Four weeks after the storming of the US Capitol, by now you will have heard of the latest act of American insurrection: The attempts to storm Wall Street by an intrepid horde of faceless individual traders, sallying forth from the bowels of the internet to wreak havoc across the plains of the US financial landscape.

The denizens of the Reddit forum WallStreetBets have caused quite the ruckus in pumping the price of US electronic retailer, GameStop, to dizzying heights, pushing established, billion dollar hedge funds to the brink in an orgy of meme stocks and loss porn. Other stocks, previously considered toxic, have followed GameStop: Nokia, Blackberry, and even the bankrupt movie rental company Blockbuster have seen remarkable rallies off the back of the snowball effect the Reddit legions have had in a wild few days of trading.

For a more comprehensive picture of what mad events had occurred up to yesterday, Robin Pagnamentas piece for this paper sets things out very clearly. But what comes next has the potential to define the future of finance and the internet, too.

Every economic commentator warned that a backlash was coming, and reprisals were indeed swift. Thinly veiled threats were issued that social media was being monitored; trading was restricted on stocks including GameStop and cinema group AMC, Wells Fargo said it would stop recommending the stocks affected, and the CEO of Nasdaq said that trading could be halted altogether to allow big investors to recalibrate.

That Wall Street might try to rein in the marauding barbarians was one thing, but late last night, the WallStreetBets server itself was kicked off communications platform Discord, ostensibly on grounds of violating its hate speech policy and nothing at all to do with what was happening in the markets. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was also asked about the forum and its impact, and confirmed that the Biden administrations treasury secretary, Janet Yellin, was monitoring events.

As night follows day with Americas elites, then came the claims that these upstarts must be part of the alt-right. There are, in fact, some similarities between the alt-right and the new wave of online traders but they arent rooted in white supremacy or racism.

What we are witnessing are movements of people deeply dissatisfied with the country, the direction it is headed in, and their role within it, who see no reason why it cant and shouldnt be upended. They share a yearning for a different direction. In many ways a more equitable one than the Biden administration is pushing for where Americas elites are made to bend and cede more control to the demos. The elites angry reaction to them is, in their mind, justification. It isnt confined to whatever passes for the right, now, either its what drives the likes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, too.

This, specifically, is a new front money is, after all, the lifeblood of America after four years of slugging in the political arena. Here, we see issues of financial control and censorship collide with the emergence of new platforms and indeed, new systems.

The erasure of scores of social media accounts in the wake of Donald Trumps Twitter ban showed that online spaces would not be left alone and with the point-blank destruction of the Parler platform, that the reach of elites is longer than many had imagined. Now, having witnessed the initial sally, we see the backlash happening in market spaces, too.

All it will lead to is people switching where they engage with others and how. Parlers destruction proved that things arent as simple as just making your own platform, but that it was possible to start off down the hazardous road. The migration of people away from WhatsApp to Telegram is another example that the internet evolves as fast as people want it to, and in whatever direction enough of them lean in.

But the GameStop incident, having shown the little people that it is possible to take on financial institutions at their own game and win, has also shown that the system, from governments to Wall Street, is every bit as ruthless and vindictive as they believed. As the world lurches from the fallout of the coronavirus-induced financial crisis, jobs dry up and values are inflated or evaporate overnight, it seems natural that this generation of online traders will look to other outlets to forge and preserve their economic futures.

That, surely, means decentralised finance will be the big winner in all this, as people look to engage in a financial world they feel they have more control over (the very nature of how the Redditors took hold of GameStop et al suggests it is a community already very familiar with this brave new world). Sure, it can be fun, and invigorating, to mete out some punishment to Wall Street suits. But if they keep rejigging the rules of the game to shut you out, it surely makes more sense to set up something your foes will find it harder to get their hands on.

Donald Trump may be gone, but what he unleashed emboldening people occupying alternative sections of reality, long there but never seen, to cross over from one to the other caused more than enough friction in politics, allowing paths to veer wildly off course from the directions they were meant to. A similar effect is now being felt in other spheres too. It is the beginning of the Trump Century: not a drained swamp, but new ones founded elsewhere, instead.

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Reddit fever may open a new populist front that the elites can't stop - Telegraph.co.uk