Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think
- Alongside Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson left Patreon over “free speech” issues to launch their own platform.
- In the interim, Peterson is accepting bitcoin, which might hint at the “extra features” their platform will include.
- They point to anti-feminist Youtuber, Sargon of Akkad, as the impetus for leaving Patreon — ironic, considering how often Peterson points to identity politics as a problem.
It’s been more than a decade since Satoshi Nakamoto published his/her/their famous white paper that first described a currency that solved the double-spending problem associated with digital assets. A few months later he released the first software that would launch the network that services bitcoin.
No longer would we need to rely on a trusted third party, many of which mine data and information while making our identity vulnerable to hacking. By incentivizing miners (or, as it has evolved, validators), a global, decentralized solution was presented. So long as no individual miner controls the bulk of computing power, a fair and equitable system of transacting is now possible.
The idea for a decentralized currency had been floating around for over a decade when Nakamoto published their paper. Since Nick Szabo wrote a treatise on “bit gold” in 1998, a few suspected him as the man behind the pseudonym; Szabo also devised the concept of “smart contracts,” one of the foundational mechanisms making blockchain so important. Szabo claims he’s not Nakamoto, however. Others claim they are, unsurprising since charlatans infect every industry.
The mythology of Satoshi transcends the individual. This is an essential part of the mythos driving cryptocurrency. The centralization of power and money has aided the world’s greatest problems — climate change, systemic racism, gender inequality, terrible design decisions. Eight people holding as much wealth as over 3.75 billion is not a feature of the species. It’s a bug, and bugs have consequences.
Cryptocurrency, at its best, is an imaginative response to a serious problem. Nothing new here: an exploitation of a powerful system followed by a social response. The history of humans again rhymes itself.
At its worst, the community cryptocurrency has spawned is little different than the forces it was designed to rail against: a seething enmity toward anything “other” in order to defend the precious self. Suffice it to say, at the moment crypto is dominated by men, and as with other tech sectors, biases are rampant.
As with any prospective industry, especially one ripe with potential capital, this next phase of human transacting will require civility. Sure, we’re biologically programmed to blah blah blah; understanding our point of origin is important. But as with broken hearts, the past becomes a prison and an excuse for not striving to be better.
We Are Leaving Patreon: Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson Announcement
Which is what Jordan Peterson, following in the footsteps of Sam Harris, did when leaving Patreon. It wasn’t specifically Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, that caused the Canadian professor to join forces with Dave Rubin to risk over half of his income in an attempt to create a new “freer speech” platform. It was, however, the final proverbial nail.
Peterson’s platform hasn’t panned out, yet, which is likely why he is utilizing all means necessary, including bitcoin. While he says the new platform will be similar to Patreon’s subscription model, he added that “it will have a bunch of additional features.”…
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