Supervillains and Crypto
đđ´ââ ď¸ Do supervillains and superheroes even exist, and does crypto need them? Smesher #009
At the end of 2021, CryptoBriefing made an end-of-the-year list, titled the Top 10 Crypto Villains of the Year. It featured such horror stories as that of the volatile Nate Chastain, the dubiously clueless moon guurl/Rea, and the inevitable Elon Musk.
In the past, we here at Smesher have ourselves echoed Stephan Colbert's question of whether Musk was a superhero or a supervillain. So we are in no position to judge.
Itâs a tough call. And much like some of comicsâ supervillains, he too doesnât possess superhuman powers accompanied by ridiculous attire. And does, much like other supervillains, boast superior intellect, legendary riches, and a technological fascination.
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Whatâs the deal with supervillains and technology?
When and why did supervillains start cultivating their technological fascination? Well, according to some, this happened thanks to the reintroduction into comics of The Flash, back in 1956.
It was a pivotal moment in comics history; âthe superhero genre had been almost completely supplanted by horror, true crime, and⌠funny animal comics.â Yikes.
But then, back came The Flash, this time around as Barry Allen, a forensic scientist who gained his powers after a bolt of lightning struck him in his lab.
This DC Comicsâ Showcase #4 is considered to have started the Silver Age of comics. Additionally, it gave way to a new era of supervillains, because taking in the Fastest Man Alive, meant his adversaries needed new and outstanding technological abilities.
However, technology didnât stay an exclusive attribute of supervillains. Only seven years after the reintroduction of The Flash, Marvelâs Ironman first appeared.
Tony Stark was âthe son of an industrialistâ who âgrew up a genius with a brilliant mind for technology and inventions.â Designing weapons âfar beyond what any other company was creating, while living the lifestyle of a bon vivant.â
Does this sound like anyone you might know?
And that hypothetical anyone â are they a superhero, or a supervillain?
The absoluteness of good and evil
In 1940, Look magazine featured a story, written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster â Supermanâs co-creators. It was about how Superman could end WWII by capturing both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. (For more on this, visit Annotated-DC).
At that moment in history, it seemed like good and evil couldnât be clearer â both in reality and in comics.
But the world has since become ever more complex, fragmented and ambiguous.
âIncreasingly we live in a world where nothing makes any sense.â
These are the opening words of Adam Curtisâs genius documentary film Bitter lake. And that was seven years ago; before COVID, before Putinâs war on Ukraine, before the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
Curtis described his own film as showing âhow all the foreigners who went to Afghanistan created an almost totally fictional version of the country in their minds. They couldnât see the complex reality that was in front of them - because the stories they had been told about the world had become so simplified that they lacked the perceptual apparatus to see reality any longer.â
He claimed that it was time for a different narrative:
ââŚA new kind of story. One that doesnât deny the complexity and reduce it to a meaningless fable of good battling evil - but instead really tries to make sense of it.â
Black, White, Gray, Multicolored
So let us circle back to the list of crypto supervillains. We can view the crypto world as consisting of villains, such as the list mentioned. One might be tempted to add Jordan Belfort, now a self-proclaimed crypto guru, as he is depicted in this story by David Yaffe-Bellany.
And we can name crypto superheroes too. For some, this might be Satoshi. For others, it is people such as Ashish Gadnis of BanQu, a for-profit that brings transparency into the supply chain, while banking the bankless. Or such as Will Ruddick â founder of Grassroots Economics, a non-profit that empowers marginalized communities with blockchain.
Or, perhaps, we can acknowledge that crypto is a technology, which can be used, and abused. And we can forgo looking for heroes and villains, and instead take it upon ourselves, each and every one of us, to use it in an ethical way. And to view the actions of others, from a complex point of view.
However, maybe pure evil does exist. Because, as Alfred tells Bruce Wayne: âsome men just want to watch the world burn.â