TL;DR

• We don’t hate the concept of a Bank, only of the Central part of them. We need banks VERY MUCH, just not the ones controlled by governments. In fact, what the world needs looks a lot like the Free Banking System supported by tech like crypto.

• The “bankless” culture, even though has the right philosophical principles, often gets aped and interpreted by people as a culture of hate towards any banker and any bank because of the wording in it.

• We believe it’ll be better for crypto OGs to have a more welcoming process with the current central banks and help them get to Free Banking and crypto faster. It’ll be up to them to join or die, but the door should be open and welcoming, not closed and hostile.
  
  
  

  

What is a Bank?

The word BANK elicits lots of good and bad feelings in people, and often, very negative ones from the crypto-sphere (see above).

The scumbags of the earth

The thieves of humanity

The guys with the free get-out-of-jail card

Let them drown in their own excrement

Those feeling are shared by us at Mean DAO, with one distinction… is not about Banks, but about Banks that are Centralized. It’s the central part the one we abhor, the part that celebrates the Fiat Monetary System, and a Central Banking infrastructure heavyhanded by a Government. That’s our big no-no.

What we are really against is Government-Controlled Banking.

Without getting too philosophical here, we feel anything in life is a feature if is by choice, and evil if is forced upon you. This holds as true for Centralized Finance (CeFi) or Traditional Finance (TradFi), as it does for Decentralized Finance (DeFi). If we FORCE society to DeFi, by forcing the absolute removal of CeFi/TradFi, without giving them the choice, we’d become what we’ve come to replace: a tyrant.

Do we really want to shun away the many folks that feel like this? 👇

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/jxmi85/i_dont_like_being_my_own_bank

Banks are good and necessary, provided they are out of the hands of governments. The Free Banking system and Austrian School of Economics are the underlying economics foundation of everything we see today in crypto and DeFi. Neither calls for the death of banks, just for the death of Central Banking.

Etimology

The world BANK even has very humble beginnings, and it originated from the German “banc”, and the Italians borrowed it into “banca”, and then the French adapted it into “banque”, and finally landed in the English “bank” we know today.

The original bankers (DeFi’s true OGs)

And they all meant the same: “BENCH”. But, how did “benches” become “banks”?

Benches were used as makeshift desks or exchange counters during the Renaissance by Florentine bankers, who used to make their transactions atop desks covered by green tablecloths

Before brick and mortar banks with ATMs and Cashiers and Vaults, people used to trade with each other, and exchange money, and coins, and make loans, and pay interest, with other people… IN BENCHES, as in, a wooden bench at some park or cross-road with high foot traffic.

Those “bankers” (the folks who sat at the banks/benches) provided the same services banks do today without their centralized nature. One can almost argue they were DeFi’s true OGs.

Governments and Authority

Somewhere along the way, the monarchs and governments of the world saw the power of money and gradually established the centralized banking infrastructure we are familiar with today. Every time and on every cycle adding more and more control from the central authority of the moment.

Providing social safety for peasants became an added benefit protection from the masters of government, and Central Banking started to peek its evil eye into societies across the world. The narrative “we are the government, we know what’s best for your social agenda, therefore we know what’s best for your economic agenda” became an idea forced upon the masses.

A Big Brother that knows how to manage my money, what a novel idea! 🤣

It wasn’t long before Government-controlled Central Banking turned into the biggest Ponzi scheme humanity has ever seen. And thanks to the US role in WW2 (enabling Bretton-Woods), and its subsequent annihilation by big-balls-Nixon, the world is in the deep-out-of-control spiral of never-ending debt and money printing we are today.

In the words of our favorite economist:

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists.”
― Friedrich Hayek

That’s it. Just wanted to throw this out there, we shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate being bankless, that would also mean being unbanked, and that is no-bueno for anyone.

Let’s keep fighting the good fight to get rid of all Central Banks and separate Government from Money.

Get Involved

We are the Mean DAO, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization working to bring financial freedom to people and businesses worldwide. We do this through the Mean Protocol and MeanFi.com, a self-custody, permissionless & trustless bank bringing crypto and DeFi to everyday banking workflows on the Solana blockchain.

Stay in touch with our progress every week, and join the DeFi revolution by checking our website, joining the Mean DAO Discord, and following @MeanFinance on Twitter.