Blockchain — A Libertarian Socialist Revolution

[TSM.Global]

What makes blockchain uniquely different than other conventional companies is not the fact the most blockchain platforms have limited supply of their tokens. Gold has a similarly limited supply today and yet capitalism persists, while communist regimes have reverted to fiat currencies and that did not make them capitalist. Instead, what makes blockchain companies unique is the fact that most crypto assets that dominate the blockchain exchanges (with minor exceptions) do not know conventional profit from the labor of others as a category. Therefore, it is my assumption that Karl Marx and many of his peers would have loved the blockchain!

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are usually done by an emission of digital tokens via coded and uploaded to be seen, smart contracts. Like bonds without interest or shares without profit yield, these tokens usually appreciate in value as the adopters of the specific token raise in number. Thus, the networking effect is the principal reason for growing the value of most digital crypto assets. For instance, the more people buy Bitcoins, the greater their value would be — and so is the case with most other crypto assets.

Tokens can be best understood as small economies connected on blockchain exchanges. To illustrate this, we can take a small example. For instance, someone can make a token for storing car data in a distributed blockchain database, like CarData (www.cardata.am) tries to do, token economy for identity verification, like Civic (www.civic.com), or for access to a lottery platform that draws the winning numbers from NASDAQ like MOS (www.moscoin.io) or as a transaction tool and keeper of value Bitcoin itself. Many things can be organized in decentralized economies based on tokens.

People holding different tokens from different token economies can trade them on exchanges. For instance, if someone needs to use medical data from a medical blockchain, she or he can use Bitcoins to buy MedicalChain tokens and access the service. If a bank or a university needs to verify an identity online, they might use Tezos tokens (called Tezzies) to buy Civic tokens and do the identity validation, etc. As you can see, there is no conventional profit made in the economy but the networking effect or how many people use it, which is connected to the utility and code of each token, determines its price. Everyone earns from their labor!

When someone launches an initial coin offering, he or she usually divides the tokens to team members, advisers, investors, and supporters. The appreciation of the value of tokens is something that leads to “capital gains” for everyone who contributed towards the project. Once the entire world accepts the blockchain economy and no more network effects exist because no new people enter the token economy, the price of these digital assets should stabilize. Then, everyone would be rewarded the proportional value that they have created for others, not necessarily with profits from ownership of assets (given there will be no more excessive “capital gains”).
Profit seems like a dirty word in crypto-land today. From 100 random ICOs, we analyzed, only 13 had some form of profit sharing function. But, even when they share profits, these start-ups seem more generous than their counterparts from the conventional, old economy. For instance, start-ups like MagnumLink (www.magnumlink.com) that is issuing tokens backed by precious minerals such as diamonds and gold, want to share at least 50% of profits with its investors while giving away 100% of tokens away during the ICO.

So, if the new blockchain companies in most of the cases become foundations (Ethereum, Tezos, etc.) that create no profits, and people earn as much value as they create for others, does that look like Socialism? Perhaps it looks like a libertarian type of socialism created by the private sector, but it is socialism, nevertheless.

Alek V. Ribak
CEO @ TSM & The Omega Project (TOP)

[1713926066]

1713926066

[bitmover]

Socialism is against everything bitcoin is doing.

Socialism is based on a fully centralized society, where the State owns all production assets and industries, and controls the money.

Bitcoin is a liberal anarchist concept, basically opposed to this idea. Bitcoin give power to individuals as they no longer need a central authority that controls money supply.

Those companies that are doing ICO have profits the same way as before. They are not being funded in the stock market anymore, like an IPO, instead they are getting funded through Ethereum and Bitcoin. That's revolutionary in the way that financial relations are being more decentralized and less regulated. And individuals can now invest in a company anywhere in the world without almost any bureaucratic  regulation .

This is a way to move a small part of the financial system out of the stock market.

That idea is against to basically all socialists ideas and propositions through histoy.

[Coffee135]

Socialism is against everything bitcoin is doing.

Socialism is based on a fully centralized society, where the State owns all production assets and industries, and controls the money.

Bitcoin is a liberal anarchist concept, basically opposed to this idea. Bitcoin give power to individuals as they no longer need a central authority that controls money supply.

Labor relations will stay the same.

I support your opinion, but it's not quite true. Under socialism in Russia there was a period of NEP (new economic policy). At this point, private ownership of the means of production was allowed, but this applies only to small entrepreneurs. This policy helped to quickly rebuild the economy destroyed after the revolution and the civil war. Bitcoin users will gladly work with Fiat. Bitcoin is more like a NEP period.

[Simon Eaton]

I think its dangerous to talk about blockchain without the addition of bitcoin. You don't get a blockchain, forward ledger and distributed consensus security without the whole package combined with bitcoin as a currency. I personally think bitcoin has the potential to be the digital cash in world without actual cash which I think will be where bitcoins eventual value will lie once the price has been discovererd

[bitmover]

Socialism is against everything bitcoin is doing.

Socialism is based on a fully centralized society, where the State owns all production assets and industries, and controls the money.

Bitcoin is a liberal anarchist concept, basically opposed to this idea. Bitcoin give power to individuals as they no longer need a central authority that controls money supply.

Labor relations will stay the same.

I support your opinion, but it's not quite true. Under socialism in Russia there was a period of NEP (new economic policy). At this point, private ownership of the means of production was allowed, but this applies only to small entrepreneurs. This policy helped to quickly rebuild the economy destroyed after the revolution and the civil war. Bitcoin users will gladly work with Fiat. Bitcoin is more like a NEP period.

This  NEP was known to be "one step back to give 2 steps foward".
They just allowed some capistalists concepts for a period of time, otherwise the economy would collapse.

This happens a lot in my country (Brazil). We stay many years in a very closed economic regime, and when inflation is about 100-1000% a year, unemployment and poverty are taking over, they allow a small liberalism for a few years so they people can breath, work and eat, and then we go back to those dark socialist years...

PS: I made a small edit in the previous post before i saw your post.

[JuniAiko]

I think it counteracting the powers of big for-profit centralized organizations and banks, and aims to give power back to the people would qualify it as a Libertarian/Democratic Socialist Revolution -- keyword is Libertarian or Democratic version of it, where the rights of the freedom of the individual is respected, while maintaining a far socialistic playing field where everyone can hopefully participate equally (idealistically that is).

But certainly not socialism in its Socialist Dictatorship form that we see in Russia and China.

[bitmover]

I think it counteracting the powers of big for-profit centralized organizations and banks, and aims to give power back to the people would qualify it as a Libertarian/Democratic Socialist Revolution.

But certainly not socialism in its Socialist Dictatorship form that we see in Russia and China.

More like a popular revolution in Cuba Venezuelan style?

[JuniAiko]

I think it counteracting the powers of big for-profit centralized organizations and banks, and aims to give power back to the people would qualify it as a Libertarian/Democratic Socialist Revolution.

But certainly not socialism in its Socialist Dictatorship form that we see in Russia and China.

More like a popular revolution in Cuba Venezuelan style?

Venezuela etc is still a Dictatorship where one person decides the fate of the people. Definitely not Democratic Socialism, where the people gets the equal power to decide/vote on the direction of the crypto project and future etc.

[Flodner]

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are definitely not related to Socialism.
On the contrast, it's closer to the free market capitalism, even Ultra-capiatalism.
The rich will become more rich, those who acquired crypto-welth and invested it correctly - will profit.
I see nothing socialist in cryptocurrencies, and may be that's why socialists sometimes dislike crypto and bitcoin, as they want state to control a big part of economy and waste state budget for unnecessary spendings.

[JuniAiko]

I see the idealism behind cryptos (e.g. Stellar's banking the unbanked, and decentralized exchange) etc. pretty inline with a libertarian/democratic take on Socialism (e.g. nothing to do with Socialist Dictatorships -- where one or a small group of misguided people tries to drive the socialism idealogy -- initially with good intention, but eventually, absolute power absolutely corrupts).

In crypto, the democratic socialistic rules is intrinsic to the code of the crypto itself; and changes relies on democratic consensus (ideally), hence doing away with a dictatorship control by a small group of people that will eventually get corrupted and move into dictatorship.

Democratic Socialism isn't against capitalism so long as it benefits (or at least not harm) and give power to the people equally, and not concentrate power to a small % of people.

Basically, decentralization with blockchain and code helps to maintain a real democratic to implement a balanced level of socialism (society's wellbeing) with capitalistic (greed-driven) drive.

[squatz1]

Wouldn't call the blockchain nor Bitcoin anything involved with Socialism, it just wouldn't make sense. Socialism means that everything should be controlled and regulated by everyone. While Bitcoin does have that, it's not like our miners aren't centralized. Exchanges are as well. As a theory yes bitcoin looks like this, but in reality it isn't.

We could say we're decentralized, but we're really not.s

[justin86]

I think it is not about socialism or any ideology. It is just a new revolutionary technology, giving the control of money to people themselves. It is about decentralization of money.

[dado7]

Actually, you have two presumptions that are incorrect.

First one is that Karl Marx would have been happy with people earning profits while not working. That was not his ideal and that was not what socialism was about. Yes, in the end, people working less earned more money because the problem with the system was that it had an inherent mistake - human nature. Someone had to set the rules and those people treated the system like it was a traditional monarchy, despotism or whatever - they took what they had for their own benefit. Exceptions do exist and kudos to them. Same is with democracy and capitalism, they sell us those two systems as decentralization while they actually help make decentralization more enforced.

Second, what you describe at the end is not socialism, it is capitalism. Socialism is designed to give equal rights to everybody in the system, capitalism was designed to give people the possibility to work and create and keep the profit for that. However, there is another inherent problem and that is how the money is created, the money circulating in the system is never of enough value to cover all the profits, hence you have to take from somebody to earn for yourself - and that is completely opposite of socialism.

By the way, we need both systems to coexist in some way to make a better future. We need capitalism because it is driving the community forward and we need socialism in order to diminish the socal inequality.

What I propose, and where blockchain and smart contracts can help a great deal, is a system enforcing equal money, basic income and similar systems, fully capitalistic in every other way (hence rewarding those that bring higher values; as Bill Gates once said - it made him possible to create such an important empire out of the garage), but with so-called in-built interventionism (a completely free market inevitably leads to more social disparity). Something like what the great economist Keynes imagined, but automatic.

[sreecanvas]

The blockchain is a libertarian Socialist Revolution as Libertarian socialists advocate for decentralized structures based on direct democracy and federal or confederal associations such as libertarian municipalism, citizens assemblies, trade unions and workers councils.It asserts that a society based on freedom and justice can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production.
The same concept of decentralization and abolition of single authority is applied to Blockchain.

[Hydrogen]

There could be some confusion as to what the terms socialism and capitalism describe.

Socialism describes a centralized paradigm where the state owns everything, it wields all power and authority under a monopoly with no competition from the private sector.

Capitalism describes a decentralized paradigm where power and authority is divided between the state and the public invoking free markets, free enterprise, private ownership of land and similar tenets.

Socialism also describes state run or state managed programs while capitalism describes programs, business or associations involving the private sector.

These days it is common for there to be a blend of both as history has shown that is the most stable and reliable model. But in the past there were more attempts at centralized socialism and it didn't work well for the same reasons centralized socialism in venezuela is currently failing. Venezuela's government has waged a war against private sector capitalism and failed to solve problems, create jobs or create value as well as the private sector has in past times. Venezuela went so far as to attempt to nationalise toyota operations which drove many private entities out of the country, killing jobs, causing losses in tax revenue and economic spending, etc.

[wandino]

It looks like a revolution as it is going to make day to day work very easy and fast.

[ylnar123]

Socialism is against everything bitcoin is doing.

Socialism is based on a fully centralized society, where the State owns all production assets and industries, and controls the money.

Bitcoin is a liberal anarchist concept, basically opposed to this idea. Bitcoin give power to individuals as they no longer need a central authority that controls money supply.

Those companies that are doing ICO have profits the same way as before. They are not being funded in the stock market anymore, like an IPO, instead they are getting funded through Ethereum and Bitcoin. That's revolutionary in the way that financial relations are being more decentralized and less regulated. And individuals can now invest in a company anywhere in the world without almost any bureaucratic  regulation .

This is a way to move a small part of the financial system out of the stock market.

That idea is against to basically all socialists ideas and propositions through histoy.

Indeed, the power of blockchain comes from the people and not from the socialist individuals. Unlike the stock market, people can invest in the blockchain whether they are poor or they are above in the society because blockchain is less regulated compared to the stock market where only the highest of ranks has the power to grow their money.

[TSM.Global]

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The Economics and Financial Maths for the Blockchain Era is a book by the CEO of TSM Global, Alek Ribak (www.alekr.com) who in 777 pages presents:

1. Blockchain Economics 101 and Finance 101
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3. Solutions that would follow and we must accelerate
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5. What should happen in 100 and what might happen in 500 years
6. Why blockchain founders are mostly libertarian socialists though they do not usually know this

The market price of the book of 777 pages would be 777 EUR and limited to only 100,000 paper copies. The first 100 who pre-purchase it can get it for only 300 EUR and expect it by late December 2018.

You can also write to office@tsm.global

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[Dmitry.Vastov]

What makes blockchain uniquely different than other conventional companies is not the fact the most blockchain platforms have limited supply of their tokens. Gold has a similarly limited supply today and yet capitalism persists, while communist regimes have reverted to fiat currencies and that did not make them capitalist. Instead, what makes blockchain companies unique is the fact that most crypto assets that dominate the blockchain exchanges (with minor exceptions) do not know conventional profit from the labor of others as a category. Therefore, it is my assumption that Karl Marx and many of his peers would have loved the blockchain!

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are usually done by an emission of digital tokens via coded and uploaded to be seen, smart contracts. Like bonds without interest or shares without profit yield, these tokens usually appreciate in value as the adopters of the specific token raise in number. Thus, the networking effect is the principal reason for growing the value of most digital crypto assets. For instance, the more people buy Bitcoins, the greater their value would be — and so is the case with most other crypto assets.

Tokens can be best understood as small economies connected on blockchain exchanges. To illustrate this, we can take a small example. For instance, someone can make a token for storing car data in a distributed blockchain database, like CarData (www.cardata.am) tries to do, token economy for identity verification, like Civic (www.civic.com), or for access to a lottery platform that draws the winning numbers from NASDAQ like MOS (www.moscoin.io) or as a transaction tool and keeper of value Bitcoin itself. Many things can be organized in decentralized economies based on tokens.

People holding different tokens from different token economies can trade them on exchanges. For instance, if someone needs to use medical data from a medical blockchain, she or he can use Bitcoins to buy MedicalChain tokens and access the service. If a bank or a university needs to verify an identity online, they might use Tezos tokens (called Tezzies) to buy Civic tokens and do the identity validation, etc. As you can see, there is no conventional profit made in the economy but the networking effect or how many people use it, which is connected to the utility and code of each token, determines its price. Everyone earns from their labor!

When someone launches an initial coin offering, he or she usually divides the tokens to team members, advisers, investors, and supporters. The appreciation of the value of tokens is something that leads to “capital gains” for everyone who contributed towards the project. Once the entire world accepts the blockchain economy and no more network effects exist because no new people enter the token economy, the price of these digital assets should stabilize. Then, everyone would be rewarded the proportional value that they have created for others, not necessarily with profits from ownership of assets (given there will be no more excessive “capital gains”).
Profit seems like a dirty word in crypto-land today. From 100 random ICOs, we analyzed, only 13 had some form of profit sharing function. But, even when they share profits, these start-ups seem more generous than their counterparts from the conventional, old economy. For instance, start-ups like MagnumLink (www.magnumlink.com) that is issuing tokens backed by precious minerals such as diamonds and gold, want to share at least 50% of profits with its investors while giving away 100% of tokens away during the ICO.

So, if the new blockchain companies in most of the cases become foundations (Ethereum, Tezos, etc.) that create no profits, and people earn as much value as they create for others, does that look like Socialism? Perhaps it looks like a libertarian type of socialism created by the private sector, but it is socialism, nevertheless.

Alek V. Ribak
CEO @ TSM & The Omega Project (TOP)

Blockchain technology is entirely a different concept and I guess a very innovative concept too. It has always helped millions of people and has always proved beneficial for the humanity. Blockchain technology has bring a new era of digitalisation in the he world and the idea of virtual currency is entirely a new and very innovative concept, a type of currency which you can store digitally and can make payments even but it’s no physical form exists, so I think Blockchain technology has bring a revolution in the society of economics.

[vlad230]

Socialism is against everything bitcoin is doing.
Socialism is based on a fully centralized society, where the State owns all production assets and industries, and controls the money.
~

Yes, I agree, Bitcoin and crypto currencies in general are nothing like the socialist principles. I think crypto currencies are more on the liberalism side of things but with a touch of decentralization and with focus on individual actions.