As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies settle into trading ranges the political debate around blockchain and cryptocurrency has ramped up. This mirrors debate about the internet itself, and in politics generally, with two sides hardening extreme positions and those seeking middle ground getting run over.

While information, and money, may want to be free, liars and criminals have the same goals. Bill Gates, now the world’s second-richest man, took the view in a recent Reddit thread that cryptocurrency “has caused deaths in a rather direct way,” as criminals and terrorists have adopted it.

Crypto-bulls reading the same story had a completely different take. Gates was once on their side, they pointed out, and cryptocurrency is not nearly as anonymous as he now suggests.

Bitcoin: Threat or Menace?

The debate between censorship and liberty has been going on ever since the web was spun, but the success of Russian trolls in the 2016 election has many nations cracking down. China has gotten the Chinese iCloud keys of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Europe has endorsed a “right to be forgotten,” and Americans now loudly demand that Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) be broken up in the name of fighting “fake news.”

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, one man’s lies are another’s truth. The same is true regarding blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Angel List founder Naval Ravikant recently issued a tweetstorm on this, filled with rhetoric of blockchain replacing networks with markets, of market rulers gaining power based on merit, of blockchain fixing the problems inherent to both the internet and dictatorships.

This idealized view of blockchain, and cryptocurrency, is wrong, writes Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) technology evangelist Gordon Haff. Blockchains that get garbage in, deliver garbage out. Technology can’t, by itself, replace human frailty. Contracts rarely cover edge cases, which is why they’re subject to laws.

Even blockchains, in other words, need governance, which may not be entirely open to automation. This is evident when you look at Initial Coin Offerings, or ICOs, the “stock” that cryptocurrency owners can “buy” with their coins. Over half of last year’s ICOs already count as failures, and many were outright scams.

Laws Harden

All this is informing government actions today, much as the early internet informed laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, which created an entire legal industry but has, so far, resisted all attempts to change it.

Efforts to patent the results of using this open source technology, to restrict it under some global legal framework and to strictly regulate it are battling on the one hand against plans to use cryptocurrency for oil, sex, gambling, coffee and affordable housing on the other.

The Bottom Line

Extremism in the defense of liberty is a vice for with extremism there is no liberty. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is a virtue, for without moderation there is no justice.

This mangling of a famous Barry Goldwater quote is my own way of saying that nothing — speech, markets, the internet or blockchain, can ever be all one thing or all the other. Compromises must be found, and structures created, that allow for ordered liberty. This is what the Constitution was meant to create, rather than the absolute license extremists of all kinds claim it does, quoting from it like theologians debating Bible verses.

All those talking about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” regarding blockchain or the internet need to remember the rest of the sentence, that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of a mystery novella involving Bitcoin, The Reluctant Detective Saves the World, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing, he owned no shares in companies mentioned in this story. To follow the value of crypto currencies bookmark https://coinmarketcap.com/