A brand new environment for survival, thinking, creation, and participation.
Author: Matti, Wrong A Lot
Translation: Shan Oppa, Golden Finance
"Major advances in civilization are processes that all but destroy the societies in which they occur." — A.N. Whitehead
Face/Off
"Face/Off" is a classic film from the 1990s that tells the story of FBI agent Sean Archer who undergoes an experimental face transplant to impersonate the notorious criminal Castor Troy in order to thwart a terrorist plot. However, when Troy wakes up and assumes Archer's identity, a high-stakes game of cat and mouse ensues. Everyone is trapped in each other's bodies, struggling to reclaim their lives while navigating the opponent's existence.
As Sean Archer and Castor Troy exchange faces and subsequently lives, they concretely embody the survival dilemma of becoming the "Other." Archer struggles with the chaotic freedom brought by Troy's malevolence, while Troy revels in the orderly facade of Archer's family life.
This reversal of identity suggests that identity is performative, shaped by environment and choice rather than intrinsic essence, blurring the lines between good and evil, as everyone must confront the shadow self deep within, ultimately implying that revenge and redemption are two sides of the same coin.
The exchanged faces represent deceptive shadows that conceal deeper truths; the characters' journeys compel reflection on authenticity versus appearance, highlighting how social roles, personal trauma, and ambition can imprison the soul.
All roles imposed by norms are cages that tame human will. However, they provide stability for the functioning of society. The process of will breaking free, causing chaos, and then re-establishing stability is merely a matter of time.
Tools: The Identity Crisis in the Crypto Space
I have come to believe that technology is the matrix in which society performs. Technology creates a largely invisible environment, a network, much like a theater with its own physical and more abstract rules.
My initial exposure to the crypto space was in 2016 when I read the Ethereum white paper. For me, it represented a fundamental transformation in how human society governs itself. Later, I read Nick Szabo's thoughts on social scalability, which comprehensively summarized my fragmented ideas.
In today's discourse, blockchain is simplified to a database solution, while trust minimization is viewed as an ideology. Everyone is chasing money, but in this case, money leads to a dead end. We are slowly eroding the demand for trust minimization, first for performance, then for use cases, and ultimately to cater to any purchasing willingness from governments and corporations.
If cryptocurrency were a character in a movie, it would be the story of a tech-anarchist drug dealer who goes through a cocaine-fueled Wall Street trading career, transforms into a tech founder, and ultimately becomes a board member at JPMorgan, spending summers in the Hamptons.
The two main memes in the current crypto space summarize this sentiment. The first is "Believe in something," which essentially reflects that cryptocurrency cannot have a definitive outlook on the goals it wishes to achieve. "Something" should be understood as "nothing." Price is the only thing that matters.
The second meme is "Pragmatism above all." Centralized chains, single sorters, performance optimization, compliance with censorship, etc. Pragmatism is slowly eroding the true unique selling point of cryptocurrency—trust minimization, thereby achieving social scalability. In other words, it is about reducing reliance on trusted third parties.
This revolution seems to be truly devouring its children. Early revolutionaries have become too wealthy to care, and today they remind us of the bankers they once rebelled against. The theme of 2021 was about alternative financial tracks for France's future, while the theme of 2025 has turned into packaging trust-minimizing machines as trust-maximizing tools, seeking someone willing to pay for a pile of empty promises.
Indeed, it is all a game of trade-offs. One cannot be a decentralized fundamentalist, as that is impractical and nearly impossible to commercialize. When the pendulum swings too far toward centralization, people should realize that the entire meaning disappears, and we are peddling a financialized void. In other words, the financialization of finance. For profit's sake.
This characterizes cryptocurrency as a tool for sale, a means of hyper-financialization. But cryptocurrency is not just a tool; to understand it this way is a great misunderstanding. Cryptocurrency is an environment.
Returning to the first paragraph of this section, the matrix in which society performs has changed, and there is no turning back.
Environment: Electronic Drama
Cryptocurrency will inevitably consume everything we think makes it exist. It is not a tool—"a stock on the chain." It is entirely, absolutely a brand new environment. It is an extension and transformation of the market, an invisible environment in which we participate. I will quote McLuhan to elaborate on this:
"The interaction between new and old environments creates many problems and confusions. The main obstacle to clearly understanding the effects of new media is our deep-seated habit of viewing all phenomena from a fixed perspective."
McLuhan foresaw as early as the 1960s that print technology created the public, while electronic technology created the mass. He understood that the invisible environment was changing, and society would change accordingly, but he pointed out that official culture was struggling to force new media to do the work of old media.
We cannot expect individuals and power structures that rely on the comfortable operation of old processes to see the essence of the new environment or understand its nature.
"Poets, artists, detectives—anyone who can sharpen our perception is often anti-social; they rarely 'adapt well' and cannot go with the flow. There is often a peculiar connection among anti-social types, namely their ability to see the true nature of the environment. This need for interaction, to counter the environment with some anti-social force, is reflected in the famous story 'The Emperor's New Clothes.' The 'well-adapted' ministers, having vested interests, see the emperor dressed in finery. Meanwhile, the 'anti-social,' unaccustomed to the old environment, child clearly sees that the emperor is 'not wearing anything.' The new environment is clear to him."
Thus, cryptocurrency finds itself in a conscious, futile attempt at integration, while unconsciously, it has birthed a new world that people are slowly but surely choosing to enter. While the entire industry is busy funding machines that comply with the old order, a few users are quietly expressing dissent, living by the rules of new media.
"Young people instinctively understand the current environment—electronic drama. They live in myth and depth. This is the reason for the vast gap between generations. Wars, revolutions, civil uprisings are all interfaces in the new environment created by electronic information media."
The true adoption of cryptocurrency does not come from optimization. It stems from a desire to participate. Anyone can become a banker, and we can also argue about the boundaries that distinguish banks from exit scams and bankers from exit developers.
The internet space, especially cryptocurrency, has shifted the educational process from "packaging" to "discovery." Guidance is no longer important; manuals have become obsolete. McLuhan suggests that people reject goals and yearn to play roles. They crave a sense of participation. If this was established in the 1960s, it is even more so today.
"Our technology forces us to live in a mythical way, yet we still think in fragmented, singular, and separate levels. Myth means placing oneself in the audience, in the environment…"
The Truth of Face/Off
In the spirit of "Face/Off," cryptocurrency is facing its own identity crisis. The truly trust-minimizing environment that enhances social scalability is being challenged by widespread pragmatism or price behavior, which reduces it to a mere financial tool.
Just as Sean Archer and Castor Troy are forced to live in each other's worlds, the pioneers of cryptocurrency are now struggling against the systems they sought to disrupt, often adopting tendencies toward centralization and trust maximization, which precisely deprives them of their true essence and unique selling points.
This tension between cryptocurrency as an environment and as a tool reflects the core themes of the film: authenticity versus appearance, and the blurred lines between revolution and assimilation. This is the "deceptive shadow" that conceals the deeper truth of cryptocurrency, just as the exchanged faces in "Face/Off" hide the true identities beneath.
However, as McLuhan described, the "electronic drama" of cryptocurrency continues to unfold outside attempts to forcibly integrate it into old paradigms. While official culture (including a large part of the crypto industry itself) struggles to make new media do the work of old media, a few users are unconsciously and quietly expressing dissent, choosing to enter a new world built on different rules.
These individuals are the "anti-social children," unaccustomed to the old environment, who may have already perceived that the emperor is "not wearing anything." They represent the participation and investment that drive the true adoption of cryptocurrency, rejecting mere optimization in favor of a new mythical interaction with the internet universe at their disposal.
Ultimately, the choice of cryptocurrency, like the choices of Archer and Troy, is about confronting authenticity and embracing its transformative power. It is about understanding that cryptocurrency is not merely "stocks on the chain" or a database solution, but a fundamental change to the social matrix.
A brand new environment for survival, thinking, creation, and participation.
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