Regardless of what you think of so-called “cancel culture,” the concept fits within the older concept that those outside the mainstream suffer for their actions and opinions, whether it be scientists, artists, philosophers, and so on.

The more modern version is far more pedestrian, focusing on who is or isn’t being kicked off the social media platforms of private companies, or denied other services. And it’s got people searching for remedies they believe will allow them to maintain their views, without losing their access to markets or their privacy. In the New York Times, James Poulos argues one way to do that is through cryptocurrency, which is under assault from the new doorkeepers of global finance:

The more power [digital payment platforms] organizations wield, the more arbitrary and punitive their ethical or ideological standards become. As PayPal’s founding C.O.O., David Sacks, has warned, the orchestration of interlocking federal, financial and technological power to punish its critics and perceived opponents circumvents our core constitutional protections: A person who finds his financial and social media accounts closed after being identified as a subversive by the government will have no legal recourse.

Thanks to its huge resources, spanning Silicon Valley and the federal government, the regime has deep knowledge of your activity online. Think, say and do what it wants, and you are allowed to function. Deviate, and you are shut down. This is the un-American logic of the social credit system being imposed on us.

Without a fundamentally new and better way to generate, circulate, save and exchange wealth, Americans will be increasingly powerless to prevent their financial system from being used to transform their country into a technological cage.

It’s a strong critique of the new digital systems that are changing finance right before our eyes. Is Poulos right? He writes that “Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies can free ordinary Americans from the financial and psychological discipline and punishment at the core of this system of control.”

Perhaps – if regulators don’t smother it first.