Cryptocurrencies are digital boundaries.

That is, in the physical world you can clearly distinguish where France ends and Germany begins. And you can enumerate the millions of people near the Franco-German border, as opposed to those who are more internally located.

But in the digital world, you can’t easily see the Instagram/X border. You can’t see which people spend a lot of time on both platforms, and are in a sense near the network border, as opposed to those who are “patriots” to just one platform.

Until crypto. Because coin holdings give public digital boundaries. You can determine from wallets and posts which people are coin maximalists (and hold 100% in one coin) vs which people are in digital border territories (and hold balances in multiple coins).

This is machine-readable information that can establish digital and physical borders for a community. NFT-gated Discords and door locks prove the point.

So: it’s early now, but eventually crypto tribalism becomes crypto patriotism.

Author of The Network State.
Work with me: jobs.ns.com

Wallets as digital passports. Feels like we're just scratching the surface of what identity means in the digital age.