The use of Narrative in the Crypto Space and The Secret Network
Tags: Secret Network, Altcoin, Investment, Crytocurrency, Narrative

We are entering a new paradigm shift of capital allocation. There are more investors playing the game across the globe. These are not your traditional investors and it seems to be more of a narrative style of investing that’s been adopted in the space. So, the next opportunity in this space wont come from jumping on the flavor of the month, not looking at the tile everyone is already stepping on, instead, look at where the next tile will be. How do we find out where the next tile is going to be? By looking at the Narrative.

Why Narratives?

Stories are easy to remember. In this space, we use it as a type of heuristic, bypassing fundamental analysis such as financial reports, debts, earnings, EBIT, EBITA, EBITDA and all sorts of Ebits, not that these would apply anyway. Enter speculative assets. The crypto space is heavily driven by narrative, perhaps because of its immaturity according to Raoul Pal. So we look to narratives or stories. Stories are as old as language, it is the best way we understand the world. It helps us make connections to concepts or memories in our heads that are locally apart. Particularly in a very top-down big picture kind of way, this is why I think the Macro guys “get” bitcoin much more easily than others.

You will hear from certain people in this space that price drives adoption, but I think its obvious that the price in itself doesn't exclusively drive something or even majorly drive anything, it is just a fraction of the story. That’s why you can sell the rocks you pick up near the river, call it “Pet Rock” and make it a business. I think the price is driven by the narrative and the more that narrative is accepted by more people then it forms a feedback loop to the price. Since crypto has distanced itself from the traditional metrics of gauging fundamentals and the fact that traditional finance has not entrenched itself in influencing certain practices, A few ways investors are forming narratives is either looking at crypto as an Investment, as a Technology, or as the road to Self Recognition. I will focus more on how self recognition has played a major part on the crypto narrative, which I think is the biggest driver of this space.

Self Recognition

Lets explore why Self recognition is an important driver in the crypto space. Francis Fukuyama is the author of The End of History and The Last Man. In his book he discusses a concept introduced by Hegel: Man’s struggle for recognition.

“The struggle for recognition is the desire of man to be recognized, by projecting his internal values unto the world, but when these values are not recognized, naturally, man is angered and will fight to uphold them” — Fukuyama

A human being’s ability to exercise his freedom shows that history is a progression towards the ultimate manifestation of that nature, which is free in its out-most sense, and this is captured by liberal democracy. As this ideology can satisfy every man’s need to be recognized through the equal treatment and acknowledgement of his rights.

Fukuyama’s book is titled The End of History is because it proposes that a particular economic or social system would be subservient eventually to mans ideal and final form of government. Thus, we are at the end of history, which means that the dominant form of government we have today is a reflection of our battle for self recognition as individuals with certain values. This seems to me is the same thing that led us to the Crypto revolution.

The Secret Network

With Secret Network, it has always been the same privacy narrative since Bitcoin, but when most people realized bitcoin transactions are pseudonymous instead of anonymous yet the price kept going up, we dusted it under the carpet, this problem was forgotten, or perhaps we hope someone will solve it at some point in the future, and that it could wait. This is what Secret Network is focusing on, but its doing much more than that, it is bringing privacy to secret contracts, in other words — programmable privacy.

The hype, the flashing lights, the euphoria, those are all nice, but when this space eventually wakes up the morning after its drunken night, it will have to face the real issues, and we will come back to whats really important, which is solving actual real problems of the blockchain, and the Team at Secret Network is trying to solve as much of it as they can.

Privacy or No Privacy?

Already we have seen government push-backs against monetary obfuscation, but the same government will stand with the people when a social media giant leaks your personal information. It is this strange cognitive dissonance that needs to be reconciled in peoples minds. I have no doubt we will get there, and if our privacy is of any importance to us as individuals who strive for self recognition, then according to Fukuyama, this being expressed in our social or economic infrastructures is inevitable.

The road to Privacy wont always be the easiest path, but that makes it the most important one.

To learn more about Secret Network and what’s been going on, head over to the official website https://scrt.network/