These Anarchists Want to Destroy the Dollar with Crypto

We all have our interests!

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Just a coupla dudes, trying to destroy the dollar.

As CNBC reports, the crypto-anarchist movement is alive and well in Prague, where an outfit dubbed Paralelní Polis — which translates to the extremely-crypto-bro-coded "Parallel World" — promises to do away with digital censorship, reclaim and protect personal data from the "State and corporations," and, one day, do away with the American dollar (in favor of crypto). The group even has a designated and aptly named Institute of Cryptoanarchy, where they recruit new anarchists to the cause through the gospel of The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto. We all have our hobbies!

"New technology brings the possibility of choice — we are in a time that is defined by The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," reads the webpage for the Institute. "With a fast internet connection, reliable anonymity and decentralized currency, you preserve freedom which we have been losing as a society."

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And yet: Polis makes some interesting points, particularly when it comes to their hard lines data and privacy. There are legitimate critiques to be had about our global financial system, most notably, the fact that it's reliant on middlemen, and those middlemen — banks, insurers, exchanges — can fail (see: 2008). As the general logic of decentralized finance goes, removing meddling institutional middlemen and government regulation could result in disseminating (to the general population) the power those institutions once held.

In short: Destroy the dollar, and in theory, the people gain more autonomy. In their Manifesto, the anarchists liken this to nothing less than the advent of the printing press.

"Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure," the Manifesto proclaims, "so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions."

The group also appears to have some notable allies; ETHPrague, for instance, was held this year at the operation's headquarters. And, per CNBC, Polis franchises have opened in Vienna, Barcelona, and two other Slavik cities.

But democratizing written knowledge and absolutely obliterating global financial systems are, of course, very different things, with very different consequences. Financial regulations — if often flawed and porous — exist for a reason, and if we learned anything from the year 2022, it's that decentralized finance can very easily be taken advantage of; last year's crypto crash caused a trillion dollars to effectively vaporize, and when it did, an incredible amount of harm was done to countless real people's bank accounts. At least for the time being, take crypto-anarchism's promises with a hefty pinch of salt.

More on crypto: The Feds Are Now Using Crypto to Catch Drug Traffickers