Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. (Stephen King)

I admit, I have no idea how cryptocurrencies work, how they are traded and, more importantly, how they are created. To my simple mind, it is impossible to envision how something can be created from thin air, with a huge amount of energy consumption, and then attributed or assigned a certain value. A value that, then, goes up or down depending on how skillful the trader is to convert it into something real (objects, services, real money) or sell it as fast as possible for a profit. For me, crypto is a “nothing” that produces “something”, and a similarity to a Ponzi scheme can’t get out of my mind, since I know that “something” can’t be created from “nothing” and, at some point, many are going to lose and few are going to win. For this reason, I stayed and keep staying away from everything crypto, although I frequently encounter various news about this stuff.

For some time people talk about cryptocurrencies and describe them as the basis for a new social network, “the new big thing” that is going to follow after the obvious failure of virtual reality and the likely failure of the artificial intelligence. People are praising crypto for its lack of regulation, for the ease of transfer, for the fact that it is not politically or ideologically controlled. In their view, crypto is a tool for democracy, freedom (or liberation from the tyranny of the System, including the recent “tariffs” debate) and a cool way to get some passive income by outsmarting the others. People tend to forget that unregulated systems or structures (that is, no police or army to do the gatekeeping, safeguarding or lawfulness reinforcement) are practically anarchic jungles where you can be scammed (by anonymous bots, and then good luck finding the culprit!) and lose all your money (or worse, get yourself fined or imprisoned for fraud). The reverse of excessive freedom is the disappearance of the rule of law and of the certitudes linked to life and its predictability; it is cool, it is exciting, but are you prepared to take the risks? And how much are you prepared to lose? In other words, how much of a gamer are you, beneath your social mask?

What I keep pondering on for some time is this: crypto as a social network. Social network for what? And how is “socializing” going to happen? People are going to talk about money/crypto, right? How to create them, how to manage them, what’s the smartest way to get rich with little effort, what are the latest technologies, where are the best places to get more money. Great! And then what? I understand: it’s all about money and getting rich. But then, what are those people going to do with the money they earn, provided they earn something?

Suppose you get a huge amount of bitcoin, an amount that you manage to convert into goods (house, car, experiences, etc.). Then… where’s the socializing? Many people are going to admire/envy you, follow you, hoping they will join you, right? And where’s the relationship, where is the exchange, where is the “social” beyond mutual envy/admiration?!? How do you “encounter” the other on a deeper level?!? ‘Cause I don’t get it!

Philosophically, and also psychologically, people are defined either by “what they have” or by “what they are”. When you are defined by the verb “have”, it is likely that you’re coming from a personal background characterized by “lacking something”, by scarcity (material poverty that you try to compensate by having more and showing it, emotional shortages that you try to compensate with material goods or social status aiming to get you the love, attention or significance that you lacked in your early years, and so on). When you are defined by the verb “be”, you could also come from a traumatic experience in your early life (you struggle to be someone, an individual with a distinct identity, someone that needs to be acknowledged, for instance if you belong to a family with a lot of children or an horizontal and uniform community), but you are also likely to be a normal human being who needs to express his/her/their individuality, hence needing to be “in a certain way”. “Being” is a flourishing mentality, sometimes described by “individuation” or “personal development” or the “thriving mode”, by contrast with the “scarcity/survival mode” of the “Having”.

Now, going back to crypto: as interesting as it is to own or trade electronic money, I can’t avoid to think about this entire subject as being more an obsession linked to “having”, rather than a personal development and an enhancing of personally “being” somehow. And the greed (and the projected superiority) I see when it comes to crypto also suggests the overuse of the scarcity mode.

Things to ponder on:

1. What is “social” in the entire cryptocurrency realm, apart from the shared obsession to get rich?
2. Are you mostly in the thriving mode (being) or in the scarcity more (having) throughout your typical day?
3. How does “the gamer in you” (or the addict) feel about trying crypto? Can you feel the itch?