Glenn Greenwald has a great interview Cryptocurrency and Blockchain: Liberation or Hoax? Interview with a Left-Wing Crypto Advocate.

Rumble — Influential leaders in numerous economic and technological sectors have been championing the economic and political potential of blockchain and crypto technology with increasing fervor. One of the most vocal has been Jack Dorsey, who resigned from Twitter as he devotes more focus to these tools. Many on the right view it as a tool of liberation. Many on the left are already opposed. Many are still learning what all this means. But today we speak with the Blockchain Socialist who argues that this technology frees individuals and movements from the tyranny of the state and Big Tech.

From a MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) perspective, the one thing that has always bothered me about crypto-currency is that there is nothing that gives a bitcoin,say, a value the way a country’s currency gets a value. For over 6,000 years of history, every currency that MMT has studied gets its value because the power that creates the currency can insist that you pay a tax in that currency. The examples of crypto-currency we see now have no ability to impose a tax, yet people value each different type of crypto-currency. Either crypto-currency will eventually collapse like the tulip-bulb mania did in history, or MMT will have to come up with another explanation about how crypto-currency gets its value.

This interview has got me thinking about alternatives to reconciling MMT and crypto-currency.