Siddharth Ramakrishnan

Crypto's Real Use Case

November 25, 2024

Amid all the debates about what cryptocurrency is good for, one truth rises above the noise: the core value of crypto is censorship resistance. Other narratives—like speculation, store of value, or cutting-edge tech—tend to come and go. But censorship resistance is the one thing that truly sets crypto apart from everything else.

Separation of Church and State

At its heart, cryptocurrency is about taking money out of the hands of the state. This separation allows money to function independently of government control, banking systems, and traditional regulations. In doing so, crypto opens the door to financial activity that would otherwise be restricted—or outright impossible. It’s a shift that’s already reshaping the way we think about finance, governance, and even ownership in a world that’s increasingly digital.

Take stablecoins, for example. They do some cool things like faster payments and lower fees, but let’s be honest: the traditional financial system could probably achieve those things with enough upgrades. What makes stablecoins special is the same thing that makes crypto special: permissionless issuance and transferability. Anyone can create a stablecoin, and anyone can send it anywhere, no matter the borders or rules in place.

Why Censorship Resistance Matters

When you remove gatekeepers from a system, interesting things start to happen. Censorship resistance unlocks a set of capabilities that build on each other, creating a framework for something much bigger than just “digital money.”

This is the cornerstone of it all: no one needs permission to participate.

• You don’t need approval from governments, banks, or big tech companies to build, transact, or innovate.
• This applies even to things like truly autonomous AI agents, which can operate in crypto networks without worrying about whether the legal system is ready for them.

Traditional finance is tied up in borders and regulations, but crypto breaks free of that.

• Instead of siloed markets, crypto creates a massive, global pool of capital.
• This is especially useful for markets like digital art, intellectual property, or decentralized prediction markets, where participants are spread all over the world. You get deeper markets and better results from expanding to every part of the world rather than operating just in New York.

Ownership looks very different in the crypto world.

• Instead of needing a government or institution to recognize your ownership, all you need is your private key. That cryptographic proof is enough.
• This creates a new kind of property rights—digital-first and entirely independent of traditional systems.

Crypto systems don’t care where you live or what your local laws say.

• If you’ve got an internet connection, you’re in. That’s it.
• This makes crypto perfectly suited for the way people connect and collaborate in the modern world, where geography often matters less than shared purpose.

When you combine permissionless systems with global reach, you get something incredible: people are free to build, innovate, and collaborate like never before.

• The barriers that block ideas in traditional systems—like regulations or lack of access—simply don’t exist in the same way in crypto.
• This leads to new businesses, ideas, and communities that wouldn’t have had a shot otherwise.

All of the most popular apps / services on crypto exist because of these properties.

• Polymarket → permissionless market creation and global liquidity
• Pump.fun → permissionless market creation
• Bridge → cross border payments (global reach)
• Farcaster → open social protocol that enables permissionless creation of new social apps. (Farcaster also touches on some other themes like digital property rights and global reach).
• ENS → digital property rights
• Gitcoin → global reach and global liquidity for crowdfunding
• Mirror → freedom to create

Global Apps & Network States

Censorship resistance isn’t a magic fix for everything, and it comes with tradeoffs. But it’s the single most compelling reason for crypto to exist. Without it, most of the transformative potential—like permissionless access, global markets, and decentralized ownership—wouldn’t be possible.

Crypto's forays beyond finance are also bringing censorship resistance to every part of our tech and communication stack, unlocking the ability to build truly global apps in a world that seems to be fragmenting post globalization.

These new properties have the potential to alter how we live entirely (see Network States, but this scale of change takes a long time to come to fruition. Just like it took 30+ years to really see the internet change society, it might take similarly long for us to really see what crypto can do to the world.