The largest bitcoin conference is happening now in Miami. I understand more than 15,000 crypto enthusiasts are attending. I think it is wonderful so many enthusiasts get to share with each other. And help educate. But what I find ironic is that so many bitcoin advocates, one would think, would support the special attributes of bitcoin and its ledger. Decentralized. Distributed. Immutable. Pseudonymous. Permissionless. Censorship resistant. Privacy preserving. Absence of a controlling authority.
Many promote themselves and their advocacy for bitcoin on Twitter, You Tube and FB. Curiously all these platforms have a controlling authority. Their use is not permissionless. Establishing identity is crucial to entry into their ecosystem. There is an absence of privacy. In fact, everyone is under constant surveillance. Censorship is prevalent. The ledger is mutated and manipulated by human intervention and algorithmic intervention.
In other words, the attributes are complete opposites. Satoshi has reminded us of the power of an idea. And having that idea stand on its own merits not linked to an individual. It is about the idea. Not identity. Satoshi has influenced more people even though we do not know the identity. Satoshi has let the idea and concept speak for itself. That is so powerful! When we can get beyond the person and talk about ideas independently of the author. The author is irrelevant. No author. No authority.
Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense (1776) and The Rights of Man (1791) also wrote Dissertations on Government; The Affairs of the Bank; and Paper Money.
Thomas Paine described Paper Money: “Paper money is like dramdrinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity.”
Paine further wrote: “As to the assumed authority of any assembly in making paper money, or paper of any kind, a legal tender, or in other language, a compulsive payment, it is a most presumptuous attempt at arbitrary power. … [A]ll tender laws are tyrannical and unjust, and calculated to support fraud and oppression.”
Madison defined property as: “In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States. If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.”
Elinor Ostrom was honored with a Nobel Prize in Economics for her work demonstrating that common-pool resources were best managed by local self-governance mechanisms. She wrote that: “There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.” Further, “As long as a single center has a monopoly on the use of coercion, one has a state rather than a self-governed society.”
For me, my holding of bitcoin represents my statement of me as a sovereign individual. Exchanging a mutually accepted form of money with peers in the absence of intermediaries, for those who want to use crypto as a form of payment. I HODL. So my expression of self-sovereignty is to mine bitcoin and self-custody it. It is my money. I do not require it being stored by any third party. Then I would be conveying sovereignty of my property to a third party. I refuse to do so.
I do not like hierarchy. I do not like authority. I prefer partners to employees. I prefer all relationships to be based upon a peer-to-peer experience. People’s identity is irrelevant. No one has the right to censor another person. No one should practice surveillance of another person. People’s data is their property. The only ledger to trust is a decentralized, distributed ledger which uses a Proof of Work consensus mechanism as articulated in the Satoshi Whitepaper. In a Proof of Work consensus model, no special power is conveyed based upon the size of one’s balance sheet. The transfer of value should not require any permission. Nor should it be inhibited by borders. Identity should not be relevant in the exchange or transfer of value.
The current structure of our society is essentially a Proof of Stake Society. In bitcoin, the money spent is to preserve the security and integrity of the ledger without having an ability to influence the ledger. In our Proof of Stake society, money is spent not to preserve the integrity of the ledger, but to influence, alter and control the ledger. That is why so much is at stake during elections and why so much money mixes with politics. A vicious cycle. The more government does, the more the government chooses winners and losers, the more at stake. So those with the greatest stakes use money to influence and manipulate the outcome. Check how much money we spend on elections and candidates and PAC money. The product is a ruling elite, a crony, corrupt, corporatist cartel. Aided and abetted by surveillance companies. Just observe the concentration in the spending of advertising dollars.
The data collected is not used on our behalf and for our benefit. The surveillance companies create algorithmically-generated echo chambers where we can reinforce our rage meeting clones of ourselves. Enragement enhances engagement! The authority figures set the rules for engagement. Enragement with respect to some narratives are enhanced. Enragement in contradiction to their preferred narrative is demonized, dehumanized and deplatformed. Further amplifying the Engagement through Enragement Model.
And all this, subsidized by the government in the form of the 230 exemption from liability. In a centralized environment with a controlling authority, wealth means influence. Wealth uses that influence to create more wealth, to deter competition and to encourage rent-seeking behavior because there is a high return to rent seeking behavior. People seek wealth not only for wealth but for power.
With bitcoin, wealth does not convey any benefits regarding governance of bitcoin. It is the purest example of the invisible hand. Purely voluntary. The meeting of wants and needs. No imbalance of power. A complete absence of coercion. People might try to convince others to buy bitcoin. However the entire ecosystem is devoid of coercion. With respect to all on-chain activities.
I will not use any platform where there exists a controlling authority, which practices surveillance, packages me and monetizes me in the form of my attributes observed while under surveillance and does this without my consent nor authorization. I will not permit any intermediary to determine if my words are allowed entry onto their platform. They all have the same thing in common. An author who is an authority.
Bitcoin. No author. No authority.
I challenge all bitcoin enthusiasts, evangelists, maximalists or whatever other adjective they describe themselves with or the labels they or others put on them; to only and exclusively embrace platforms that preserve the bitcoin foundational values and attributes.
Get off Twitter. Get off You Tube. Get off FB. And promote the repeal of 230. The government grant of immunity to surveillance companies.
NO AUTHOR. NO AUTHORITY. NO AUTHORITARIANISM.