BulletProof Cat
I recently came to this sentiment and I would like to share how:
I came into some dialogue with some sincere bitcoin sv supporters-one of which made this comment:
I remember once asking Theymos about these posts and one about Satoshi saying users might get tyrannical about keeping the blockchain size low:
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it’s easy for lots of users and small devices.
Iirc Theymos told me they weren’t even sure it was Satoshi at some point. I thought this was strangely esoteric information but I trusted there was something to it and that I probably shouldn’t press on.
This all also reminded me of a Dragon’s Den session I had where I asked @brian_trollz and @stopanddecrypt about these sentiments of Satoshi’s. I distinctly remembered the latter party asking me “Do you think Satoshi is fallible?”
I thought of it to be a really odd question and of course I felt Satoshi was human and thus fallible. And so the sentiment I gathered from that group was many people felt Satoshi was in error with those lines of thinking.
But I have been at odds with these Bitcoin Maximalists for quite some time who continue to assert and imply that Bitcoin is going to take down central banks and give the people sovereign control over their money. It’s an irrational view and I could never really understand why they were acting this way.
Then it occurred to me. It’s a lag in my understanding of the technical. I am a fast generalizer in some ways but in others I gloss over specifics and so sometimes what most people learn quickly it takes me longer.
The economic and philosophical view that bitcoin maximalists have been touting is an expression or transmutation of their technical ‘stance’ which is that every user needs to be able to run a node.
All of a sudden it dawned on me. Like how Luke Jr wants to lower the block-size when we just spent years in a civil war over changing it versus not change it.
You see I don’t share the irrational political stance that the people need to rise up against their governments and detach money from state (and furthermore to abolish state) and so my views do not transmute to a technical goal of every citizen must be able to run a node.
All of a sudden I was spinning again. I realized the feeling of betrayal and deceit that the anti-core forks were based on. And I thought to myself I reject this political hijacking of the development direction of bitcoin. So many mantras and narratives made sense. These people would say “Jal you really need to run a node.” And I would think and ask “Why? I don’t have any reason to other than altruism (and altruism is not capitalistic at there hearts)” I thought I was missing the reasoning but I didn’t connect it with the irrational political philosophy most dub crypto-anarchism.
I started to question what that means in regard to what I support and what I don’t support and I realized I am fully against this movement and I remembered people like @mrhodl who would always say you can decide what is bitcoin to you by the node you run and if you don’t like it then run a different node. Like it or leave it.
I thought then of declaring that I am anti-core and not touching or supporting bitcoin in this state. I thought of what it would be like if I supported a counter claim in which not all users run nodes.
Then I realized I understood BitcoinSV.
And then it occurred to me how much internet “abuse” I would be taking for this stance.
Then I realized I would need a bulletproof vest.
Bitcoin Marxists
I have been calling these Bitcoin Maximalists and Anarchists Bitcoin Marxists for quite some time (and in my articles) as I recognized that their ultimate end is perfectly Marxist in the sense that they mean to increase our freedoms by getting rid of the very governments and institutions that actually provide and uphold them. An irrational pursuit which would rather in fact ultimately just give control to the new faction.
I had more recently come to see Pham start to tout this label as well and so I meant to ask him where he came up with this:
He nailed it and apparently we came to this on our own.
A Universally Adopted But Incredibly Exclusive Money?
I think this narrative of a one world currency is starting to be exposed especially because bitcoin has run out of libertarian steam that bootstrapped it. It seems bitcoin Marxists tried to run away with the narrative as far and fast as they could before reasonable people entered the scene. But I think a lot of people in this transition are waking up to the deception I am highlighting.
Since I suggested I too must wear a bullproof vest (I changed my avatar for a day but changed it back to people could still recognized my ‘brand’/image) I have had multiple core supporters tell me that I need to quit bitcoin. The motto for many of these people is if you don’t like that narrative or development direction then gtfo.
The idea is that people run whatever nodes they want and that the majority run nodes with core’s consensus rules so this locks in the system to those rules and effectively that development plan. It is purely the will of the (majority of) node runners.
But of course we have persons like @derose who point out that there really is a network of people (I call Bitcoin Maximalist Elites) who use their connections and influence to keep dissenting opinions out of the main communication and dialogue channels used to propose and ultimately implement changes in the Core protocol.
Nonetheless, how is a money that more and more people, as they catch up with the history of bitcoin, are not only feeling alienated but also being told to leave, going to become a currency that everyone in the world uses?
If I won’t touch it then why would my peers that already still don’t care about it.
This had me come up with the statement “I refuse to support Saifedean’s shitcoin” And I think a lot of people agree.
On Satoshi and John Nash’s Influence On Satoshi
All of a sudden what Wright has been doing makes sense to me in a whole new way and much of what he has been going on about reads completely different to me.
I recently asked him about Nash’s Ideal Money and he told me to read his blog. I was astonished as his blog read like a counterfeit of my argument for bitcoin (a bitcoin removed of core sentiments and propaganda) serving as a basis for bringing about the scenario John Nash describes as Ideal Money. Starting with the comparison of BTC core supporters as Marxist in nature Wright explains:
I had said that I had believed that Bitcoin would be attractive to those with a libertarian point of view, but many who jumped on to Bitcoin are far from libertarian. I’ve detailed the difference between anarchy and libertarian thought many times, and it is Marxist communism that seeks to expunge the state. Bitcoin was never designed to be anti bank or anti government
Wright perfectly shares my sentiments in regard to the absurdity of trying to separate money and state:
The described fallacy is propagated and exponentially expounded through the errors in the understanding of economics promoted by a community I sadly used to be a part of. Abolishing money or making Bitcoin universal will not become the end of all fraud, thefts, crimes of passion, fear, tension, anxiety, and long working hours
…
Such then is the myth that seems to propagate in “crypto.” The idea that money alone will abolish the state and create freedom.”
I have always said decentralization is a means not an ends and sufficient decentralization is enough:
It is not decentralization for the sake of it, nor is it the creation of a system that removes all government and corporations. Such a utopian perspective, as I have discussed earlier in this article, is rather delusional.”
As I read Wrights sentiments a certain orientation I am reminded of rang perfectly clear…bitcoin as an apolitical basis for measuring the quality of our existing major currencies:
Gold was valuable when it was used as a global form of exchange. It was not valuable because gold was different in different countries nor because different governments exchanged at different rates, it was valuable as it allowed a universal measurement of value. Even when individual governments debased the currency, gold was valuable as it allowed measurement of the debasement. And that’s important; looking across global trade and global exchange, we want a system of value that can report on debasements and allow us to see the value of our money in any location as it is spent in the location. To do so, we need a stable base currency.
And furthermore I completely agree with what Wright says here and much of my past writing expresses this:
The existence of a sound commodity money based on principles of supply and demand does not mean you become richer, and it does not mean that local currencies alter in form. It does mean that they compete, and it requires far more than simply having Bitcoin as a HODL platform, in other words a pyramid scheme or Ponzi. Bitcoin is a system of work. In proof of work, it is fairly much a Protestant work ethic digitised and exchanged online. What Bitcoin adds is efficiency.
The mantra of “hodl” is absolutely counter to the idea that bitcoin might become an inclusive and ubiquitous world currency (not that I even think it must be scaled so every user has their own sovereignty). Scaling in this sense is petty-I have long expressed this. Bitcoin’s greatest use case is to serve to optimize our existing legacy systems-not to bring them down.
Wright is right. The want to bring our legacy systems down is Marxist. Bitcoin’s greatest use-case is the Nashian orientation of serving as a catalyst that puts our current legacy currencies on a stage of competition thus optimizing them.
And so I think perhaps there is a renewed possibility that “Satoshi” consulted Nash and/or Nash’s works.
