Abstract
Since its emergence in 2008–2009, blockchain technology—essentially an append-only database that employs cryptography to establish an immutable logbook of transactions—has expanded its applications beyond just the realm of cryptocurrency. Today, it is also used within the international development space, deployed for humanitarian causes and presented as a solution to the climate crisis. Actors celebrating, implementing and/or investing in it range from small startups to big venture capitalists, global hegemonic actors such as the World Economic Forum and the United Nations Environmental Programme and a variety of NGOs such as Oxfam and WWF. From ‘banking the unbanked’ to digital biometric IDs to a fix for the carbon credit market, blockchain has been heralded as the next big solution for just about anything.
Let Them Eat Crypto. The Blockchain Scam That’s Ruining the World (2023) is a welcome examination of this phenomenon. It is easily accessible for a wide audience of readers, informative and well-written, piercing right through the discourse that surrounds blockchain. By doing so, it gives a critical perspective on the ‘blockchain-for-good’ space. Throughout the book, Howson showcases various blockchain applications, calling out the many venture capitalists, ‘longtermists’ and libertarians whose blockchain solutions fail, Howson argues, to offer real solutions to the social and environmental problems the crypto folk purport to solve.
The book is presented as the author’s atonement for his blockchain-agnostic years (p. vii). Having studied this phenomenon closely for eight years, Howson now reaches a clear conclusion: Bitcoin and blockchain are a scam, and the world would be better off without them. He builds up this argument throughout seven chapters. The first four chapters discuss blockchain within the international development space, the neo-colonial tendencies of crypto endeavours in the Global South, its use to solve environmental problems and the use of blockchain within charitable giving. Using a myriad of examples, the author shows how blockchain projects have not solved actually existing problems such as poverty and health problems, lack of economic opportunities or climate change, nor their underlying causes. ‘[The] problem’, Howson explains, ‘…is that [blockchain projects] have little interest and/or capacity to solve real problems. They merely reframe problems. In doing so, Web3 fixes create new sets of crises as an opportunity to launch yet more techno-fixes for profit’ (p. 214).
The book continues with a chapter on the connection between crypto, misogyny, ‘incels’ (involuntary celibates) and far-right extremism and explains the ‘crypto bro’ (a caricature of the crypto enthusiast, i.e., ‘the white, tech-savvy men dominating the crypto industry’ (p. 161)) and problematizes the narrative of crypto being a tool for women’s emancipation. In the penultimate chapter, Howson explores crypto’s role in the setup of the Metaverse (an immersive, virtual world) and warns of the dangers a Metaverse tailored along Silicon Valley’s interests (i.e., an unregulated virtual place optimized to harvest user data) poses, especially for children and other vulnerable people.
In the last chapter, Howson draws his conclusion. Where in 2019 he still thought ‘it would be too hasty to throw the blockchain baby out with Bitcoin’s bathwater’ (Howson, 2019, p. 214), today he is sure that ‘blockchain is a rotting fruit bowl of bad ideas thrown hurriedly together to solve made-up problems’ (p. 214). It would be best to regulate crypto away completely. It is ‘…free-market capitalism in its most violent form’ (p. 219). Bitcoin and blockchain have never been designed to create a more just, post-imperialist world. Instead, they have been designed to undermine democracy and states ‘for and by right-wing anarcho-capitalist libertarians’ (p. 214). They are about establishing new markets to benefit already wealthy people, not about making the world a better place (p. 244).
Is blockchain agnosticism still possible after such a book? Howson has mobilized powerful and convincing arguments that strongly challenge my own agnosticism. But it still leaves me with some questions. Some of his judgements may be too sweeping. For example, he states, ‘[w]ithout exception, when you buy crypto, you’re buying access to a scam’ (p. viii), but I do not think this is so ‘without exception’. For example, in my own field (blockchain and nature conservation), there exist projects that simply sell non-fungible crypto tokens as digital gadgets in order to raise funds. In principle, these are no more a scam than a WWF plush panda bear or t-shirt is, or any other fund-raising trinket.
An issue absent in the book is a deeper engagement with the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Within the crypto space, many herald this as the great energy savior with which to overcome the environmental concerns associated with proof-of-work (PoW), and as such, usually it is one of the first arguments to defend blockchain when people raise the issue of its energy and resource use. The book rightfully criticizes the PoW consensus mechanism (pp. 99–100) but does not engage sufficiently with the often-heard PoS counter-argument, apart from arguing that it is unlikely that Bitcoin will switch to PoS.
Lastly, the book for a large part deals with the big names within the space (A16z, FTX, Sam Altman, etc.) and their strange ideologies. It does so very well, but it runs the risk of overshadowing the smaller projects. This is important because I think there is a difference between the two groups. Some of the smaller entrepreneurs—at least in my field of study—could in my opinion sometimes better be framed as small actors who simply operate and/or see solutions within the confines of the current political economy. That being said, how these smaller projects will materialize and with what outcomes remains to be properly studied.
Despite these points, this book is a powerful challenge to blockchain. It presents the definitive analysis against which future accounts will have to position themselves. Howson does a brilliant job at exposing the many wrong-doings done by ‘for-good’ crypto folk who lack a proper understanding of the issues they purport to solve. The book is provocative, dense with examples and information yet easy to read and with very on-point analogies (e.g., ‘Banking the unbanked with crypto was like helping the homeless by selling them virtual homes in the metaverse’ (p. 58)), all of which make it a very enjoyable read. All in all, Howson’s analysis makes a vital addition to the still scarce critical literature about blockchain ‘for-good’ and crypto’s wider social and environmental implications. This is a must read for anyone interested in blockchain.