Aliens Exist. And They Use Cryptocurrency

Aliens exist. And they use cryptocurrency.

This isn’t exactly a provable statement, but for all we know Bitcoin could have been a gift from extraterrestrials. Can anything else explain Satoshi Nakamoto’s disappearance?

According to recent testimony from former Department of Defense employee turned whistleblower David Grusch, parts of the U.S. government have been engaged in an almost century-long conspiracy to cover up information regarding unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) in the nation’s airspace.

The allegation was made during a House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security hearing Wednesday, and supported by claims made from executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace Ryan Graves and retired Navy Commander David Fravor. In 2004 Fravor, then a pilot on routine mission, shot the now widely circulated footage of a “Tic Tac” shaped object capable of aerial maneuvers far beyond the technical limitations of modern aircraft.

Now, dear CoinDesk reader, you may be wondering what UFOs or talk of non-human “biologics” and physics-defying tech have to do with crypto. In short, it doesn’t. I’m sorta banking on the crypto community’s inclination to speculate to hold this piece together and your attention. But, I mean, isn’t any example showing that authorities cannot be trusted another notch for blockchain, a reason to build tools that empower individuals?

Anyway, aliens exist. And they use crypto. There are earthlings among us who are actually thinking seriously about what money would look like in space, and plenty of reasons to think fully verifiable, and self-settling currencies would be needed if humanity is ever to become a multiplanetary species or colonize worlds outside our solar system. Bitcoin was first to solve the Byzantine Generals Problem – a way to coordinate trust among people separated by time, distance and motivations – and fiat hasn’t.

We don’t know how UAPs work, and there are plenty of reasons to doubt what has been said about them. Grusch contradicted himself saying he both had access and was denied Pentagon intelligence on UAPs. And so much of the supposed eye-witness accounts of flying saucers can already be explained by faulty sensors on military aircraft. But I’d bet a dollar that if aliens exist, and they’re as barbaric as us to need money, their cash would be “digital” and inherently trustworthy.

It’d be impossible to enforce the rule of law on Mars. So wouldn’t you at least want a currency you could trust?

Samuel Edward Konkin III, the political philosopher who coined the term and advocated for agorism, got the closest to outlining what the world would look like if crypto was in wide circulation. In his New Libertarian Manifesto, Konkin argued against engaging in political processes, and instead encouraged people to withdraw their consent to be governed by only transacting in black or gray markets. Agoras for Konkin are opt-in free markets, which sounds pretty crypto.

There are some who would argue that bitcoin and crypto are not entirely antithetical to “the State,” and there’s a way to integrate these systems into wider society. But as a simple fact, it is true (if out of vogue to say in an age where BlackRock’s bitcoin products are celebrated) that Bitcoin was launched to steal back the power to transact freely from internet corporations, and shield some private information from surveillance.

Maybe this would explain why the U.S. government is working to crush crypto, or at least regulate it into a version they can still control. I’d wager one more argument: if it’s true the Pentagon is working to suppress information that might lead us to one day exploring the cosmos by covering up everything related to our space-faring friends, then it makes total sense they’d suppress crypto.

According to renowned physicist (and Oppenheimer collaborator) Enrico Fermi, intelligent species likely have a set window of time to build the technological capabilities needed to leave their home base. And if that window closes – if wars lead to societal collapse or if scientific progress otherwise halts – we’ll miss the chance to slingshot through the universe before the sun engulfs the earth. Maybe crypto is as necessary to space exploration as fusion, and so must be throttled to prevent us from leaving our overlords.

And that’s really the point of crypto. In a world where it’s conceivable the government is lying about something as fundamental as earth-shattering as the existence of life beyond our planet, and feels the patronizing need to protect us from ourselves, there’s already an option to rebel. Do as Konkin did, and become an alien in your own land.