On Friday morning, I decided to shell out the handful of coins I had accumulated from spending Colombian pesos.
Normally, I find spare change quite annoying. Itâs inefficient. I donât like keeping a bowl of metallic coins that are worth less than the bowl itself.
But today, as I counted the coins and made piles with different denominations, my attention drifted to something else. I started to notice the engravings on the coins. They were beautiful.
Each denomination had its own engraving with tiny elevations and depressions. I rubbed my thumb over the coins and â for a brief second â sensed something Iâd never felt when handing out my credit card. I sensed culture.
I looked at the 2,000 Colombian peso bill next to me. Featured on the bill was the face of a smiling girl: DĂ©bora Arango, a feminist and artist with a legacy spanning almost 8 decades of socially provocative artwork.
I flashed back to one of my first Spanish lessons here when my teacher taught me the Spanish word for money. âDinero. But in Colombia, the locals say plata.â
Immediately, I felt guilty. I planned on devoting my days to crypto and web3. An industry whose zenith would be the day coins and bills go extinct.
A big appeal for crypto is the notion of a global, borderless currency. And I understand the appeal.
When it comes to money, borders create inefficiencies. They create a laundry list of âinternational transaction feesâ and âexchange feesâ. They also give birth to hundreds of fiat currencies, some of whom prosper while others hyper-inflate and suffer.
But, at that moment, as I rubbed the coins and glanced at the bills, I sensed a deeper truth. Borders also create culture. And currencies help preserve it.
I will admit that crypto degens have followed routes to create culture. Theyâve created altcoins, stablecoins, memecoins, shitcoins, and tons of other {prefix}coins. Some of these have amassed followings full of culture and acronym-intensive lingua franca.
But, this culture is borderless and country-agnostic. That may sound great, but itâs not what weâre evolved to build. Weâve spent generations living in tribes, creating and preserving cultures tied by geography.
And thatâs why a piece of paper with a smiling Colombian artist will always supersede a digital token in preserving culture: because it is preserving bordered culture.
In the process of creating these borderless virtual cultures, Iâm worried that weâre endangering older cultures rooted in our geography and history.
Yes, I agree that the move from fiat to crypto makes money more efficient. But, I fear the price weâre paying might be worth more than those pesky 2% fees.
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Written by Aryan Bhasin