The Moral Case for Crypto Currencies
On January 6th, 2021, thousands of aggrieved American citizens descended on the U.S. Capitol to protest an election they believed was…
On January 6th, 2021, thousands of aggrieved American citizens descended on the U.S. Capitol to protest an election they believed was stolen by a cabal of nefarious foreign actors and transnational elites. Alongside the rousing speeches and calls for political reform, the gathering was marked by the sound of prayer and displays of worship from a large and vocal Christian contingent. Unfortunately, the 6th will likely not be remembered for its impassioned speakers, criticisms of government corruption, or patriotic crowd. Instead, it will be remembered for its historic political “violence” and the ensuing witch hunt against conservative attendees and sympathizers.
Christian political activist Ali Alexander was the primary organizer of the January 6th rally. Proclaiming on Telegram, “I am glad I have been humiliated before the world that God, my Father, might be greater glorified when we are vindicated…” Alexander disavowed violence and promoted civil solutions. Despite his denouncement of bad actors, Alexander found himself targeted by the incoming regime. Erased from social media and canceled by multiple payment processors, Alexander turned to the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo for financial support. Without notice, major payment processors including PayPal and Visa immediately dropped support for GiveSendGo, affecting Christian charities and missionary funds across the platform. On January 18th, Alexander sent out a plea to his Telegram followers:
“GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding website, finally re-enabled by (sic) account after being harassed by far-left partisans but now the processor is cutting me off
I’ll officially have no ability to accept funds outside of cryptocurrency for days to weeks while I put a team on sourcing a solution that will eat a higher chunk of funds” (January 18th Telegram Communication, Ali Alexander).
Ali Alexander was effectively “de-personed,” but he was not the first to face the full force of Big Tech censorship without so much as a criminal charge. In 2019, Laura Loomer was banned from major payment processors including PayPal, Venmo, and GoFundMe following a dispute over the Islamic beliefs of Representative Ilhan Omar. Similarly, conservative Catholic commentator Nick Fuentes was forced to only accept crypto payments for merchandise and show subscriptions following various service provider drops after the 6th.
Major institutional players including the NRA, immigration detention facilities (CNA), and conservative think tanks have also faced financial censorship. As recently as March, 2021 self-proclaimed Christian social media alternative, Gab, reported they were suspended from five banks in three weeks. One bank is purported to have justified their decision by saying “the media has written bad things about your business” (Email Communication, Gab News). Gab is also blacklisted by both Visa and PayPal along with its founder and CEO, Andrew Torba.
“Time and time again, corporations [have] bent the knee before outraged activists and stifled the free speech of ordinary Americans. We see this when social media giants regularly censor and ban individuals who run afoul of liberal orthodoxy…. Less noticed is the threat of financial de-platforming. This growing menace means those who dissent from the official left-wing line won’t even be allowed to bank or use a credit card” (“Trump Administration Rule Poised to Take a Stand Against Financial Censorship,” CNS News).
With increasing frequency, those who hold to conservative, Christian beliefs are finding themselves isolated and unable to conduct business in a corrupted social economic system that is hostile to dissenters. These concerted attacks are no accident. Rather, they are the result of a careful and coordinated effort by leftists to assimilate all of western society to their social vision.
“They don’t want me to fund security. They want me, the founder of the Stop the Steal movement in 2020, to die” (Ali Alexander).
How is the U.S. Financial System a weapon?
It is little wonder how we got here. Our modern financial system requires three parties to be involved in every transaction: the buyer, the seller, and an intermediary. There is no way to buy or sell in our global, digital economy without an independent, federally approved payment processor. Whether making a wire transfer from a bank, a credit card payment, or a transfer via PayPal, every transaction involves a third-party processor or facilitator who manages, tracks, and reports activity to regulators according to strict policy measures.
While tight regulation may serve to ensure taxes are properly paid, it also serves to reduce competition in the market. Because of strict regulation, payment processors are few and the threat of competition is small. A January, 2021 report by Merchant Cost Consulting found the total list of direct credit card processors and acquirers at just 66 (“List of Credit Card Processing Companies 2021,” Matt Rej). However, the interlacing nature of the payment processing industry means there are also downstream and side-chain services that work together, often within exclusive ecosystems, to support online payment processing.
Once a service provider decides to drop support, whether due to company policy or capitulation to mob demands, it can be days or weeks before another payment solution can be sourced and implemented. Even worse, the forces of mob pressure and nature of low competition mean some may find themselves completely stranded with no way to receive funds in the online, global economy — a reality that conservatives Christians across the world are quickly waking up to.
The Crypto Currency Solution
Recognizing the financial risks of the U.S. Dollar, and considering the moral implications of supporting it, many turn to traditional, longstanding stores of value such as gold, silver, and other physical assets. However, those kinds of physical assets present problems to their use as an exchange of value in the modern economy that will be difficult to overcome — difficulties that will be felt hardest by those who rely on charity donations (such as global missions) where convenience of payment can more often mean the difference between a received or a lost donation.
A 2019 survey by the American Express found that 85% of consumers have abandoned an online purchase because the shopping experience was not easy enough (“Payment Method Statistics,” Jason Steele & Tamara E. Holmes). Thus, it seems fair to say that physical assets that necessitate an in-person exchange are out of the scope of reasonability for the vast majority of consumers.
Crypto currencies, however, provide an elegant solution to this problem and many more. With an infrastructure that has slowly and organically grown, and is just now ripening for use, one might reasonably claim the hand of the divine at work.
“Bitcoin allows anyone in the world to store value digitally and transact in a way that is secure, censorship-resistant, and doesn’t require permission or approval from any government, corporation, or bank” (“What is Bitcoin?” Gab News).
Bitcoin, the first and most popular crypto currency, was developed by an anonymous figure known as Satoshi, and unlike the U.S. dollar with its seemingly endlessly printed supply, is capped at a total circulation of 21 million. But the true power of bitcoin and the crypto currency revolution it has spurred is Blockchain.
Blockchain was proposed as a record keeping system as early as 1982 before being repurposed by Satoshi in the development of bitcoin. Blockchain is a database system that stores information in a chain of sequential blocks. Using cryptographic math functions, each block is immutably chained to the previous block so that validated information cannot be manipulated.
In the case of bitcoin, the information is transaction data, and the security of blockchain removes the need for a trusted intermediary to process and validate online payments. This principle is called immutability and is the first pillar of blockchain technology.
“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution…. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed…” (“Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” Satoshi Nakamoto).
The next pillar is decentralization. Once you understand immutability, you might be tempted to wonder who validates transaction data? The answer is no one, or rather, everyone. Unlike traditional finance, there is no single entity that controls bitcoin and there is no central server location where blockchain transactions are processed. This means no entity can deprive a user of the ability to exchange value through bitcoin.
Decentralization is achieved through a network of computers, or nodes, that each store a copy of the entire blockchain ledger history and compete with each other to validate new blocks of transactions and earn bitcoin, a process known as mining. Mining rewards are made up of a combination of transaction fees and new bitcoin that will slowly be released into the system by the bitcoin algorithm until the total circulation reaches 21 million.
Once a node mines a new block it broadcasts its updated blockchain to the network where it is re-validated by the remaining nodes. Anyone can connect a node to the blockchain network and begin mining for bitcoin. Currently there is estimated to be over 1,000,000 unique individuals worldwide mining for bitcoin (“How Many Bitcoins Are There? How Many Left to Mine?” Wallabit Media).
The final pillar of blockchain technology is transparency. Once created, Satoshi released the bitcoin source code to the world. It is open source and viewable by anybody. Furthermore, source, amount, and destination data of every transaction logged is public information and can be reviewed by anybody at any time. Transparency means blockchain technology does not require blind trust, and all entities are accountable to the public.
The three pillars of immutability, decentralization, and transparency create a financial alternative to the U.S. economic system that can be trusted to remain secure and censorship free. In a global economy, crypto currencies represent the best alternative to traditional fiat. But bitcoin is just the tip of the cryptocurrency iceberg, and a replacement for fiat is just the beginning.
Web 3.0 and the Blockchain Revolution
The term Web 2.0 was coined to describe the rise of user-generated content, such as blogging and social media, over the old consumer-content provider relationship that dominated the early web. Web 2.0 drastically shifted the power structure of the internet, but centrally controlled content aggregators, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, were still required to host and manage data. Blockchain represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of the internet and opens up the possibility of a fully decentralized web where users manage their own data in a system that is transparent, secure, and censorship free. The development of blockchain technology solutions and the decentralized applications (dapps) built on them are referred to as Web 3.0
“Decentralized infrastructure and application platforms will displace centralized tech giants, and individuals will be able to rightfully own their data” (“What is Web 3.0?” Charles Silver).
Etherium is an asset, like bitcoin, that is built on a blockchain network. However, Etherium expanded the use of blockchain by creating a network that is capable of handling complex data processing requests beyond simple transactions. Through the use of “smart contracts,” users can buy processing power on the Etherium network creating the first asset of its kind that can be used as both an exchange of value and a convertible resource with ease.
In a world where server power is increasingly expensive and under the control of big tech monopolies, censorship is a very real concern for all web projects. Recently, the case of Parler, an alternative social media platform, provided more than enough validation for those concerns. Following the events of the 6th, media sources claimed Parler was responsible for harboring right wing dissidents who incited violence. By the 9th, Amazon Cloud Services dropped hosting for Parler’s backend data (“Amazon drops Parler from its web hosting service, citing violent posts,” Annie Palmer). To date Parler has been unable to find an alternative hosting solution.
Thankfully, the Etherium network, and other projects like it, represent a scalable solution for web projects without concern for censorship. The ecosystem is only just emerging, but smart contract solutions are finding integration with new areas of the web every day.
A Moral Imperative
“Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you,” (2 Corinthians 6:17, ESV).
As institutions across the West seemingly act in ideological lock-step, it is apparent that a new order has emerged, and it will not rest until it has assimilated all of society to its liberal agenda. Seeking to coerce the Church into sharing its vision, the centralization of big tech and the U.S. economic system are viscous tools in their hands. Blockchain, DeFi, and their associated cryptocurrency projects represent some of the best solutions we have to maintain the autonomy of the Church within a hostile system.
In the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul teaches us to fulfill the law of Christ through the act of “bearing one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). We understand this in the context of the weight of sin, but in it we also find the principle of the mutual solidarity of Christians as one body, and one bride, striving together to perfect the love of Christ in us and to present ourselves “as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1).
Individually, we may not, and God willing, may never feel the pressure on our means of income that others face, but if our brothers and sisters are banned from doing business with the U.S. dollar, surely we have a responsibility to investigate alternative means of compensation.
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35, ESV).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was put to death in 1940s Germany for opposing the Nazi Regime. A Lutheran theologian and founding member of the confessing Church, Bonhoeffer wrote vigorously about the ethical and moral responsibility of Christians in a secular state leading up to his execution. Bonhoeffer believed that the Church should seek to obey the state, but that its true responsibility was to the people of the state. He argued that Christians had a moral imperative to act when the need grew great enough, not out of rebellion, but out of our conviction to obey the will of God. Bonhoeffer did not believe that the actions required would always be clear, but that the Church was still required to act in faith and trust that God would provide revelation.
Knowledge carries great responsibility, and we cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices of the U.S. economic system. Bonhoeffer argued that God would reveal Himself at the junction of conscious and dilemma. Finding ourselves at a similar, critical junction now, can we trust that God has revealed Himself through a viable alternative? If we recognize the existence of our moral imperative to move away from evil and towards good, then it’s time to act.
“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17, ESV).
Works Cited
“Trump Administration Rule Poised to Take a Stand against Financial Censorship.” CNSNews.com, 28 Dec. 2020.
Rej, Matt. List of Credit Card Processing Companies 2021 | Merchant Cost Consulting, 4 Mar. 2021.
Steele, Jason & Tamara E. Holmes “Payment Method Statistics.” CreditCards.com, 24 Mar. 2021.
“What Is Bitcoin?” Gab News, 8 Oct. 2019.
Nakamoto, Satoshi. Bitcoin: A Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System, 31 Oct. 2008.
“How Many Bitcoins Are There? How Many Left to Mine? (2019).” Wallabit Media, 2019.
Silver, Charles. “Council Post: What Is Web 3.0?” Forbes, 6 Jan. 2020.
Palmer, Annie. “Amazon Drops Parler from Its Web Hosting Service, Citing Violent Posts.” CNBC, 10 Jan. 2021.