The Return of Crypto Populism in 2026: A Non-Partisan Take - January 10, 2026

The Return of Crypto Populism in 2026: A Non-Partisan Take - January 10, 2026

Economic turmoil and political turmoil often go hand-in-hand - we can see parallels happening now with what happened during the Great Depression, with the rise of populism on both left and the right that emerged as inequality between the rich and the poor grew further and further apart.

How does crypto and blockchain tech play into things as these events unfold? A deep dive into the idea of Bitcoin and the crypto industry's populist roots.

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Transcript

ryangtanaka: 0:00

Hello, everyone. This is Ryan from Teia Cafe. This is season two, episode We're going to be talking about turmoil and political turmoil. So today's date is January And there's a lot of kind of in the United States right now. One big one is the US, uh, extradition or whatever you want to call it, kidnapping of the Venezuelan president. That's, uh, going around in the But also there was that, shooting that happened in Minnesota recently. Uh, everyone's talking about that, so I don't I'm not going to really, focus on that too much, but I wanted to kind of make a episode talking about how all of these things are related to the economic situation that the country is going through today. So if you've been in living in the United States right now, um, it's pretty obvious that a lot of the things have gotten very expensive, right? Especially in housing. the stock markets are going up, not keeping up. And a lot of, younger people especially have given up on homeownership and the divide between, the haves and the have nots has gotten pretty extreme lately. Right? This is not anything new. experts have been talking about this for a long time, and things don't seem to be getting any better. And this is very similar to what happened during the Great Depression in earlier in the twentieth century in the US as well. So I kind of want to talk about very relevant to what's going to And we can kind of maybe think play into that, because this is just in for the technology, but And here's this new thing, That wasn't the case before. So how the world is going to All these, uh, happenings is We don't have a precedent to, you know, base our opinions upon. But we do know that there are that happened back then that picture, of what's actually So okay, so let's get started. Um, so back in during the Great Depression, which was kind of, uh, the big crash in the, in the markets was nineteen twenty nine. Right? But leading up to that, about a there's been, you know, like, our economy has become more like If you look at tech especially, corporations kind of bought out being a monopoly, right? Yeah, it's an oligarchy at at best, but we don't have that sort of, small business culture that we used to in the US anymore. And so what ends up happening is that a few of these, big corporations kind of end up controlling everything, including things happening in politics. I'm not saying anything that the most part, but it's kind of that's that's what it is. Right? That's what we're working with the issue is that back then we Where basically like the the stock market's doing good Stock market's doing great. But there's this disconnect doing versus how the average And it's kind of worth of Americans don't own stocks. Like not even one. so regardless of how you think not apply to most people. And so you have to be careful about like kind of leaning into that bubble a little bit too much because all of the media and everything that's talked about. Like, uh, they're all in on it, They're all in on this big game. And like, some people are making but most people are left out. you could argue that maybe that And, you know, this is nothing, But because of inflation and housing is out of the reach for And even the food prices are And when it reaches a breaking start to happen. And that's where we are. You could say that we've been thousand and eight. Two thousand and eight was economics, because really they second Great Depression. That's how big of a deal it was. Now, there's a lot of different You could some a lot of people handled the problem. And a lot of that comes a lot of of crypto and why I got so So crypto is interesting because at least when it was first launched, Bitcoin came into being around twenty ten, twenty eleven. There's some, uh, discrepancies But we do know that Satoshi was around the same time as the two And I would probably argue that, he was doing it in response to that. So basically, he wanted to that wasn't fueled by debt. But that's another episode. You can check it out if you're But but the whole reason for crypto existing is to to offer an alternative to what was there. And a lot of it was fueled by And populism is like an not left or right. It's not really liberal or It's really about people versus the beginning, crypto projects of crypto being a populist want to call it, you know? now there is a lot of populism going on today, and you could say, like, Donald Trump being the president is part of that, right? just to clear the record, I slightly leaning left, but for know, a moderate when it comes the American spectrum. so I've talked with people on And the interesting thing for me is that when I was talking to a lot of these, people who strongly supported crypto in the earlier days, there were people from all over the political spectrum. There were people who were very liberal, people were very conservative, but they were united under the idea of crypto being, for the people, so to speak. And that is a very populist message that has always been embedded into the technology itself. Now, today it's different years, especially since the lot of, uh, institutional money Banks, hedge funds and even some kind of came in and wanted to And then the message started introducing all these other, this whole crypto thing. And a lot of them wasn't done in Now that the markets are down, maybe we can start talking about this. But a lot of the the coins out help the people. You know, the most obvious one was that was rich people losing Right. but um, all the, meme coins out there and the scams and the rug pulls, those are all designed just to extract money from the poor. You know, it's kind of similar to like how lottery systems work. And, yeah, unfortunately, that's kind of where the, industry found itself. And it couldn't it just couldn't money just floating in. Right. Like, if you could get rich off Oh, yeah. You know, like, it wasn't the say the least, you know? so personally, I, uh, half agree with people on the right saying that they should leave this stuff alone. And the government should have involved with this, this stuff. But at the same time, if we're have to have regulations. And, that part where it's still very messy and we're still trying to figure it out as we speak. So the journey is not over, to So going back to the Great Depression, and I do think there's a strong case to be made that, the American economy is really teetering towards that right now. I mean, I could go into it, but that the American dollar is not used to be in the near future. that coincides with a time of rising populism, which also happened during the great stock market crash in nineteen twenty nine. So here's a few examples. Examples of political turmoil Right. One, all of those things that are happening in the markets contribute to the rise of FDR, right? And he's a very left leaning Right. But it's pretty cut and dry situation back then contributed Rise of socialism. officials were very, very United States might actually go That's how bad things were. So there's a few people that A guy named Huey Long from, uh, And then he basically said that. Yeah, let's let's, uh, eat the rich, you know, like, that was his platform. And he started to get very, very And it made a lot of people And, but he was eventually assassinated in nineteen thirty five. So that happened. There's another guy named Father And, uh, initially he was a you know, this starts from populism, right? And so he was he supported FDR But then something happened and he didn't like how he was going about things. And then he eventually turned pro-fascist, like, openly national radio show. So, you know, it kind of goes to show, like, how easily people can flip right from one thing to another. So left or right, it's, uh. So the horse shoe theory, uh, that horseshoe theory. in practice and, uh, yeah, in popular, like, similar to how had a huge uptick, in membership DSA stands for Democratic And if you look at New York and living at, there are mayors that running as a socialist. They didn't even try to hide it, So both Trump and the socialists can be thought of as populists just on different sides of the aisle, And you see that, picture of, Mamdani hanging out with Trump, right? Yeah, it it seemed a lot more Right. But in in some ways, they're sides of the same coin, So about, like, all these, these want to make this about like, hey, this is where we are. And economic situation that we're in has led up to this point. So you can draw even more parallels here where like, the progressives, right? Like Mamdani and, Katie Wilson, even the Democrats because they of the Democratic Party for a And, there's Bernie and then AOC who are kind of been there, for a while. But they are in the smallest of Right? I would say, like there's less than, than, uh, double digits in terms of, like how many people in Congress Really identify that far left. But we may start to see a reaction to that in the next couple years. And we'll have to see after But, uh, not a lot of people are very happy with the way Trump is doing. And so we might see a big flip Right now, the, Republicans kind of control the whole, you know, branches. But we might see a big flip to people are fed up. And that tends to happen during, So that being said, I mean, everything I just said is more of a summary than anything new here. But the kind of the big question, at least for this episode, is how does this play into crypto? And that is a big question mark that even I ask myself every day because, I, I'm one of those people that got in early in the crypto movement. So I believe in the idea of like that populists, you know, like crypto being for other people, right. And even technologically, crypto if it served small businesses big businesses have all those frameworks. They have their resources and the lawyers and the manpower to really just, you know, do things in, in the way that they see fit. But really, the biggest use case contracts, you can give people documentation that they normally Right. Like if you a lot of the legal functions of lawyers can be replaced by smart contracts, not all, but at least some, so there's that whole thing that is going on. And right now the industry is kind of muddled because of, there's all these like, external organizations like Wall Street coming in and kind of muddying the message. But since we're in a market the biggest correction to ever uh, a lot of, uh, even people in Reflecting on like, why they're You know, so is crypto gonna really be a hedge for economic turmoil? And so far, the answer doesn't you probably heard that gold and those are typical destinations. When, uh, a currency in a Right? They've been shooting up, but crypto really didn't follow that like most coins actually went down. So at least right now nobody is Bitcoin being a hedge for That might change if some of been fueled by fiat contracts And I dedicate an episode to But the idea is that since a been a ton of money coming in flowing into crypto, And a lot pull out now. Now that it's like not and we're going to see what is left, because a lot of the money that came in, uh, was done through exchanges and exchanges were never really meant to be a place where you store your money. Right? Like Coinbase or Binance, like, those are the two biggest ones right now. But, when I think of an exchange, I don't think of a bank. I think of, you know, that that kiosks in the airports where you just convert one, one currency to another. That was the original intention, started dipping their hands into to function more like banks and And you know, you know, when you there talk about themselves, really want this real bad, huh? Like, you want to be acknowledged by Wall Street, right? Your Wall Street buddies, like crypto's, always had sort of this, uh, inferiority complex compared to traditional finance because, you know, it's this new wacky thing that's kind of like, cool. But at the same time, it's not Right? But I don't think it's going to Coinbase especially like they're exchange and a bank and it when because you could convert your with some ease. But there's a lot of places that hundreds if not thousands. So they don't have that Anyone can do it now. And the problem is that they're they put in money into that And is it really going to last? Like and then when you look at if you look at them as a bank, which is another consideration, you'll notice that the staking rewards, which is basically an interest rate, aren't really that great because they take a big cut. for example, Tezos, if you percent plus APY, on Coinbase three to four percent and their validators correctly. You know, your complaints about Like they don't show up to the governance stuff even though they don't, and so it doesn't seem like they're taking it seriously. And to be fair, they have coins out there to manage. And there's no way, right? There's no way. So lately they've been talking about moving over their service to a DEX which is a decentralized exchange which runs autonomously. And that can be done. that technology was figured out And again then it's like, well, what is the point of Coinbase? They're just basically a on ramp And there's hundreds of that So anyway, they're really trying going to stay relevant to the thing is starting to die out and serious, like questions about going forward in the economy? Because, you know, like the government is shutting down every other month and like, there's all this political turmoil. There's like tariffs, uh, A lot of, uh, countries are the yuan because they see them is America going to be able to So it's looking pretty dire if you're like, the status quo right now. And a lot of people are dollar is going to lose a lot of It's already it's already down And it's been on a decline for a And there's no signs of it but on a more optimistic note, we're gonna see what happens to this populist movement because it's not going to go away at any time soon. The manifestations of it might or left leaning, which is likely But there's this angle here for if it can really like, go back I was honestly kind of annoyed for most of twenty twenty one hype cycle, if I'm being perfectly honest. the money was good, I won't lie But at the same time, I felt in terms of like, why it was And that's why you ended up with happen if people are actually The problem is that they used fiat instruments to do this crypto thing, but only as a buzzword. if people held their private keys and just kind of did the crypto thing the way it was intended, none of that would have happened. But again, people got sucked in So yeah, so that's that's kind And it's more of a almost like a taking their roots more what's going to make it or break And if we don't do it, if the industry doesn't come together and like actually represent the values that the technology was created to begin with, it's just going to lose to China probably, maybe Asia. I don't know the yen. Warren Buffett is investing in Um, there's that too. it has to really, like, make a its value, because right now I And if they don't do something are going to lose interest. but they're already doing that. You know, like a lot of these, go out of business in the next And then, uh, what will be left, is that is only gonna be after itself, There's only really left who are actually custodying Is that a word? Uh, but, you know, self-custody, That that word disappeared from the Web3, discussions because the exchanges had just had too many power. Right? If you have your money on Coinbase, that wallet is not yours, right? It belongs to the bank. You are trusting them that they're not going to screw you over. But when push comes to shove, if you think they're going to have are they going to choose their Right. And you got to kind of ask you And maybe, most people don't really take those sorts of questions seriously, but I do think that we're reaching a point where we might not have a choice. And there are people, like, in, who's from Venezuela originally. And he said, yeah, I see the The stuff that's happening in which is why he fled. He lives in Argentina right now, But, you know, things can get And it's the same thing. You don't believe it until it So yeah. So keep that in mind when all happening because it's not going to get worse in a lot of ways. So you have to figure out how you're going to protect yourself. And the idea of there being a unrealistic at this point. You know, hate to say it, but. So. In conclusion, crypto is still in this weird place where we're not quite sure where it's gonna go. But assuming that you've been doing and working on this stuff in good faith, there might be an out. You know, there might be a And that's a big reason why a even despite the bad markets. And like, nobody really talks Most of the public does not trust crypto, and a lot of it has to do with, like its integration with the, fiat markets. But we have to work on like otherwise, it's not going to So hope you found that And, uh, see you in the next Take care.