Defunct Honduran ZEDEs

The Venetian Doge vs. The Crypto Anarchist

Alternative Title: Is Bitcoin Venice, or a Defunct Honduran ZEDE?

The Doge was the elected chief magistrate and leader of the Venetian Republic (697–1797), a mercantile superpower that dominated Mediterranean trade for centuries.

Unlike absolute monarchs, the Doge governed alongside councils and guilds, blending pragmatic statecraft with free enterprise.

Venice thrived by:

1. Imposing strategic tariffs on foreign goods to protect local industries (e.g., glassmaking).
2. Maintaining a navy to safeguard trade routes (state-funded "public goods").
3. Balancing open markets with rules preventing foreign powers from undermining Venetian sovereignty.

Crypto Anarchists, on the other hand, are a modern libertarian archetype who reject all state intervention, advocating for fully decentralized systems, such as Bitcoin, DAOs, Nostr and ZEDEs. Their mantra? "Code, not laws." Results so far? Sadly, underwhelming...

While a Free State Project might truly have changed demographics and bent local laws towards freedom over time, it is unclear how it might scale. Can they increase the population there sufficiently to gain a single electoral college vote? Who knows!

The Doge understood that durable freedom requires guardrails.

Venice’s tariffs weren’t "socialism" — they were investments in the republic’s ability to stay independent and prosperous.

Without them, rivals like Genoa or the Ottomans would have colonized Venice’s markets, turning its merchants into vassals.

Meanwhile, Crypto Anarchists’ "pure" free markets risk replicating Venice’s decline:

• No tariffs? China’s state-subsidized firms gut your industrial base.
• No public infrastructure? Your economy gets extractively globalized (see: deindustrialized Midwest).
• No strategic foresight? "Sovereign individuals" become serfs to offshore oligarchs or AI cartels.

"Venice fell not because it regulated, but because it stopped innovating its statecraft. Libertarians today forget: unregulated markets are just feudalism with better marketing."

— Hypothetical take from a Doge’s ghost, sipping prosecco in the metaverse

TL;DR: The Doge’s lesson:

True sovereignty sometimes demands using state power tactically to keep the playing field free, competitive, and yours. Crypto anarchists’ "hands-off" dogma (no pun intended) risks letting others write the rules — and own the future.