Crypto has failed

It was supposed to be a tool used to enhance our freedoms. Instead, it has extracted wealth and eroded trust through unregulated financial products. If you maintain a tunnel and it's used to help free slaves or as part of a resistance movement, you should keep doing so. If the tunnel is used to traffic children and weapons for cartels, you should probably stop maintaining the tunnel.

It's noble to want a tunnel that's not racist and doesn't charge exorbitant fees. That might have been the original goal. But somewhere along the way, the tunnel became neutral toward the goal and even the people who built it.

This book is that story.

Through vivid stories and personal examples, the book explores how the hypermarket structures of crypto have failed time and again to provide real utility to the societies they interact with.

This is the insider critique of the economic underpinnings of the entire crypto industry. It shows that neutrality and financialization are failures. Hinting at broader political lessons, the question is not whether crypto has failed, but what we can learn about markets, money, and the systems we're building next.