In a cypherpunk future, the people possess the technological tools to gain more freedom from their governments. They can share encrypted data with each other, in a way that no state actor can effectively surveil and identify. They have the power to choose where they live, to the point where nation states become just like restaurants: all state entities display attractive menus, hoping that the customers would choose to enter, pay for the benefits provided, and hopefully stay. And most importantly, the same people are able to make financial payments that no government can control, censor, tax, devalue through inflation, or clearly link to someone’s identity.

In other words, a cypherpunk future radically changes the nature of social contracts and constitutions. The focus is no longer on state actors, leaders, and a vague collective good — it’s all about individuals, their best interest, and their choices. This cypherpunk future promotes freedom and the ability to peacefully opt out. It puts voting with one’s feet (leaving any country with great ease) at the forefront of political decision making — after all, any polity loses legitimacy if there is nobody who grants permission to be governed. These ideas aren’t as radical as they sound: not so long ago, our democracies were built on the principle of consent and no taxation without representation… but somewhere along the way, they forgot about the first convention between those who govern and those who are governed.

Today, we already have most of the tools necessary to build a cypherpunk future. We have the kind of cryptography that no government super computer can break. We have open source projects for everything, ranging from software to produce guns, automobiles, and genetic engineering. And most importantly, we have decentralized cryptocurrencies that are able to fuel this type of parallel economy and make any useful project prosper even if the political establishment removes it from the traditional financial system.

But technological advancements must be followed by a culture that protects and nurtures them. For this, we need philosophers, artists, orators, and educators to create works that emphasize on the benefits of techno logically-enforced freedoms. We also need well-funded software developers to work towards improving, optimizing, and ultimately revolutionizing the way in which we make financial payments to each other. Yet most importantly, we need normal everyday people to use the technology and popularize its use to the point where it becomes unstoppable.

As Bitcoin’s scaling partner and experimentation pioneer, Litecoin finds itself in a pretty good position: it’s been around since 2011 and has a large community of users, which makes it robust and resilient; it’s the leader among Scrypt coins, which means that the likeliness of going through a malevolent 51% attack is extremely low; it’s similar enough with Bitcoin to attract users and get integrated into various parallel payment systems, but also different enough to have a value proposition of its own; it has a higher transaction throughput than Bitcoin and also benefits from better privacy thanks to the MWEB activation; and most importantly, it follows a culture of progress and improvements which also benefits Bitcoin on the long run.

The fact that Litecoin’s economic policy has remained a constant since 2011 is also a good sign: it shows that there’s a degree of commitment in making incentives work, as the community is willing to find solutions to increase the demand for transactions.

Today, Litecoin is perfect for payments and for intermediating swaps between coins. It’s thermodynamically safe thanks to the Proof of Work security, it’s fast enough to attract use in commerce, and it has such a great network effect that you’ll find it listed on every exchange and across virtually all ATM networks. For freedom lovers, Litecoin is an ideal tool: as it has pretty good privacy and fungibility, a degree of adoption that’s second only to Bitcoin, and it’s designed to remain affordable.

What about the maximalist thesis of “one coin to rule them all”, though? After all, we can envision a future in which cryptography and computing become so advanced that Bitcoin can do everything. Both economically and technologically, a future in which only Bitcoin exists and thrives all alone is unrealistic. There will always be demand for features that aren’t necessarily included in Bitcoin, and incentivized experimentation is the market’s best evolution mechanism. Developers take greater risks and make more interesting discoveries when they can issue their own currency or token, as opposed to raising BTC and having to account to investors for it.

Furthermore, competition is useful because it pushes innovation and constantly raises the standard all across the board. In the event that certain governments become hostile towards forms of money that they don’t issue and control, it’s better if they have multiple targets to pursue — going after only one is extremely simple. Because even though Bitcoin and Litecoin transactions can’t be censored, the censorship is still possible at the social level users, miners, nodes, service providers, and developers are politically vulnerable.

By simply existing, Litecoin makes Bitcoin more resilient to human politics. It also provides a layer to scale peer to peer transactions, while simultaneously being more open to experimentation. The Lindy effects are also on Litecoin’s side: having been around since 2011 and growing into the biggest Proof of Work coin for its Scrypt mining algorithm, it benefits from a thermodynamic security that’s second only to Bitcoin’s… but which doesn’t rely on Bitcoin and is not vulnerable to malevolence from BTC miners.

In a cypherpunk future, Litecoin has earned its own seat at the table — and everyone who has the ability to understand this is very much ahead of his time.

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