Cryptocurrency series - The idea of Financial sovereignty is a mirage.

“Cryptocurrency is driven by the belief that money should be decentralized, not controlled by governments or banks. It champions financial sovereignty, giving individuals absolute ownership of their assets. The movement favors code over institutions, replacing intermediaries with transparent, trustless systems. Promoters see it as a pathway to universal financial access, beyond geography or status. At its core lies a conviction in economic freedom and censorship resistance.”

I would in this series of articles share my views on each of the major idea captured in this opening para. This one is on “Financial sovereignty”. The primary idea of cryptocurrency emerges from the philosophy of “financial sovereignty” – which leans substantively towards absolute individual freedom. A society built on absolute individual freedom is more a philosophical thought experiment than a historically observed reality. Every functioning civilization has discovered — often painfully — that freedom without constraint tends to erode the very conditions that make freedom possible.

Financial sovereignty is a mirage

At the core lies a structural paradox:

If everyone is free to act without limits, no one is reliably free from the actions of others.

Political philosophy has long grappled with this tension. Thomas Hobbes argued that unchecked liberty leads to insecurity — a condition he famously described as a life of perpetual conflict — prompting humans to surrender some freedom in exchange for order. In contrast, John Locke envisioned freedom surviving within a framework of rights and laws that protect individuals from mutual harm rather than suppress autonomy.

Modern economics reaches a similar conclusion through a different route: markets themselves require rules. Property rights, contract enforcement, and predictable institutions are not enemies of liberty; they are its infrastructure. Without them, trust collapses, transactions shrink, and cooperation becomes fragile.

There is also a behavioral dimension. Humans are not purely rational actors — fear, greed, identity, and power shape decision-making. Absolute freedom can therefore drift toward concentration rather than equality, as stronger actors accumulate disproportionate influence. Ironically, unbounded liberty can culminate in informal forms of domination.

History suggests that durable societies converge toward a balancing principle often called ordered liberty — freedom bounded by norms strong enough to prevent chaos but restrained enough to avoid suffocation.

The deeper insight is this:

👉 Freedom is not a binary condition; it is an equilibrium.

Too little produces oppression.Too much produces instability.

Civilizations endure not by maximizing freedom, but by optimizing it — continuously renegotiating the line where personal autonomy coexists with collective security.

In that sense, the real question is not whether society can survive absolute freedom. It is whether freedom itself can survive without structure. This question will be expanded more in my next article which would explore the widest issued Stablecoin - USDT and its issuer - Tether.

My conclusion is "Financial Sovereignty is a Mirage"