A pluralist future for money

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Speaker: Yoseph Ayele

Type: Talk

Expertise: Some familiarity with the topic

Event: Devcon

Date: Nov 2026

Many in crypto are voting for legibility because it reads as scalable and "pragmatic", while open crypto gets labelled idealistic. In Africa, pluralism is the default. Crypto is moving through institutions faster than banking money, and beating banking at its own game. It is also enabling coordination without force: discovery of price, duration, and rate. That many of our currencies have no single price exposes a tiered money system. You provide the balance to the bank, someone else earns the risk-free rate on it, and the bank pays you a fraction. A single unit (USD or a monetary union) does not dissolve this: your money sits at the bottom regardless of denomination. The Legible vs Open debate doesn't solve money tiers. Plurality without oneness is just dollarization. In this talk I unpack what oneness of money means, and the models Africa sets for the world. "Ethereum stands for the alternatives" has to mean this too: money that doesn't ask who is holding it.