My journey began the 4th Of July. I was already feeling the FOMO since other members of the summit were already posting their photos touring around beautiful places in Czech Republic. I would take me 24 hours between commuting, flight time plus stopovers to get there. In the meantime, I would be able to work instead of sitting idle waiting for the hours to pass by.
The 4th of July is well known as “Independence Day” the cultural industries of the US have taken care that no one is ignorant of their independence celebration. To me, It has a different meaning. Around 20 years ago I started my own journey towards independence, when I started my training as tech support representative in a call center where many US companies outsourced their services. Inbound call center operations are very rough on the mind and body of the people working there, but still I remember that gig with much love. I met many friends there who I still have a close relationship with, I met my partner commuting to that job and I learned a lot about idiosyncrasies in the US.
For a few months, I worked for one of our foes: Western Union. Back then there were many years to go by before Satoshi Nakamoto revolutionized borderless payments with a peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol called Bitcoin. After 9/11 airport and border controls tightened as we know them today. “Mules” or “Bagalleros” were cooked on their own stew. The big WU was one of the few ways remittances could be sent abroad or aid sent to those trying to stand on their feet in the promised “land of opportunity” and the “American Dream”.
The thing I liked the most about being a WU call center tech rep is that I got to talk with a lot of people and learn every single accent in the US migrant communities. It was very difficult at first but then your ears starts to sharpen and you start understanding the metalanguage of English as a Second Language. I used to work in a project where having an accent was punished. Working at WU let me embrace the music of the human voice while fixing 33k modems and matrix dot printers, DOS machines that had decades running like that. Coming back to spoken language, accents are the essence of the soul. I understood that people spoked English their way with their own melody not because they wouldn’t want to learn, on the contrary they did It because it was a way to say “This is who I am”, “I come from far and I’m proud of it”.
The lords of border-enforcing payments had a well-oiled operation, where they could capture and censor anyone at will. While they exploited inequalities of the economic system, they told the story as if they were the facilitators of freedom. They were the value extractors of TradFi cross-border payments by excellence and they knew how to do it better than anyone.
But for all of this to work, they needed to gain trust among the communities they'd be inserted in. They had to create status quo inside the different immigrant communities that inhabit developed nations to maximize their profit in the name of convenience. So the big W would scout for community members that were eligible to work in the US and that were well established in the neural centers of these Latin, Slavic, Russian, African, Indian, Pakistani neighborhoods all across the US. Every branch would offer English as a second language and the community’s Language as the first. Just as their people would. That’s how the lords of censorship-first border-enforcing payments rolled. And it worked.
I learned that, in the end, the legitimacy comes from communities. It doesn't matter what outsiders say. You can’t come from to communities and have people to adopt your payment tech. You have to work the inside out, pass their tests, gain their trust.
Fortunately, thanks to ZCG resuming funding on community efforts, we are slowly retaking this path of growing Zcash from the communities themselves and not AirDropping our “fabulous tech” as “(mostly white) Knights of al that is fair and just” as most of the crypto industry (unfortunately) is still doing.
Chequia and Prague specifically have a history of liberation and emancipation from occupying forces and it's something one can feel in the air of that ancient but vibrant city. The Z|ECC summit awaits with a Full (chatham ruled) House where I hope many project and community representatives can exchange their experiences with developers to continue to build a thriving decentralized borderless, censorship-resistant, byzantine-fault-tolerant private peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol known as Zcash also called Unstoppable Internet Money for Everyone.
Onwards!