I could have been a bitcoin millionaire.

I know, I know everyone says that. “If only”. I mean it literally. I had the opportunity, the capital, the time and resources. I saw the value and the earning potential. I chose not to make that investment.

A friend who was in the tech space, who invested in travel, alcohol and toys, and as such, didn’t have much in the way of capital, was beside himself at the prospect of securing my participation in setting up a bitcoin mining operation in a warehouse space I had recently secured, encouraging me to invest a steady influx of the $3500 a week I was turning over in the bitcoin mining hardware he was able to source, to accumulate, over the course of 6 months, a very healthy mining operation.

He laid out the potential for securing this increasingly rare commodity in the early stages, to sell later as people sought to get into the cryptocurrency scene. I saw the potential, and having felt the desire to break away from conventional economic models myself, I could see the appeal.

But to take advantage of the opportunity would require crossing a self-imposed moral boundary. I could not take part in an activity that amounted to self-enrichment through participation in establishing barriers to entry. The barrier to entry being, the early adoption, and mass securing, of bitcoin, to control access to those who similarly saw the opportunity to experience a departure from the standard economic models.

The other thing that became more obvious to me the longer I followed cryptocurrency on and off, was that there was no way it was what it proposed to be. There was no way it could be, with the architecture and philosophy that it spawned from. Sure, it was a breakaway from the contemporary monetary system, but it was itself, another fiat system that relied on the same speculative model to determine value.

The principle of decentralization was something I adored the first moment I discovered it, and I am critical of models that promise decentralized control structures, because I desire a truly decentralized model. I didn’t see that with bitcoin. I saw, instantiated in the architecture, the capacity for capture, and control, of the “market” by any suitably backed individual or collective.

We are seeing the emergence of this very thing into the crypto space now with Facebook and Libre, backed by the big money players. Yes, there are arguments to be made that Libre isn’t cryptocurrency, but the capacity to capture mass control of the economic system remains to some degree that doesn’t sit well with me.

The Other Decentralized Game.

Game B is in a similar position. I am not convinced that Game B can yet live up to it’s own promises. The main promise is that it will eventually emerge to replace Game A, or conventional competitive models of behaviour.

Maybe I have both crypto and Game B all wrong, but it seems, at least in the majority and mainstream, to be competing for control of the narrative, and, more specifically, access through technological architecture and lexical gate-keeping. To play the Sense-making Game, you have to make sense to the self-appointed sense-makers.

Play Game B for fun and, more importantly, profit.

But I have hope far beyond what this piece might inspire one to believe.

In the same sense that I am finding an awful lot of the desired requirements for a truly decentralized economic system emerging in Holochain, I am also finding an awful lot of eschewing of what seems like speculative marketing of Game B control and influence systems, with truly emergent sense-making occurring.

I am loathe to think of things in the language of conflict and competition, so I’ll try out another framework for what I am seeing…

I see Two Methods. Two alternate paths into the future.

One being that of trade-offs, obligation, indebtedness and reliance, open to all, at a price.

The other is investment in collective well-being, emergent trends and support, open to all that share a desire for a degree of freedom not otherwise afforded.

Where one method will seek to become more broadly appealing, but narrower ideologically over time, the other will become more refined but more broadly exploratory of ideas.

I’m increasingly hopeful as I see this refinement emerge, and separate from the need to be broadly appealing.

It’s the differentiation from the old method I was waiting for.