I'll make a prediction. My prediction is in the next 20 years, the DeFi movement will catalyze, um, a movement against the open internet. And it is because state actors will compete with private actors for this battle between centralized institutional, state based control systems... and the open internet will start to get threatened... and I do think that that is going to be kind of the big pushing force socially.View on YouTube
The prediction’s horizon is 20 years from September 14, 2021 (i.e., until 2041), so we are only a bit over four years into it—far too early to judge the long‑term claim.
So far, parts of the mechanism Friedberg described are visible:
- Regulators have clearly intensified scrutiny of crypto and DeFi. The U.S. SEC brought its first DeFi‑specific enforcement action in 2021 and has treated crypto as a key enforcement priority, bringing numerous cases against exchanges and token offerings. (sec.gov)
- The EU’s MiCA framework creates comprehensive regulation for crypto‑assets and service providers, reflecting that governments now see crypto/DeFi as a mainstream financial‑system concern, though MiCA explicitly leaves DeFi mostly out of scope for now. (eur-lex.europa.eu)
- The Tornado Cash episode shows how DeFi‑related tools can trigger actions that touch open‑internet norms: OFAC’s 2022 sanctions led GitHub to remove the project’s open‑source repositories and suspend developer accounts, prompting free‑speech concerns from groups like EFF about government pressure on code hosting and publication. (github.com)
However, the stronger part of the prediction—that this DeFi‑driven state‑vs‑private conflict will significantly threaten the openness of the internet and become a primary social battleground—is not clearly true as of late 2025:
- Major public fights over the “open internet” remain dominated by content‑moderation, misinformation, hate speech, and platform governance issues (e.g., Meta’s shifts away from fact‑checking and loosening hate‑speech rules), rather than DeFi or financial‑system control. (theverge.com)
- Existing crypto/DeFi regulation efforts, like MiCA or past SEC crackdowns, are largely framed as investor protection, financial stability, and anti‑money‑laundering measures, not as explicit political movements to roll back general internet openness (and courts have in some cases constrained overreach, as with appeals overturning Tornado Cash sanctions). (consilium.europa.eu)
Given (1) the long time remaining until 2041 and (2) that the predicted end state (“primary social battleground” over the open internet) has not clearly materialized yet—despite some suggestive incidents—the correct status today is inconclusive (too early) rather than clearly right or wrong.