The mainstream adoption of crypto from 2020 to 2022 left a lot of people disillusioned. Libertarians included. What started as a movement about monetary sovereignty became dominated by big money and corporate interests, along with some cringe-inducing celebrity endorsements. The values that originally made cryptoassets exciting — individual sovereignty, decentralization, resistance to authority — got diluted in the rush toward mass adoption. It’s understandable why many of our political clique tuned out entirely.
But to continue doing so would be a mistake.
Libertarians were some of crypto’s earliest champions for good reason. We understood that Bitcoin represented something profound: the separation of money from state control. Here was digital cash that no central bank could debase with quantitative easing, no government could freeze, no payment processor could censor. It embodied the cypherpunk dream of cryptography as a shield for individual liberty.
This brings us to our current problem. Big Tech’s stranglehold on our digital lives represents one of the gravest threats to individual liberty in our time. A handful of companies control how billions of people communicate, shop, work, and think. They wield this power with minimal accountability, often in service of political agendas that many reject. To a degree, Facebook decides what you can say, Amazon decides what you can sell, PayPal decides who you can pay, and Apple decides what apps you can install. These companies become chokepoints that governments and activists can pressure to enforce their preferred outcomes.
The pandemic years thrust crypto into the mainstream, but also turned it into a sideshow that obscured its deeper purpose. Lockdowns meant stimulus checks, and suddenly it felt like everyone with a phone or a laptop was day-trading dog coins. DeFi Summer promised riches. NFT art sold for millions. Elon Musk tweeted Dogecoin to 70 cents, then called it a “hustle” on Saturday Night Live. When retail investors piled in chasing quick profits, the technology’s potential got lost in the noise. Then came the inevitable crash. Terra Luna collapsed. Celsius froze withdrawals. Three Arrows Capital imploded. FTX turned out to be a fraud that stole billions in customer funds. The whole thing felt divorced from the original values that motivated cryptocurrency’s creation, all while co-opting the language and values that birthed it.
Yet throughout crypto’s mainstream evolution, the cypherpunks — the cryptographers and privacy advocates who originally built these systems — kept working in the background. They’ve been developing zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a cryptographic breakthrough that allows you to prove you know something without revealing what it is. This technology addresses two fundamental problems that Bitcoin’s creators always acknowledged: the network’s limited transaction capacity and its lack of true privacy. While institutions co-opted the narrative, the builders were staying true to crypto’s foundational principles.
Beyond Digital Money
We recently celebrated Ethereum’s tenth birthday in July. A decade on from its launch as the world’s first programmable blockchain — a digital ledger that can run software applications, not just record transactions like Bitcoin — we’re finally seeing its true potential emerge. Not as a get-rich-quick scheme, but as infrastructure for a more decentralized internet.
For the beginners, Web3 is a software paradigm that includes blockchains instead of centralized servers. Think of it as the next evolution of the internet, where applications are built on open protocols rather than controlled by single companies. Your data lives on networks you help secure, not in Big Tech’s walled gardens.
This matters enormously for liberty. Traditional software concentrates power in the hands of platform owners. Blockchain-based software works differently. Because the code runs across thousands of computers (or “nodes”) instead of one company’s servers, no single entity can shut it down or change the rules arbitrarily. Users can own their accounts and data. Developers can’t be de-platformed. Communities can fork the code — copy it and create their own version — if they disagree with its direction.
We’re seeing this play out in practice. Decentralized social networks like Farcaster let you post without fear of algorithmic suppression or account suspension. Your followers belong to you, not to the platform. Decentralized storage networks like Filecoin and Arweave preserve data permanently, beyond the reach of content moderators or server shutdowns. Decentralized finance lets you trade, lend, and invest without intermediaries who might freeze your assets (although governments around the world are still trying).
The Infrastructure Is Coming
The infrastructure is getting real. Ethereum’s scaling solutions — networks layered on top of the main blockchain that process transactions faster and cheaper — now handle hundreds of transactions per second at pennies per transaction, faster than Visa. That’s fast and cheap enough to support mainstream applications. Transaction fees that once cost tens of dollars now cost a tiny fraction of that.
Meanwhile, the regulatory picture has clarified dramatically. Major institutions from BlackRock to JPMorgan to Google are joining the industry in various ways, the EU & other big jurisdictions have comprehensive crypto regulations, and central banks are piloting digital currencies. This isn’t the Wild West anymore, and this presents an unprecedented opportunity for those of libertarian values to shape what our next technological era looks like.
Crypto offers a path out of the Big Tech trap. Not through regulation or antitrust action but through technological alternatives that make centralized control impossible. When software runs on public blockchains, it belongs to everyone and no one and therefore users regain sovereignty over their digital lives.
This goes far beyond internet money, though that remains important. We’re talking about preserving the possibility of free expression, free commerce, and free association, and ensuring that tomorrow’s internet serves human flourishing rather than corporate profits and government control.
The speculation will come and go but the technology will endure. For libertarians who value voluntary cooperation over coercive authority, decentralized software represents the most promising development in decades. It’s too important to dismiss because of a few bad actors or market bubbles.
Zero-knowledge proofs and the cypherpunks’ patient work are finally delivering on crypto’s original promise. We’re entering an era of truly private, scalable, decentralized software that embodies libertarian principles in practice, not just theory. The infrastructure is ready, the technology works, and the builders who never lost sight of the mission are shipping solutions. To libertarians: our time is coming.
This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the magazine as a whole. SpeakFreely is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions. Support freedom and independent journalism by donating today.
