# Can Blockchain Really Make Us Free? - Julio Linares / Poetic Technologies - Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress) - Date: 2026-08-09 - Duration: 12:55 - Topics: web3, privacy, now, crypto, cryptography, blockchain, data, security, human right, rights, tech, technology, internet, open source, free, freedom, ethereum, hackers, ethics, cypherpunk, dev, developer, dapp, decentralization, bitcoin, computer, surveillance, cyber, peer2peer, p2p, love, solidity, zk, zero knowledge, education, academy, w3pn, julio linares, poetic technologies - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-G9toY-dZr60 - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9toY-dZr60 ## Description What would truly private digital money look like? Julio Linares from Poetic Technologies explores why privacy is essential for digital payments, reflects on the evolution of cypherpunk ideas, and questions whether today's blockchain ecosystem can deliver real financial freedom. We discuss cryptography, peer-to-peer technologies, digital cash, community currencies, and why building alternatives also means challenging the systems of power they aim to replace. Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 01:00 Why digital cash needs privacy 02:12 What it means to be a cypherpunk today 03:32 Can blockchains really deliver freedom? 04:28 Cryptography beyond blockchain 06:36 Dismantling monopolies & building alternatives 08:03 Favorite privacy tools & the future of peer-to-peer 09:43 Why abolish the US dollar? 10:43 A vision of economic democracy & community currencies -- This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you! ## Transcript I am in the Global Initiative. I am an anthropologist from Guatemala. And I have served the Basic Income Earth Network since around 2018 as public average. So, my work is a lot about creating awareness and and networks about basic income in different countries, in different regions. I also have made pilots uh basic income. So, for example, in the tech world, I made a uh uh basic income pilot using cryptography uh with a project called Circles UBI uh back in the day. So, yeah, now like more recently, I made a different company called Poetic Technologies um where we [music] do privacy, payments, and security systems. I think Poetic Technologies was born out of uh a research question of how do we do digital payments in a way that preserve people's privacy. So, today when you pay online, you mostly are using Visa and Mastercard, whatever kind of debit credit cards that reveal your data, use your data, exploit your data, and make money out of your data. So, you know, what is the equivalent of cash in the digital world where cash is actually defending your privacy. Um it's autonomous, you have it, you own it, you know. So, it's a question I think a lot about uh because of my work in basic income because if you give out a basic income that is unconditionally to people, but then it doesn't have privacy, then it can be exploited by actors with power. The issue where is banks, states, and so on, so how How we make sure that we can have some sort of digital system of payments or money where people's autonomy and privacy can be kept? Uh which is of course not a problem I invented. This is has a long history since David Chaum for example and and many other other giants. What is the difference between Cypherpunk today and 1993? I think I think being a punk is a lot about not caring about what other people think. So I think a Cypherpunk would be someone who just does just lives as if they were already free using technology. So imagining new forms of technology, creating new forms of technology, implementing them. Sort of yeah, expanding the imagination of what is possible with technology. That's what I would imagine to be a Cypherpunk. I was born in 1982 so I was one when 1993 happened so I don't know how it was back in the day. I know it was probably more um I guess I know that a lot of the people that wrote a lot of the like like the manifestos early on were very were influential, very theoretical. I think now we're really living through a lot of the implications of the technologies that have been invented since the '80s and '90s so it's interesting to look back and think, "Okay, um what are the ideologies, what are the practices that these technologies have mediated or enabled?" So so yeah, it's like it's like an interesting it's an interesting question. I have worked in in the blockchain world for a while and at the beginning I was very I really believed in this promise of like censorship resistance. Um well at some point I remember the the blockchain that we had made circles on was bought out. So I thought, "Wow, if you can buy a blockchain, then what's the point? You know, how do you actually make infrastructures that are not enclosable or buyable, basically? Um so, I'm I am a bit doubtful about, you know, uh how activists can use blockchains in that way, unless it's really for the purposes of like archival research, storing data in a distributed way, uh things like that. But, for money, I am more and more doubtful that blockchains can serve uh emancipatory purposes. Um with cryptography, I am hopeful because I see lots of very interesting hackers and people trying to make uh progress with things like zero-knowledge proofs, nice. Uh even hardware. Uh so, for example, like it's funny how these things work because um because of this this work on like offline payments and so on, I stumbled upon uh the history of how quantum cryptography was was uh sort of invented. And it was actually through a paper uh written by a guy called Stephen Wiesner, uh where it was called conjugate encoding, where in it he lays out the foundations of what a quantum money system would be like, but it was never published. It was like 14 years in a uh in a desk somewhere uh until like some of his mates uh got together, talked about it, and then released a paper that became the foundation of quantum cryptography. Um and later it led to like some other developments in like security, physical security, physical un- unclonable functions, etc. So, I feel like there is this there is this weird genealogy to cryptography in terms of like how you know, what someone invents then later has unintended consequences and also often cyclical ones and um it's quite a magical magical thing in some ways. Um but I guess I guess where I was going with this is that I do think that there is power in cryptography and especially if it's put at the hands of everyday people. Uh like I mentioned in my talk like uh I I believe Pix as a system and or M-Pesa which is something that China is using they they they leverage uh cryptography uh to make uh new payment systems that are actually publicly owned. Which is I think better than what I see in the ecosystem uh largely. Oops. When it comes to the monopolies that exist within technology and these oligopolies um the way I think about decolonization um is really in terms of abolition. >> [clears throat] >> So, we first have to dismantle these oppressive forms of technology and regimes if you want to also build alternatives uh to them. So, it's not just about you know, uh making something else or something alternative but really uh trying to tackle them from within and say why you know, how do they work and how could we tell take them apart so that there is a space to make them so that the alternatives can flourish. I think about things like Palantir. I think about um even things like manufacturing of uh silicon chips. You know, it's a huge uh monopoly of also knowledge and power and there's all these geopolitics involved so I think we're getting to this point in the world where we really need to think about planetary politics and the ways in which we produced, uh vital uh things or things that have become vital. Um, and how to share them across borders. Uh, both the knowledge and the practice of production because if they keep being oligopolies or monopolies, it's just going to end up benefiting a few people. Nothing's going to really change in the world. I'm actually quite shy about talking about these things. Like, I don't want to reveal to people what I use. Uh, but I guess one interesting one that some friends of mine in Berlin are using is called Simplex, which is a chat. I don't know if you heard about Simplex, but it's like you know, what people really wanted when they heard Signal was a thing. So, it's actually decentralized. Uh, you have a lot more privacy guarantees than with Signal. And it's just nice to use, you know. Not many people use it. So, there's need there needs to be like more community involvement and so on, but definitely Simplex is one up and coming one that I think is really cool. Um, I mean, I also use Graphene on on one of my devices. Uh, and I like the containers within that. Uh, all the sort of Tor uh, related uh, apps that that are used there are really nice. What else is I mean, of course Tor in general always uh, I think um, I'm more and more interested in like peer-to-peer technology and like the relationship between client or VM peer-to-peer. Um, because I think there's a lot of interesting intersections there for the future of the internet as well that we have to really think about because um, you know, as climate collapse uh, grows, there will be a need to move beyond the hegemonic internet and move towards offline ways of communicating with each other through Bluetooth, through radio, through um, you you whatever media we can imagine. So, that of course has to have some sort of privacy in it. So, that is kind of what I when I think about when I think about this questions of privacy as well and which technologies and so on. Okay, so why to abolish the US dollar? Um I would say there are at least three reasons. One of them is that it perpetuates wealth inequality. It extracts a lot of wealth from other nations in order to keep itself alive. Uh this happens through the petrodollar system, which is also a big cost on the earth. It perpetuates climate change through the maintenance and reinforcement of fossil fuels. So, that's another big reason. And the other one is just debt that, you know, we're all living on US dollar debt basically, which is a big cost on the rest of the world. So, um I think in order to cancel debt, be able to live within planetary boundaries, and achieve economic democracy, we need to abolish the US dollar today. So, I imagine a world where everyone where like communal ownership over the earth has been established and private property has been abolished. So, everyone can just live according to their abilities and according to their needs. Uh they may or may not have a basic income. If they choose not to have one, that's also fine. Uh that gives them enough money to live if money still exists by then. Hopefully by then we have abolished that as well. But if not, maybe 20 years we might still need a UBI. Where that money of the UBI comes from this wealth held in common by everyone on earth. Uh where, you know, money is no longer issued by banks and states, but by people in democratic assemblies where they decide where those credit go for which kinds of production and and also how to cancel debt. I believe that these powers have to be democratizing. So, in my future utopia, I would I would imagine and hope that this is how how it works, where money is actually democratized at the institutional level. Um yeah, I imagine a pluriverse of community currencies, people using them for all sorts of things and exchange beyond the monocultures of today's state currencies. Um I imagine a world where people have the power to say no to relationships of domination, be it in their work, in their families, uh in their relationships, and they are really free to live with each other because, you know, as Murray Bookchin used to say, um you know, like we cannot change the way we relate to what we call nature. I mean, of course, we're also nature, unless we change how we relate to each other. So, if we don't change the domination that that humans have over each other, we cannot change how we relate to the rest of the world. So, in order to do that, to change that, we need to change the economic system. And so, I imagine a world where we are finally we don't have to live as if we are free because we are already free.