Spotify now find themselves under pressure because many artists on the platform are removing their music because they object to what they see as misinformation being purveyed on the Rogan show. They may have a point and the attempt to have him cancelled is well under way.

Why do we care? We don’t really. Other than to make the point that participation in the economy, as it is currently constructed, seems to exist at the whim of others. You can have your bank accounts closed, your business banned from the internet and your travel plans cancelled.

That is the purpose of decentralised, open-source systems. They are open to everyone and via cryptography you can outright control your own assets and that cannot be taken away from you. It is a profound step forward for property rights, which matter a lot. Increasingly there is a risk that if you think or say or do the wrong thing, then the consequences can be enormous, rightly or wrongly. In effect, you can be excluded from the economy.

This use case for digital assets isn’t given enough credit. Who else is really working towards the enhancement of property rights? It seems to me most governments around the world are working to remove them.

Consider inflation. It is a direct attack on your property rights, you have absolutely no control over the number of currency units in existence in your country. While those units increased enormously over the last three years, your property has been debased, effectively taken from you. It is remarkable that people rarely forget to lock their front door at night but don’t even blink when the government tells them their inflation target is 2%.

As for Rogan, should the campaign to remove him from Spotify be successful then he will go from being the biggest podcaster in the world (on Spotify), to just the biggest podcaster in the world.

Still, this kind of activity builds out the case for decentralised platforms. Property rights are the foundation of modern economies, the more they are eroded the slower growth goes. There aren’t many things you can outright own and control yourself, it is massively powerful technology, and the government knows it. It is possibly one of the few areas where governments are in front of populations in their tactical thinking, mostly because they have had access to cryptography for a lot longer than everyone else.

Visa

For the first time, bitcoin’s annual settled value exceeded that of Visa. In 2021, over $12 trillion was settled on the network. There are significant differences though, Visa being vastly more used for smaller items and day to day transactions, bitcoin for much higher value settlements.

Nonetheless, the numbers are on the bitcoin blockchain, they are provable and they exceed Visa, American Express and every other major credit card.

We might ask why that is and the answer is rather simple. Bitcoin is cheap, secure and convenient taking only 0.01% of the settlement value in fees against 0.22% for Visa. A 20-fold difference in price.

The promoted consensus as far as bitcoin is concerned remains that “nobody uses it”. Here’s an extract from an article on Livewire this week.

That bitcoin isn’t used just is not true. It is now widely used across the world and that usage is growing very quickly. Particularly in poorer countries with weaker currencies.

What’s more, stablecoins are approaching $200 billion in circulation which if it were a currency unit would be the 35th largest in the world, ranking alongside the Danish Krone and the New Zealand dollar. Bitcoin itself ranks 14th, in front of the Russian ruble and slightly behind the Swiss Franc.

ETH 2.0….now called “consensus layer”