potentially become less of an affectation and more of an effect. A proposed downside of all this is it simply may not work. I don't buy that. I think the main problems we have as a species are in how we allow ourselves to be exploitable. Building in greater sovereignty is the solution, not a problem. |