An interview with Cassio Gusson, editor-in-chief of Cointelegraph Brazil and author of hundreds of articles about cryptocurrencies and technology, is featured in this article.
Cassio studied advertising and journalism, specializing in culture and globalization. And then he got involved in Brazilian politics for 12 years. Aside from crypto, he has a wide range of interests and hobbies. He enjoys art, music, reading, and traveling. He's all about maximizing the potential of humans.
“I keep my eyes and ears open and listen to the music that comes from uncertainty,” Cassio views cryptocurrency in a similar philosophical way, as something that ties into the meaning of life and the nature of reality.
Crypto Philosophy Is About Equal Opportunities for All
To start with, Cassio told me that he became interested in Bitcoin because of its idea of decentralization, the cypherpunk environment, and also primarily because of Jude Milhon, who did not have anything to do with Bitcoin, but with the movement that preceded it.
“Milhon was an activist, a freedom fighter. For me that is what really matters – fighting for people to have equal opportunities. Not for them to be the same, because that's bullshit. The difference between people is what makes us human. You are totally different from your mother and so on. Anyway, offering equal opportunities is what I believe in, and Milhon fought for it,” he said.
I asked Cassio whether cryptocurrency would eventually replace traditional finance, and he said we shouldn't aim to achieve that because it won't create equal opportunities for all.
“Concentration of wealth and power will remain the same as it is today. Does Bitcoin give opportunities? Sure. But the plough has also opened up opportunities for thousands of people across the world. Bitcoin doesn't change anything. People are the ones who change life, and also the use they make of technology is what changes everything,” he said.
“People have a false illusion that state control is responsible for human misery. This is bullshit. The state is neither a devil nor a god, the state was invented by human beings, so if the state is shit, if it prints money like crazy, if there is poverty in the world, it's not “the state's fault”. This is how humans are – we are always looking for someone to blame for our misery and don’t assume responsibility for our actions,” Cassio added.
To him, Bitcoin replacing the dollar is useless and money is just a means. If Bitcoin becomes the world standard, people will just look, like today, for ways to earn and accumulate more Bitcoin.
“Will human beings stop killing each other, or stop fighting, or will people respect each other's religion more just because Bitcoin has become the currency of the world?” he asked rhetorically.
The Metaverses Is Antithetical to Decentralization
I then turned the conversation to the hot topic of the metaverse, and asked Cassio if we are experiencing the birth of a new era with it, or if it is just a passing fad.
“We are always at the dawn of a new era. It was like that with every technology we created. When we mastered fire, when we created the wheel, when we established agriculture, when we sailed the seas, when Gutenberg started printing the Bible... each time it was the dawn of a new era.
As Marx once said, all that is solid melts into air. So, the metaverse is nothing more than part of the process of deceiving the mind and giving meaning to life.
We live a life of illusions and lies that we choose to believe in order to give meaning to our existence. All our senses do is gather information for our brain to interpret. It chews it and spits out a “logic” that we are capable of absorbing. This means that nothing is absolute and therefore everything, absolutely everything can change,” Cassio reflected philosophically.
The metaverse, he says, is the opposite of decentralization. Ironically, crypto investors are “against the state” but believe the metaverse is different from it, when it is actually the same thing.
“In the metaverse, whoever creates the code, rules the data. And if we are data in the virtual environment, then whoever owns the data and the code dictates the rules. You can't smoke weed in Decentraland if the code doesn't allow it. The metaverse is the deprivation of individual liberty and not its emancipation. You cannot cross your Axie with your avatar in The Sandbox,” he said.
This is not a good or a bad thing in his opinion. It is up to each of us to choose what fits us at the moment. Getting the deification out of the metaverse, he believes that it will be a way to expand the knowledge and amplify the relationships between human beings.
Then I asked Cassio if escapism will be a problem in the metaverse.
“To answer that, we first have to be certain what life is. If to live is to give meaning to existence then there is no escapism, there is only a new way of giving meaning to life. If living is “enjoying the moment”, then there is no escapism, because the metaverse is also that. If to live is to “feel” then there is no escapism because in the metaverse we will also feel.
What we call life is in constant transformation, and the metaverse is part of it. There are theories that point out that even the rules of the universe were being modified throughout their existence. Therefore, I don't believe in any form of escapism, I believe in reality transformations and how we will deal with them. Reality itself is just a construct of the mind,” Cassio concluded.
“Should there be any guiding ethical code for people participating in virtual worlds?” I asked.
“Ahahahaha, as I said, the metaverse is the total deprivation of liberty. Whoever owns the code will command how life should be lived in the digital environment. So, of course there will be codes of ethics and rules.
The human being likes and needs power, and power is control. This has already migrated into the metaverse and will continue to transform.
I hope there will always be hackers ready to break the rules of code, find flaws, and spit in the face of the creators,” Cassio guffawed.
As he continued discussing the metaverse, he said, "We live in one already. We are already in a “parallel” reality created by our senses and interpreted by our mind. We cannot exist if the computer of our mind does not interpret the data captured by our senses. Isn't this a metaverse? Isn't it an “alternative” reality? You see, reality, or what we call reality, is a creation of our mind. It matters little to me whether it is digital or, as we believe today, physical. What matters is what we're making of it.”
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