Peer-to-peer, decentralized, anonymous, censorship-resistant and State-control-resistant technologies and networks have grown and matured and represent the digital front in the struggle for liberty against the totalitarian tyranny of the global elite State. The word “crypto” in crypto-anarchism/crypto-agorism refers to this broad array of technologies, spanning much more than the relatively more recent notion of “cryptocurrencies”.
Many of these services are based on staking storage (sometimes called proof-of-space or, proof-of-capacity) or network routing as opposed to CPU/energy-intensive proof-of-work, like Bitcoin. The former involves staking one’s storage capacity or network routing capabilities for overlay networking for use within the network. Given that proof-of-work mining requires scale and access to cheap energy, the former may be a more effective way for most individual contributors and users to fruitfully participate in building out the new digital infrastructure of freedom.
Some of the most important technologies to research in this regard are : I2P, Tor, IPFS, and Storj. These span everything from distributed data storage, anonymous p2p trading and markets, anonymous p2p censorship-free web hosting, ICANN-alternatives for DNS (https://www.namecoin.org/, which is censorship-proof but not easily discoverable and https://www.opennic.org/, which is mostly censorship-proof and plays nice with others, which comes with its own risks) and other such darknet services.
How does one help and get involved? I see three ways :
- Research them and try to explain it to someone else who has not heard of it (the best way to understand what it is). If one happens to use DuckDuckGo for Internet search on browsers like Dissenter/Brave/Tor browser while doing this research (or, for anything else, for that matter!), that is double or triple the whammy!s
- Use these networks!
- Contribute to them, ideally while using them, by hosting and running nodes, i.e. providing storage and network
On the subject of cryptocurrencies, an important principle is to avoid KYC shops like Coinbase for BTC acquisition. After doing some reading, I began to appreciate bisq in principle and I have started to use them (there is a premium to pay for early users and it limits to small amounts). The most useful options for US customers, which has one of the worst online banking access and option regimes, seem to be Uphold and Zelle, if one is willing to sacrifice full KYC-proofing. I was also able to use Transferwise on it -- which is not officially advertised. Another one I just successfully tried out using Zelle, with a small amount, is localcryptos.com. On there, I see TransferWise, Paypal and Venmo, as also perhaps being similarly useful (again, one loses full KYC-proof security here -- but, arguably, even face-to-face is not completely fool-proof in that regard). BTC can be moved to your favorite hardware wallet (mine is Trezor) for long-term storage and trade. Alt-coins may be acquired on an exchange like Binance. Alt-coins like ETH (and many others) can and should be brought back into your hardware wallet. Stuff should stay on your “cloud” wallets on exchanges only if your hardware wallet does not support that network.
In addition, new agorist/voluntaryist marketplaces are forming such as The Voluntaryist Marketplace and agorist.market, and these are worth trying to push forward into useful scale (at present, they are only just getting started). A simple act like advertising your goods and services, and your intention to take payment in crypto, on such marketplaces. goes a long way.