Cryptocurrency: the most significant political act of all time

[grarpamp]

The Existence Of Bitcoin Is A Political Paradox

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoins-existence-is-a-political-paradox

Bitcoin is an apolitical monetary protocol for humanity, birthed in a
world so deeply entangled and confused by a captured system of
political power, influence and violence...

    “Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not
act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive
in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into
servility.“

    - Jullian Assange, “Conspiracy as Governance,” 2006

A deep irony exists when we live in a world that has become so deeply
polarized and politicized. So much so that an immutable, apolitical
system of scarce information — of value — has manifested into
existence.

As a protocol, Bitcoin is absolutely apolitical. It is indifferent to
any political beliefs or ideology. It is decisively neutral, which is
a stark contrast to almost everything else in this clown world.
Bitcoin is neutral to race, religion, ethnicity, gender, height, hair
color, skin color, eye color, body type, body shape, name, language,
location, wealth or any other myriad identifying and distinguishing
factors.

Bitcoin will process any transaction from any person and to any other
person, regardless of everything else. The only exception is if you do
not adhere to the rules of the network or if you don’t pay the
appropriate fees to process your transaction — which is essentially a
free-market bid to pay for the block space scarcity. Assuming these
two items are met, your transaction will be processed.

Where the political paradox lies is in Bitcoin’s very existence. The
fact that it has come to be. Its existence implies that some cohort of
individuals sought to create a technology with the very properties
Bitcoin has. While the protocol itself is apolitical, this act of
creation is a deeply political one.

When someone really sees Bitcoin for the first time, many things about
our current system are illuminated that were previously invisible. All
of a sudden, you can no longer see the world in the same way as
before. Prior to the inception of Bitcoin, we had no superior system
or point of comparison, nothing that would highlight the broken
characteristics of our system by providing an alternative perspective.

We now have something to compare the current system to. It would seem
the case that the creation of Bitcoin is the recognition that having a
monetary system — a network of value — that is centralized and enables
the weaponization of this network by those with administrative
privileges against those without (the users), is a deeply flawed and
immoral one. This system of incentives that rewards people for playing
political games, specifically those who get closer toward the center
of this system by playing these games, benefit disproportionately to
those furthest away. The zero-sum nature of the current design would
seem another fundamental flaw in the code of the central banking
system, but perhaps to those who designed the system it is a feature?
This dynamic of inequality only accelerates over time as those at the
center of the system continue to increase the supply of monetary units
at the expense of a large swath of users on the network and eventually
to the demise of the network itself.

The very creation of this technology we call “Bitcoin” is perhaps the
most significant political act of all time. It is a technology that is
diametrically opposed to the current system and everything this
current system stands for. The notion that someone should be able to
get between two individual humans and their right to transact with one
another or that any entity or group should have that power over
another? Bitcoin rejects this. That you should be required to identify
yourself in order to access the network of value transfer and be
subject to surveillance and a loss of privacy for that privilege?
Bitcoin rejects this. That the imaginary borders formed by tribes of
humans should have any impact over our ability to transact with one
another? Bitcoin rejects this. The current system asserts that the
right to transact freely is not a fundamental human right. Bitcoin
rejects this.

Bitcoin is a vote in opposition to the current system and the values
this current system has attempted to install within the minds of many.
It is, in its very essence, political.

The beauty of Bitcoin is that it will never coerce you to use it, like
the current system does. It will never impose its power upon you or
any other. It will simply offer superior incentives. And no one can
ever control the network, therefore no one can capture this power.
Bitcoin is an immaculate system of incentive design that allows the
flow of pure informational clarity from any node in the network to any
other. A system that is owned by no one. Where no hierarchical
structure exists and no imbalance in the distribution of this
information affords any node power over another as a result.

It’s impossible not to be completely in awe of its existence and to
marvel at its very nature.

An apolitical monetary protocol for humanity birthed in a world so
deeply entangled and confused by a captured system of political power,
influence and violence. As Jullian Assange hinted in the quote at the
beginning, once an injustice is brought to the fore of our attention,
we are offered a choice: Will we be passive and become party to the
injustice — and in the process find our character corroded into
servility — or will we take the necessary steps to act and oppose such
an injustice by opting in to the freedom network that is Bitcoin?

I know which one gets my vote.