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One of the critiques most often thrown at crypto is that it’s just a form of late-stage capitalism, the enshittification of an increasingly extractive economic system which serves to benefit only the wealthy while making the world worse off for everyone else. In this telling, crypto is turning everything into a financial product, and this ‘hyperfinancialization’ is just another form of gambling for the already rich, of speculation for the leisure class.
Until recently, I would simultaneously protest ‘But the tech is awesome!’ while also nodding in agreement. I was torn, never sure whether hyperfinancialization was really a bad thing if crypto was also working to disintermediate layers of extraction while giving people tools to live a more free life. But I never really gave it a lot of thought. Until recently. Until I became hyperstitious.
Although I’d seen the word ‘hyperstition’ before, I never really knew what it meant. A couple of months ago I saw a post from Gitcoin’s Kevin Owocki:
One of the critiques most often thrown at crypto is that it’s just a form of late-stage capitalism, the enshittification of an increasingly extractive economic system which serves to benefit only the wealthy while making the world worse off for everyone else. In this telling, crypto is turning everything into a financial product, and this ‘hyperfinancialization’ is just another form of gambling for the already rich, of speculation for the leisure class.
Until recently, I would simultaneously protest ‘But the tech is awesome!’ while also nodding in agreement. I was torn, never sure whether hyperfinancialization was really a bad thing if crypto was also working to disintermediate layers of extraction while giving people tools to live a more free life. But I never really gave it a lot of thought. Until recently. Until I became hyperstitious.
Although I’d seen the word ‘hyperstition’ before, I never really knew what it meant. A couple of months ago I saw a post from Gitcoin’s Kevin Owocki:
I wasn’t trolling when I asked how he defined ‘hyperstition’; I really wanted to know. It turns out hyperstition is a mid-90s word from the same minds who first articulated the techno-cult thesis of ‘accelerationism’. Hyperstition was loosely defined by its originator, Nick Land, as a self-fulfilling positive feedback loop, enabled by techno-capitalist systems, that manifests cultural elements into reality.
In other words, futuristic ideas that resonate become culturally embedded through recognition and repetition at scale, influencing the present and driving progress in that direction. According to Land, “(h)yperstitions by their very existence as ideas function causally to bring about their own reality.”
Hyperstition collapses the boundary between fiction and reality by exploiting feedback loops between belief, action, and material conditions. Or as William S. Burroughs said, “When you cut into the present, the future leaks out”.
Hyperfinancialization is the idea that capitalism has become more than the financial layer for modern society; it is modern society. Financial products are no longer limited to stocks, bonds, bank accounts, derivatives, and other legacy assets. Rather, everything becomes financialized.
We sell our time by the minute or hour, speculate on attention with memecoins and information with prediction markets, while self-branding and influencer culture has commodified our identity. As Nick Land said, “capitalism incarnates hyperstitional dynamics at an unprecedented and unsurpassable level of intensity, turning mundane economic ‘speculation’ into an effective world-historical force”.
Hyperfinancialization is hyperstition with money, the capitalization of everything, everywhere, all at once. Nick Land and his fellow academics didn’t know Bitcoin was a decade away, let alone that over 50,000,000 tokens would be launched in its wake. But their insight was on the money: when culture and capital move at hyperspeed in an intertwined mass of monied memetic momentum, large-scale change is inevitable.
Of course the tricky part is determining what kind of change is inevitable. Most of the culture around the future is dystopic, dark, ruled by scarcity, fear, and absolute power: from the interstellar space battles of Star Wars to the junkyard deserts of Mad Max and the steaming, teeming cities of Blade Runner. Nowhere is there a vision that decentralized financial technologies help to shape the kind of future you would want to live in. Crypto is not part of the story. Yet.
One of the more interesting stories to tell is to envision how hyperfinancialization will intertwine with artificial intelligence and robotics. Will each autonomous agent — whether a robot in your kitchen ordering groceries or an always-on-call personalized AI assistant — use crypto to transact? If we tax each of those transactions at 0.0001%, does that enable some kind of universal basic income? In the end, is it hyperfinancialization that saves humanity?
To date, crypto has made little dent in our legacy social and creative institutions, partly because we are failing to elucidate positive crypto-centric pre-hyperstitions, to tell transformative stories about why crypto matters. Crypto provides the tools to enable us to have more control over our future, to give us more agency, authority, and autonomy within the present system, to change the system. In this pre-hyperstition, crypto-powered hyperfinancialization enables us each to align what we produce with capital, on an instantaneous, global scale. It may also be the rails on which other future technologies of the present, the AI and robotics of today, do their work. But not unless we tell that story.
There is also my favorite story, a tale about a crypto-powered, techno-nature utopia, the solarpunk world, where we find new ways to align effort, incentives, and value to create a system that is as sustainable as it is beautiful and abundant. But this vision, and others even more marvelous, won’t manifest unless we put in the work: educate, build, and ensure that the cultural embeds that stick for tomorrow aren’t simply those of a dystopic, oppressive future, but of value created together while building our collective future, one empowered individual at a time, tyranny not included.
Author Bio
Hiro Kennelly is a writer and cofounder of IndyPen CryptoMedia. He loves people, Moloch, and degenerative cryptoeconomics.
Editor and Designer Bio
trewkat is a writer, editor, and designer interested in the potential for web3 to disrupt fat cats. She is cofounder of IndyPen CryptoMedia.
This post does not contain financial advice, only educational information. By reading this article, you agree and affirm the above, as well as that you are not being solicited to make a financial decision, and that you in no way are receiving any fiduciary projection, promise, or tacit inference of your ability to achieve financial gains.
IndyPen CryptoMedia is open to submissions for publication. We’d love to read your work, so please submit your article for consideration!
I wasn’t trolling when I asked how he defined ‘hyperstition’; I really wanted to know. It turns out hyperstition is a mid-90s word from the same minds who first articulated the techno-cult thesis of ‘accelerationism’. Hyperstition was loosely defined by its originator, Nick Land, as a self-fulfilling positive feedback loop, enabled by techno-capitalist systems, that manifests cultural elements into reality.
In other words, futuristic ideas that resonate become culturally embedded through recognition and repetition at scale, influencing the present and driving progress in that direction. According to Land, “(h)yperstitions by their very existence as ideas function causally to bring about their own reality.”
Hyperstition collapses the boundary between fiction and reality by exploiting feedback loops between belief, action, and material conditions. Or as William S. Burroughs said, “When you cut into the present, the future leaks out”.
Hyperfinancialization is the idea that capitalism has become more than the financial layer for modern society; it is modern society. Financial products are no longer limited to stocks, bonds, bank accounts, derivatives, and other legacy assets. Rather, everything becomes financialized.
We sell our time by the minute or hour, speculate on attention with memecoins and information with prediction markets, while self-branding and influencer culture has commodified our identity. As Nick Land said, “capitalism incarnates hyperstitional dynamics at an unprecedented and unsurpassable level of intensity, turning mundane economic ‘speculation’ into an effective world-historical force”.
Hyperfinancialization is hyperstition with money, the capitalization of everything, everywhere, all at once. Nick Land and his fellow academics didn’t know Bitcoin was a decade away, let alone that over 50,000,000 tokens would be launched in its wake. But their insight was on the money: when culture and capital move at hyperspeed in an intertwined mass of monied memetic momentum, large-scale change is inevitable.
Of course the tricky part is determining what kind of change is inevitable. Most of the culture around the future is dystopic, dark, ruled by scarcity, fear, and absolute power: from the interstellar space battles of Star Wars to the junkyard deserts of Mad Max and the steaming, teeming cities of Blade Runner. Nowhere is there a vision that decentralized financial technologies help to shape the kind of future you would want to live in. Crypto is not part of the story. Yet.
One of the more interesting stories to tell is to envision how hyperfinancialization will intertwine with artificial intelligence and robotics. Will each autonomous agent — whether a robot in your kitchen ordering groceries or an always-on-call personalized AI assistant — use crypto to transact? If we tax each of those transactions at 0.0001%, does that enable some kind of universal basic income? In the end, is it hyperfinancialization that saves humanity?
To date, crypto has made little dent in our legacy social and creative institutions, partly because we are failing to elucidate positive crypto-centric pre-hyperstitions, to tell transformative stories about why crypto matters. Crypto provides the tools to enable us to have more control over our future, to give us more agency, authority, and autonomy within the present system, to change the system. In this pre-hyperstition, crypto-powered hyperfinancialization enables us each to align what we produce with capital, on an instantaneous, global scale. It may also be the rails on which other future technologies of the present, the AI and robotics of today, do their work. But not unless we tell that story.
There is also my favorite story, a tale about a crypto-powered, techno-nature utopia, the solarpunk world, where we find new ways to align effort, incentives, and value to create a system that is as sustainable as it is beautiful and abundant. But this vision, and others even more marvelous, won’t manifest unless we put in the work: educate, build, and ensure that the cultural embeds that stick for tomorrow aren’t simply those of a dystopic, oppressive future, but of value created together while building our collective future, one empowered individual at a time, tyranny not included.
Author Bio
Hiro Kennelly is a writer and cofounder of IndyPen CryptoMedia. He loves people, Moloch, and degenerative cryptoeconomics.
Editor and Designer Bio
trewkat is a writer, editor, and designer interested in the potential for web3 to disrupt fat cats. She is cofounder of IndyPen CryptoMedia.
This post does not contain financial advice, only educational information. By reading this article, you agree and affirm the above, as well as that you are not being solicited to make a financial decision, and that you in no way are receiving any fiduciary projection, promise, or tacit inference of your ability to achieve financial gains.
IndyPen CryptoMedia is open to submissions for publication. We’d love to read your work, so please submit your article for consideration!
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Finance at the Speed of Hyperstition
Finance at the Speed of Hyperstition
It's been a while, but @hirokennelly has written IndyPen's latest piece on Finance at the Speed of Hyperstition
Thanks for sharing! 🙏