Centralized systems are easy to control, while decentralized systems are not. Take into consideration a recent development with the gaming distributor Steam removing thousands of games containing NSFW (but legal) material after being pressured by credit card companies Visa and Mastercard to do so or risk losing ability to have customers’ payments processed through them.

Visa and Mastercard were applying this pressure in turn in response to special interests group Collective Shout asking them to do so. Therefore it was not the payment processors who wanted Steam content censored but they merely played the centralized intermediaries being leveraged as common middlemen to transactions on Steam. Steam could not afford to lose Visa and Mastercard payment processing and therefore complied with the demand for games to be dropped from their catalog.

This is a major concern that markets can be manipulated by applying social or political pressure against monopolies to enforce a specific groups’ desires. Not upholding a specific law but simply bowing to the demands of a vociferous minority. It remains to be seen whether this move will be reversed based on outcry from the gaming community, but that it was done at all paints a bleak picture for the future of free speech in the USA and anywhere else where it’s embraced if this kind of pressure from people who aren’t even direct stakeholders in a market can bend it to their will.

Crypto is a decentralized form of monetary exchange. No one entity can prohibit or promote its use in specific ways. If Valve already accepted crypto payments and the vast majority of Steam customers used that payment method, there would be no issue as nobody could pressure the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, or other widely used cryptos into pressuring Steam to do anything special for them.

Similar issues are seen with banking restrictions on funds being exchanged between certain countries. For example, in the US banking system there are several countries designated too risky to allow the exchange of funds to them, due to a higher presence of terrorist or other politically undesirable forces in those places. But imagine someone in the US trying to send funds to a family member in that place to help them escape, trying to directly support a local resistance group fighting against a dominant force of ill, or funding alternative media in that country to spread a counter to the local propaganda. Such causes are only a small fraction of good uses for monetary exchange and yet they are blocked by blanket restrictions made possible through centralization. Crypto does not suffer from such restrictions.

Banks can even slow down or stop normal domestic fund transfers that they deem unusual or suspicious based purely on account usage patterns of the individual. Whether higher amounts or higher frequencies than usual, these transactions are routinely flagged by risk assessment algorithms and put through manual review before being allowed. Such measures are not seen in the crypto space, as all transactions are cleared as promptly as possible without any arbitrary treatment of them. Sometimes there may be practical limitations of minimum or maximum supported amounts by certain platforms supporting crypto, but these are much broader than those seen in the traditional banking system.

Centralized systems are easy to control, while decentralized systems are not. Take into consideration a recent development with the gaming distributor Steam removing thousands of games containing NSFW (but legal) material after being pressured by credit card companies Visa and Mastercard to do so or risk losing ability to have customers’ payments processed through them.

Visa and Mastercard were applying this pressure in turn in response to special interests group Collective Shout asking them to do so. Therefore it was not the payment processors who wanted Steam content censored but they merely played the centralized intermediaries being leveraged as common middlemen to transactions on Steam. Steam could not afford to lose Visa and Mastercard payment processing and therefore complied with the demand for games to be dropped from their catalog.

This is a major concern that markets can be manipulated by applying social or political pressure against monopolies to enforce a specific groups’ desires. Not upholding a specific law but simply bowing to the demands of a vociferous minority. It remains to be seen whether this move will be reversed based on outcry from the gaming community, but that it was done at all paints a bleak picture for the future of free speech in the USA and anywhere else where it’s embraced if this kind of pressure from people who aren’t even direct stakeholders in a market can bend it to their will.

Crypto is a decentralized form of monetary exchange. No one entity can prohibit or promote its use in specific ways. If Valve already accepted crypto payments and the vast majority of Steam customers used that payment method, there would be no issue as nobody could pressure the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, or other widely used cryptos into pressuring Steam to do anything special for them.

Similar issues are seen with banking restrictions on funds being exchanged between certain countries. For example, in the US banking system there are several countries designated too risky to allow the exchange of funds to them, due to a higher presence of terrorist or other politically undesirable forces in those places. But imagine someone in the US trying to send funds to a family member in that place to help them escape, trying to directly support a local resistance group fighting against a dominant force of ill, or funding alternative media in that country to spread a counter to the local propaganda. Such causes are only a small fraction of good uses for monetary exchange and yet they are blocked by blanket restrictions made possible through centralization. Crypto does not suffer from such restrictions.

Banks can even slow down or stop normal domestic fund transfers that they deem unusual or suspicious based purely on account usage patterns of the individual. Whether higher amounts or higher frequencies than usual, these transactions are routinely flagged by risk assessment algorithms and put through manual review before being allowed. Such measures are not seen in the crypto space, as all transactions are cleared as promptly as possible without any arbitrary treatment of them. Sometimes there may be practical limitations of minimum or maximum supported amounts by certain platforms supporting crypto, but these are much broader than those seen in the traditional banking system.