So with the news from Canada that the Trudeau government will accelerate freezing the personal and business accounts of truckers protesting mandates (https://fee.org/articles/did-justin-trudeau-s-financial-crackdown-really-spark-a-bank-run-in-canada/), it occurred to me that some people may need to think about something. This could absolutely happen here in the U.S. This isn’t a “oh, it’s happening in another country, it could never happen here” thing.

So, the problem with the way most people think about banks is wrong…or at least, incomplete. This is an over-simplification, but when you deposit your money in a bank, you have now lost custody of that money. Those numbers you see on your mobile banking app is how much money the bank is holding in your name. But you do not have physical custody of ANY of that money. The government (or indeed the bank itself) can freeze or remove that money at any time, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Yes, you might be able to get that money returned, but it’ll be a court battle to get it back. A possibly expensive court battle you have to wage with your money seized and inaccessible. A quick web search will return stories of accounts frozen and seized with little or no evidence of any wrongdoing, which takes weeks, months, or even years of expensive lawyers to resolve.

Now, I’m not saying this to scare people. But I do want people to acknowledge that giving your money for some other entity to hold on your behalf removes it from your immediate control. I’m not saying go and pull your money out of the bank. That would be counter-productive, and very inconvenient. Maybe a layered approach? Have some cash on hand, crypto holdings, and such? I don’t know, I’m not a financial professional, and this is not financial advice.

That’s one reason the government via the SEC, Fed, etc. are trying so hard to eliminate most cryptocurrencies, especially privacy-centered cryptocurrencies. They can’t be controlled, deleted, or frozen, and in the case of privacy coins, it’s very difficult to even track or trace. With some of the crazy things going on nowadays, it would be wise to be cautious.

Yeah, that one didn’t age well. Lots of effort for little return.

So I decided to play around a little with crypto. I read up on wallets, the different coins and tokens, and some of the basics of the uses of some crypto.

Some of what I learned at first was familiar. Anyone who’s played with asymmetrical encryption (PGP or GPG) will recognize how most crypto wallets work. You have a public key and a private key. The private key is kept in your crypto wallet (either a program, app, or hardware device). This allows you to sign outgoing transactions, or unencrypt incoming transactions. While the public key is used to encrypt transactions to you, or verify signed transactions sent from you.

Some of what I learned was new and foreign. The use cases of some crypto is downright confusing if you aren’t well-versed in it. Such as coins used as some intermediary between large scale transactions, or some kind of tokenized collateral for loans.

But as I read, I began to see at least some of what is trying to be accomplished with most of these coins. The developers are trying to re-make the financial world into something a little more secure, and a lot more free from bad actors trying to influence (or downright manipulate) the economy. Bad actors in this case not only being thieves, hackers, and conmen, but governments, central banks, and large financial institutions as well. That’s not to say the cryptos are perfect. Far from it. The entire crypto industry is still in its infancy. There is a lot more development necessary. But one day (hopefully soon), the corrupt, mostly unsecure financial system may be faster, more secure, and more independent than ever.

Until then, I advise to play around with it. Don’t dump any significant fiat (dollars, pesos, etc.) into it without the advice of a financial advisor, but anyone can download a wallet app (such as Coinomi or Trust Wallet), open an exchange account (such as Coinbase.com, ftx.us, etc.), and buy some Bitcoin, Etherium, or Litecoin. There are some very few stores that will even take crypto as payments. So don’t let the idea of crypto scare you. Get in there and play around. See what it’s all about. And learn.