The other day I was zapping on that archaic object that is television and I came across the well-known film saga: "The Pirates of the Caribbean", one of my favorites.
After I was spellbound, I had a reflection that goes beyond Johnny Depp and his alter ego, Captain Jack Sparrow. The reflection was to realize that the global audience is seriously making parallels between the world of cryptocurrencies, its users and the world of pirates and buccaneers of yesteryear.
But on what do I base my arguments? Why do I say that they try to compare us with these sailors, horrifying the average user with accusations that leave our activities at a reprehensible level, comparable to money laundering, theft and modern acts of piracy on the east coast of Africa?
The answer is very simple: governments are afraid of cryptocurrencies and how they work. They fear having zero influence over them and fear even more that the adoption rate of blockchain wallets will grow day by day. But today I don't want to focus on this point.
What I want to highlight today is the most romantic and idealistic part of my thought. Which we could name as the affable side of the coin (a metaphor that, if you allow me, I think fits perfectly with pirates, treasures and cryptocurrencies):
Why was this reflection funny to me? Why did I identify with pirates and I think it is an appropriate comparison? For a profound reason: our ambiguous relationship with the growth of the modern bureaucratic state, in which social behavior is so regulated that the unlimited freedom, represented by pirates, is attractive.
Let's face it, we all love the idea of financial freedom. From a very young age (or at least I) we have idolized those people who had the freedom to do whatever they wanted. That's why we are so drawn to gunmen from cowboy movies, Prohibition-era gangsters, medieval knights, and even space smuggler Han Solo from Star Wars.
Those subversive swordsmen, gunmen, and dandies were less serious than many movie heroes, and thus more attractive. But the fascination and parallelism with the pirate goes further: His Golden Age appeared just when the legal forms of sovereignty and international trade agreements were developing and that implied an increase in statutory, social and moral restrictions on the expression of Being. Do you see where I am going?
Many pirates, refused to return to the relentless and brutal hierarchy of the Royal Navy, the merchant marine or even civilian life. And instead, they lived by a completely different code of honor.
Those pirate codes can be read as a communiqué from an anarchist community, with collective decision-making, without hierarchy, elected leaders, and an equitable distribution of labor and profits.
And, in addition, all that seasoned with a lot of rum.
That is why, in a society in which ways to achieve riches that are based on lies and deception are sold so that the average user which helps to feed a system that favors the usual, cryptocurrencies can mark a turning point. They can be the ultimate tool to break this vicious cycle.
I simply wanted to share this thought with you and encourage you to continue navigating this sea of opportunities that is presented to us. For the first time in many years, the ordinary man will be able to pioneer this new economic paradigm that is opening up to us. Let's be sailors of honor and as our old friend Captain Jack Sparrow would say:
Take what you can,
Give nothing back!