Many people talk about separating money from the state, but almost no one seriously attempts to imagine what that world would actually look like. The idea is usually treated as a slogan, not a destination.

There’s a famous quote from Friedrich Hayek that gets cited often:

“I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government. We can’t take them violently out of the hands of government; all we can do is by some sly, roundabout way introduce something they can’t stop.”

The quote is powerful, but it raises a far more interesting question than it answers. What would really happen if this did play out? What if, in practice rather than theory, sound money were taken out of the hands of the state?

That question is why I support the eCash project. It is explicitly attempting what Hayek described: a “sly, roundabout” path toward unstoppable, sound money. More importantly, eCash isn’t just philosophical, but practical. To my knowledge, it’s the only cryptocurrency with a credible roadmap aimed at true human scale on the order of 50 transactions per day for 10 billion people on the planet.

Recently, a scandal on X involving fraudulent Somali daycare centers siphoning American taxpayer funds has sparked calls to stop paying taxes altogether. While I’m sympathetic to the impulse and ultimately supportive of abolishing taxes, I don’t think an abrupt shutdown of the system is wise today.

Imagine a scenario where enough Americans coordinated to stop paying taxes that enforcement became impossible. Government revenue collapses. Workers go unpaid. The state grinds to a halt. What happens next?

Do we rapidly self-organize under a new governance model? I doubt it. More likely, society fractures before it rebuilds. Would it become a lawless hellscape? Maybe. But I’d prefer not to find out the hard way.

The uncomfortable truth is that tearing down the current system without a fully functional alternative ready to take its place is far more likely to make things worse. This is the kind of scenario only hardcore preppers plan for. Our money itself depends on centralized authority; remove that authority overnight, and it’s not clear what remains.

So what is the alternative?

It starts by building an entirely separate monetary system that doesn’t require a central authority to function. That is precisely what the eCash project is attempting to do. Once such a system exists, the ideal transition would be gradual rather than catastrophic, though whether that’s realistic remains to be seen.

The only path I can envision involves a government that genuinely believes in free markets and embraces new technology instead of regulating it into oblivion. That’s not unprecedented. In the early days of the Internet, governments allowed online commerce to flourish by exempting it from sales taxes. That decision helped ignite a global transformation.

Why couldn’t we do something similar with crypto today? No taxes on crypto. Period.

Imagine cryptocurrency networks as the financial equivalent of the high seas, like international waters where no single nation’s laws apply. Imagine building online businesses, earning revenue in crypto, and eliminating the administrative nightmare of tax compliance. The transition wouldn’t be instantaneous, but I don’t think it would take centuries either. More like decades. As the dollar continues to lose value and crypto adoption grows, traditional tax revenue would steadily evaporate. Governments could attempt to print their way out, but that would only accelerate the decline.

This is exactly what Milton Friedman foresaw when he said:

“The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that’s missing, but will soon be developed, is a reliable eCash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A.”

If every transaction were conducted in cash, wouldn’t you agree that taxation would become vastly more difficult? That’s what internet-native cash enables. And when governments no longer control the money supply, their role inevitably shrinks.

Of course, that also means many services currently funded by governments would need new models. This is where the free market must step in. Some services such as education or fire departments could transition into for-profit or cooperative models. Others could remain public goods, funded transparently, not through taxes, but through block rewards or transaction fees.

Imagine a system where a fixed percentage of all transaction fees collected by the network funds real world social services, allocated through on-chain governance by staking nodes. No income taxes. No hidden money creation. Every coin accounted for. Less corruption. Less bureaucracy. Governance by math rather than discretion.

How we get there is still an open question, however.

But the first requirement is clear: a reliable, scalable network with robust infrastructure and an exceptional user experience. That’s what eCash is building. The second requirement is adoption, but as we have seen, that can only come after the first requirement. Only then can we change civilization as we know it.

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