Here’s why it’s a good thing – Cointelegraph Magazine

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Blockchains provide an anonymous and trustless intermediary for objective transactional actions, putting the transfer of wealth in the hands of the individual and out of centralized control.

This, unsurprisingly, has worked on the toes of a number of governments. To make matters worse, supporting this technology can be misinterpreted as taking a stand against your home country and can pose a huge risk to someone’s reputation. So what can we do about it?

An exciting phenomenon that has surfaced over the years in blockchain culture is the choice to use an alias or pseudonym while using the internet as a digital profile with no connection to your real identity, often more hidden behind a VPN. This has resulted in a strange phenomenon where the most credible information now comes from various animal avatars or obscure anime references.

To an outsider, or normal, it would seem quite irrational to seek information from individuals who do not have some form of verification in the real world. However, there are a growing number of people who believe that the days of your real identity or bag of meat are numbered.

Here’s why that could be a really good thing.

Give a voice to the voiceless

Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say Edward snowden

It should be understood that these online characters seen on Twitter are not anonymous, and instead, as observed by Balaji Srinivasan, these aliases are pseudonyms. Completely anonymous users seen on websites like 4chan care less about building a reputation. This is where pseudonymous profiles come in handy in cases where they can build a reputation around their alias online, regardless of their reputation in the real world. The obvious advantages of independent reputable personalities may not be as relevant in Western societies as they are in more speech-restrictive countries like China or the more obvious and harsh example of North Korea.

Ukrainian-American actor Yakov Smirnoff sums it up brilliantly: in Soviet Russia, his freedom of expression. In America, it is freedom after speech. In an age of political correctness and hypersensitivity, saying the wrong thing can cause you to lose your job and permanently damage your reputation, and in more totalitarian countries the consequences of crossing the line can be much worse. To exacerbate this risk, interactions on social networks are immortalized and can return to punish individuals years later.

Balaji also emphasizes the cost of your reputation: your bank account is stored wealth. Your real name is the stored reputation. Only you can debit your bank account. Anyone can claim your reputation. Blockchain has now not only provided a safe place to store value, but allowing anonymity is now also a safe haven for your speech and ideas detached from the vulnerability of real-world reputation.

The end of the prison of social normality

Social media used to be about everyone who knew you as someone you’re not, but using a social media alias is like being you without anyone knowing.

The majority of social media searches that don’t have questionable credibility (i.e. anxiety, to name a few. However, it should be noted that when asked if individuals would give up social media, the question often only arises for large sums of money.Why does something that responds to such a strong unconscious desire to be connected have such devastating effects on our mental well-being?

Part of that reason is due to the nature of social media and the type of behavior it encourages. Social media is much less of a social media and more of a social comparison platform. A particular phenomenon of ghost users, individuals who frequent these different platforms but never publish or interact with content, is easily observed and common on social networks.

Acting like a ghost, always there but out of sight of others. This behavior could be argued as an unconscious response from the individual to understand what current social norms are, with the intention of better facilitating your actions to be more in line with what is normal.

While we are likely to behave primarily online in the ways that individuals find most accepted, we live with a philosophy opposite to that of mindfulness. This is why the crypto culture of aliases is so exciting. It empowers a new form of social media, which actually promotes sociability by removing the barrier of social comparison.

The rise of autistic people

What would happen if the autism gene were removed from the gene pool? You would have a group of people standing in a cave, chatting and socializing, doing nothing. Grandin Temple

An interesting and revealing observation found in crypto culture is the use of the term autistic. This familiar usage is a revised definition of the traditional understanding of autism. In crypto, calling someone autistic is usually meant with positive connotations yet another reflection of the new social structure that blockchain culture provides. This new definition of autism generally refers to objective thinking without taking into account social normality.

Online personas provide a layer of anonymity that can eliminate the intimidation and prejudice seen many times in real-world social interactions. Without anyone in particular to judge or compare you to, all you have left is the content of the communicated message. This makes it harder, especially more than ever, to slander an individual because of an irrelevant characteristic about their physique or even their past.

One avenue for research into online culture might be to study the parallels between the behavior of individuals who spend a lot of time using objective coding language and relying on what is meant by left brain thought (logical and rationality) or straight (creativity and abstraction).

The last line of defense

A unique and revolutionary aspect of blockchain technology comes from its ability to allow complete anonymity. As I’m sure readers know, actions on the blockchain are encrypted and stored on multiple devices or nodes across the planet, behind a fairly sophisticated private key function. Although these interactions are public, it is almost impossible to distinguish the individual behind the interaction.

The multitude of data breaches in recent years on centralized platforms demonstrates that technology was the weak link in data security. Blockchain offers a promise of security that has never been available before. However, now that technology is no longer the weak link, the bad actors must target the next weak link in the chain: the user.

The technology can be as secure as it wants, but whoever has access to it will still be vulnerable to hacking via the $ 5 key method, a term popularized by the XKCD comics for hitting someone on the head. with a key until he gives up their private key. A number of exchanges currently require Know Your Customer, or KYC, verification. Therefore, it is especially important to protect your actual identity associated with your Exchange account.

However, aliasing culture can provide some solace, as the barrier between user and character makes it difficult for potential attackers to easily identify and locate victims.

Self liberation

The start of a great day begins the night before Sukant Ratnakar

Overall, online personas can reduce freedom to the notion of free speech. Speech is a freedom that has long been criticized since the rise of government-regulated political correctness. An online character removes the chains of social normality. In the absence of an identifiable human user, the risk of being dubbed an outcast becomes inconsequential. This security allows autistic people, once ostracized, to demonstrate their unrealized potential on a large scale. Online personas have paved the way for objective conversations by removing outdated potholes of archaic socio-psychological tendencies. Additionally, using an online character puts yet another layer of security between users’ interactions with the world and the value they have stored in blockchains.

Blockchain cultures have never really cared about traditional norms; they never needed it. One amazing thing about mathematics is that it is the language of the universe. You cannot introduce social prejudices to prove that mathematics is wrong. If that’s right, it just is, and it doesn’t matter whether someone agrees or not. I would say this has been an unspoken philosophy of blockchain technology from day one.

Once we take out the bad actors and the wrong influences such as social conditioning, the cream rises to the top. The users who can deliver the most value are important regardless of their social position in the meat space. The blockchain movement has always been about liberation, a digital revolution that cannot be stopped. Freedom of systemic control of your wealth, freedom of systemic regulation of your speech and finally, freedom of your physical identity.

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