From Anarchy to Alignment
By Marutey Mani
If someone had told me back in 2007 that a strange digital currency posted anonymously on the internet would one day push governments to rethink how money works, I honestly wouldn’t have believed it. At that time, Bitcoin didn’t look like an invention that would last a long time. It felt more like a protest, a bunch of people fed up with banks and institutions trying to build a parallel world where code had more power than authority. Crypto didn’t begin as a polished idea. It started as frustration, rebellion, and the belief that technology could do a better job than the people running traditional finance.
That origin story actually matters. It explains why crypto always felt a bit wild and idealistic. It wasn’t created for mainstream acceptance or digital governance. But the more I read about its journey, the more interesting the shift becomes. Somewhere along the line, the same technology that tried so hard to run away from institutions slowly became useful to them. And today, with governments, especially the Indian government, moving deeper into digital public systems, it’s fair to ask whether something born in anarchy can actually make our institutions more transparent and reliable.
To understand that shift, it’s important to see what problem crypto originally tried to solve. For decades, financial systems worked in a very centralized way. Banks approved everything. Governments controlled currency. Institutions handled verification. Most of us never questioned this because we didn’t really have a choice. But centralized systems, even when they’re efficient, come with weaknesses. A single error or hack can affect millions. Corruption becomes easier because one insider can change records. And in many parts of the world, people who don’t have documents or access to banks just get left out entirely.
Crypto emerged as a response to this fragility. It offered a huge promise: a ledger that anyone could verify, where transactions couldn’t be secretly changed, and where trust didn’t depend on any single authority. In theory, this felt like digital equality. But in practice, it came with a new set of issues. A system with no central authority also means no safety net. If you lost your private key, that was it. If an exchange collapsed, you had no regulator to complain to. If scammers tricked people, there was no way to recover funds. Complete freedom sounded exciting, but it didn’t always work for real-world users who need stability more than ideology.
This is why early crypto couldn’t grow beyond a niche community. The technology was promising, but it wasn’t built for ordinary people. Meanwhile, governments around the world were struggling with their own problems. Citizens were demanding faster payments, transparent systems, and corruption-free processes. Many old digital systems, centralized databases, manual checks, and slow banks weren’t built for this new digital age. And in a country like India, once people experienced UPI, DigiLocker, Aadhaar, FASTag, CoWIN, and other large-scale digital systems, expectations changed completely. We got used to things being fast and trustworthy. That’s exactly where blockchain re-enters the picture, surprisingly not as a rebellion but as a tool for accountability. A blockchain record can’t be replaced secretly. Every change is visible. It’s time-stamped. It’s shared across many participants. For governments dealing with land records, subsidy transfers, identity, and supply chains, this solves a very practical issue: how to create trust without relying on thousands of middlemen.
Of course, this doesn’t mean governments should suddenly adopt the unpredictable, anonymous version of crypto that existed in the early days. What’s happening globally is more mature: permissioned, regulated, or hybrid systems. China has a national blockchain network. Countries in Europe are using blockchain for healthcare and document verification. The UAE uses it for business licensing. And India has already run pilots for blockchain land records, certificate verification, agricultural supply chains, and more.
The clearest example of this shift is Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). India’s Digital Rupee is already in pilot mode. A CBDC isn’t like Bitcoin; it’s not volatile or speculative. It’s stable, backed by the government, and runs on block-chain-inspired infrastructure. It takes the strengths of crypto (speed, transparency, programmability) but removes the risks (scams, instability, lack of control).
This leads to the main debate: Should block-chain stay totally decentralized and anarchist, or should it be shaped into something governments can use responsibly? Crypto purists say that government involvement destroys the original purpose. But honestly, a technology only makes a real impact when it gets adopted at scale. And scaling safely needs policies, guardrails, and trust, the things only governments can provide.
This is where the Engagement/Participation Model from SciComm becomes relevant. The future is not about authorities dictating technology to people or people rejecting everything. It’s about collaboration. Governments, developers, companies, and citizens together decide how digital systems should work. Block-chain fits this model well because it encourages shared participation by design.
If governments adopt block-chain responsibly, the impact on daily life could be huge. Land records that cannot be faked. Scholarships or subsidies reach people instantly. Identity systems that protect privacy but remain verifiable. Cross-border payments in seconds. Academic certificates that employers can check in one click. These aren’t just nice ideas; pilot projects in India and other countries already show they work.
Crypto has also surprisingly influenced financial literacy in India. Many young people learned about digital wallets, private keys, and security through crypto apps, sometimes even before understanding traditional banking. With proper education and regulation, this curiosity could grow into a stronger, more informed financial culture.
But all of this only works if safety is guaranteed. People are scared of scams, volatility, and misuse, and that fear is completely valid. Block-chain itself isn’t unsafe; it becomes unsafe when there are no rules. When governments collaborate with industry and set clear frameworks, block-chain becomes both open and protected. That balance, not extreme decentralization or extreme control, is how crypto’s chaotic beginning can turn into something useful and reliable. For the common Indian citizen, the benefits could be very real: faster payments, clearer records, fewer intermediaries, safer documents, better privacy, and more accessible financial tools. In a country as big and diverse as ours, even small improvements can transform millions of lives.
Crypto may have been born as a rebellion, but its future, if used wisely, lies in helping systems become more transparent and accountable. The real success isn’t crypto escaping the system. It’s block-chain helping the system work better for everyone.
And maybe that’s the irony of it all: a technology built to avoid governments might be the one that finally helps them earn public trust.
(The author is a First Year Student, Plaksha University).
