American Gods

This is fourth or fifth time I've used Neil Gaiman as the touchstone for an Epsilon Theory note, but it's okay because he's that good. Plus there's Ian McShane in the TV version of American Gods, who is also that good. So don't @me.

On the surface, American Gods is a fantasy story about Norse gods looking for a comeback, wrapped up in a Gaiman-esque history lesson about the origins of the Easter Bunny myth and the like. Think Joseph Campbell meets Steven Spielberg, which is ... pretty high praise when you think about it. But what American Gods is really about, and hence the title, is that our modern attitudes and practices toward the Big Ideas that dominate our personal and social lives, memes like Cancer! and The Market! and National Security!, are EXACTLY like the attitudes and practices non-modern humans had towards Hades and Hermes and Mars. Not kinda sorta like. Not metaphor or simile like. EXACTLY like. We build exactly the same temples, except we call them hospitals and exchanges and TSA checkpoints. We say exactly the same prayers of propitiation, except we call them mammograms and technical analysis and deterrence theory. We have exactly the same professional priestly castes to guide the allocation of our worshipful tithes, except we call them health insurers and economists and lieutenant colonels.

Did you know that there are tens of thousands active-duty colonels and lieutenant colonels in the US armed forces? There's a statutory max of 650 active-duty generals, in case you were wondering. I find this a fascinating statistic. But I digress.

Cancer! IS a death god. The Market! IS a commerce god. National Security! IS a war god.

I'm willing to wager a large sum that every single person reading this note has said a silent prayer asking for the favor for one of these gods at some point in his or her life.

There's an Epsilon Theory note published on all this a few years ago, called Magical Thinking. It's one of my all-time faves, and I think you'll find it worth your time.

Every idea has a story, but the story is not the idea.

Stories change with the times. They are born, they live, and they die. But if the idea is powerful enough - if it's a Big Idea like death or commerce or war - then the idea can survive the lifecycle of its story. It can find a NEW story and be reborn.

For the past two years, the idea of crypto has been wrapped in the story of Price.

Price is one of the Old Stories, one of the most powerful and certainly the most seductive. I completely understand why so many crypto adherents came to their faith through the allure of Price, and I completely understand why Bitcoin Maximalists and the various Hodler denominations - like all millenarian sects - will never believe that Price has deserted them.

But Price is also the most fickle of the Old Stories. It has a very short lifecycle in any single host, and it survives parasitically by sucking out the life in one idea and moving on to the next. Just follow the raccoons if you want to know where Price is hanging out.

I think you can find Price over in the cannabis aisle of the meme supermarket today.

Crypto needs a new story.

Or rather, it needs a better Old Story.

I think that better Old Story is small-l liberalism. I think it's an autonomy of mind. It think it's Clear Eyes and Full Hearts. I think it's the Old Story of Liberty and Justice for All.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Kiva, Sierra Leone and U.N. agencies partner to implement ‘credit bureau of the future’

An exciting new partnership between Kiva, Sierra Leone and U.N. agencies is set to bring a nationwide digital identification system to the people of Sierra Leone that is designed to provide citizens with formal identity and control over their own credit information.

Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio announced the initiative, which could be a promising new model for global financial inclusion, during his address to the Sept. 27, 2018, U.N General Assembly.

The centerpiece of the partnership is the new Kiva Protocol, which will create and establish a national digital identification system using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The system will help ensure that every citizen in Sierra Leone has secure and complete ownership of their personal data and information, with the ultimate goal of helping people access the financial services they need.

“Sierra Leone will now modernize its Credit Reference Bureau and radically transform its financial inclusion landscape,” President Maada Bio said of the partnership during his U.N. address.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund and the U.N. Development Programme are partners on the project.

“Through this implementation, Sierra Leone is setting out to build one of the most advanced, secure credit bureaus,” said Xavier Michon, Deputy Executive Secretary of UNCDF. “It could serve as a model for both developing and developed nations in the future.”

Globally, 1.7 billion adults are unbanked and unable to access the financial services they need to improve their lives and their families’ futures. Two of the major barriers to accessing financial services are a lack of formal identification and a lack of verifiable credit history.

The new Kiva Protocol is designed to address these barriers by issuing digital identification to all citizens and enabling formal and informal financial institutions to contribute to a person’s verifiable credit history.

Currently, unbanked people cannot leverage financial transactions from the ‘informal economy,’ such as credit with a local shopkeeper, to build their credit history. The Kiva Protocol will capture a wide range of financial transactions—from bank loans to credit with a local shopkeeper—to help people access the financial services they need, including loans for businesses, education or basic medical services.      

Kiva is building the system that will record these transactions using distributed ledger technology. For 13 years, Kiva has worked to provide financial access to the unbanked and underserved, becoming a trusted name with strong partnerships across the global microfinance industry. We identified that a systems-level change in identification and credit history has the potential to unlock massive amounts of capital for the populations they serve, so began the hunt for a solution.

“With this partnership in Sierra Leone, we hope to carve a path to a system of global identity and federated credit history,” said Kiva CEO Neville Crawley. “This can unlock capital for the populations who need it most, allowing lenders to massively increase services and the flow of funds to the world’s unbanked.” Rollout of the Sierra Leone project is planned for 2019, after continued ongoing implementation discussions.

For more information, visit kiva.org/protocol

What's the crypto connection here?

The Kiva protocol is built on distributed ledger technology (DLT), which is the broad category of decentralized database structures that includes the more well-known blockchain technology that underpins Bitcoin. So when I say "blockchain not Bitcoin", that's shorthand for "DLT without a monetary application."

DLT is a data infrastructure model that is in direct opposition to the far more common centralized database model. The centralized model is far more common because it can be directly controlled by a central authority. Like Google. Like the Chinese government.

DLT is a revolutionary tool to promote liberty and justice for all, because it is impossible for a government to edit or shut down a well-implemented, well-distributed ledger.

DLT is a viable tool to promote liberty and justice for all, because, at least in this case, it is not directly threatening the State by trying to BE money.

There's another crypto connection here, too. A language connection. The Kiva protocol is built on a cryptographic personal identifier, which means that each individual controls the release of his or her credit history. This is crypto as in "cryptographic", not crypto as in "cryptocurrency". You may think this is beside the point. You may think that a language connection is small beer. It's not. When you look at the history of how Big Ideas merge and transform over time, particularly how religious ideas merge and transform over time (and if you don't recognize that both crypto and small-l liberalism are religions, you're just not paying attention), appropriating language and ritual is critically important. Read American Gods if you don't believe me.

The Kiva protocol is for the unbanked, the hundreds of millions of people around the world who do not have easy access to the monetary goodies that the City of Man can provide, like credit at a reasonable interest rate.

In my opinion, providing cheaper credit to the unbanked is the single most promising initiative to spur global growth available to humankind.

And it's just a start.

Anyone reading this note is not unbanked. You are almost certainly overbanked. The tools for promoting OUR liberty and justice, however, are the same. It's a DLT data infrastructure combined with applications that do not directly threaten the State's sovereign control over money. These are applications that take back our core Identity Data - what we do and where we go and who we go with, both physically and virtually - from the thieving hands of the little technology kingdoms.

You can read more about Taking Back Our Data here.

You can read more about our larger civics initiative here and here.

You can join us here.

Because we really are just getting started.