Bypassing Financial Gatekeepers With Bitcoin

Bitcoin allows people to exchange value directly without intermediaries, and the article argues that this offers an alternative to a financial system dominated by a small number of large institutions. It focuses on Fedimint and Cashu, two projects that give communities the tools to run their own bitcoin-based banks. Fedimint lets a community pool its bitcoin in a federated mint run by collective consensus, with added privacy and security, while Cashu offers individuals a private way to hold and send funds.

The article contrasts these mints with traditional cooperative banks, saying they remove barriers set by paperwork, governments or banks, so that the community becomes the bank. It also points to bitcoin’s use in Venezuela to protect savings from hyperinflation, across Africa for cross-border payments and in Lebanon during severe economic distress.