I Am Not A Security

Created by
lorepunk

I wrote this poem in July 2023, at the beginning of my third full year as a full-time writer and creator in Web3. This space saved my life. Like many members of our community, I came here full of hope—ready to build a world where we are all going to make it, ready to uplift technologies that enabled creators from the margins of society to connect with their communities and earn a decent living. In the heady days of 2021, I connected with amazing people, all ready to share their knowledge, skills and connections with anyone who was willing to make a contribution to web3.
From the outside, our space is portrayed very differently. Many media prefer to highlight the scammers and grifters of crypto, not the artists and animators, the coders and connectors, the hackers and dreamers of the old school.
To us, our blockchains are playgrounds, canvases and wild universes whose laws are just being drawn. Their currencies are an engine of association, connection and prosperity—freedom to transact means freedom to make our communities manifest. But for too many in power, the power, promise and potential of blockchain technology means nothing. Even though the greatest scams in the world come from traditional finance, to the powerful, it is crypto that is the scam.
I usually keep my head down, building and creating, but when there was a judgement in a US circuit court that XRP token was, indeed, not a security, I saw so many people on Crypto Twitter cheering, and saying that “we are not a security.”
Not just XRP, not they. We. Because whether we are on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana or any other chain, we live and die together. We are not a security. We are a world entire, and we are just getting started.
I wrote this poem in a rush, with the hair standing up on the back of my neck, full of hope at that judge’s decision. But we will build our world by our work and play within it, not by waiting on the decisions of the powerful. #OnchainSummer and #IStandWithCrypto have their messages for lawmakers, for sure. But their most important message is to us—to get out there, and get building.
Many thanks to the wonderful @shibboleth88 for the technical and creative support, and to the incredible @ProofofNima and @Layerrxyz team for making this drop happen, and to @JessePollak and team at @BuildonBase for creating Base and making this incredible celebration possible.