The Brinkmanship of Crypto

“A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy. Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the true name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive rerouting of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.”
― Peter Ludlow, Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias

States believe themselves to be above and beyond the laws and constitutions that created them. They believe they are the law itself, no different from the kings and emperors that came before them. This has driven the world under the leadership of state governments into a dangerous power struggle with their own people. This game of brinkmanship has led to the extreme development and deployment of cryptography as a means to resist tyranny, and will cause for the downfall of states in the coming years as they lose control of the means of communications, exchange, and ultimately their population.

Due to the constant transgressions of all States into a territory to which they have no claim, we have been forced to use the power of encryption to shield ourselves from their glaring eyes. We use encryption to protect the very rights to which we are entitled, but which the state would still deny us. The same aggressive, violent and illegal behavior states display outwardly towards each other, they now present towards their own people. The have pushed us into a brinkmanship that can only end in our mutually assured destruction:

The people, as bound and sworn subjects, and States, as sovereign governments that reign through the power of the Social Contract and constitutions that bind us.

This is how the old social contract is destroyed, and new smarter one is deployed.

Encryption as Resistance to Tyranny

The power struggle for states to control all communications has each state engaged in a civil war against their own citizen for control of all information. States violate civil liberties of their citizens systematically, utilizing violent police actions to respond to our political actions. We are fed propaganda that such actions are for our own safety, and that the state must see all and approve of all to protect against ‘terrorist’ that are little more than a fabrication. We are brainwashed from a young age not to disobey authority or we will be met with the truncheon and broken teeth. Direct physical resistances is impossible and merely gains us broken bones, and lengthy prison sentences. To abscond into bits is our only hope now.

These repressive bodies of armed men under the authority of the state has driven the circumstances which impels the development of cryptosystems. This dangerous game that has all states engaged in brinkmanship against their citizens, violating their right to privacy and interloping into every facet of life for ‘security reasons’. Through these actions, states have caused for the extreme development and use of cryptosystems across the global. States have proven themselves to no longer be trusted, and we must use crypto to protect ourselves from them. People around the globe can now use crypto to negate the economic and political functions of the state, and evade their unjust draconian laws.

Digital currencies are the economic empowerment of cryptosystems that fights against both corrupt bankers, and the corrupt state fiat money system. Over the next several years there will be a florishment of activity from System D, and the global south as they discover what crypto can do for them. This will be at the expense of the contemporary economic and political system, as more and more people choose to exit state economies and political systems, and join the new digital ones.

Economic Resistance Through Digital Currencies

It is inevitable that this new form of technological capital will clash against the old forms industrial capital. Through the creative deconstruction of money as a social ideal, bitcoin recreates capital as access to, and direct ownership of the social network that is money. It renders a new kind of capital that is based upon mathematics, encryption, and technology; which is superior and more efficient that the violent monetary monopolies of state fiat capital.

Crypto provides absolute protection of both ones communications, and now wealth as well. It is from this base of power that we can start to understand the true power at the root of digital currencies.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are new forms of capital that any person can use from anywhere on the planet. We are creating a new world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. State legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Through the understanding and application of cryptocurrenices and cryptosystems to the modern economic and political machine, we are forging a new future; outside and beyond the controls of states from the past.

Digital Solidarity

There is solidarity to be found in our mutual quest to have transparent, privacy-protected form of wealth. This solidarity is transnational in its nature, and can be found among people in every corner of the globe. We now have a mode of true economic resistance that will allow for us to reject the corrupt beast of government and capitalism, while forging a more egalitarian system for all. There is now an economic system which makes economic exploitation much more difficult. This will create a rising tide for all, at the expense of the contemporary capitalist class. Crypto gives people a way to organize, communicate, and exchange for themselves, without the approval of the state and outside of the banking system. This new form of international money can operate outside the bounds and beyond the limitations of any, and all states. It is truly a manifestation of a digital sovereign; an economic and political power that is beholden only to itself.

People of the world will adopt cryptocurrencies in the coming decades, not from the majesty that is offered by the mathematical security of these systems, but the from the sheer economic efficiency they present against the old monetary system. Digital currencies are too efficient and inexpensive when compared to the expensive, corrupt, inept system of finance, exchange, economics, and banking the world has today–the transaction cost of cryptocurrency systems are just too low compared to fiat ones. Digital currencies can help our society solve the fundamental issue that has always existed between money, and exploitation: the control of money itself.

Hidden from the all-seeing oppressive panopticon of the technological totalitarian state; crypto is the organizational weapon against the bureaucratic state, their police armies of death, and their alliances with corrupt capitalist who poison and permanently destroy vast swaths of the natural world. We can now fight back without needing to subjugate ourselves to the violence that will meet us if we organization in the streets. We must strike at the root of the problem, which is economic in nature, and has manifest itself though the control money by a small corrupt group of politicians and bankers. We must end this exploitation, and the only way is to create and use another system of money which they can have no power over.

Crypto Endgame

There is a total war that is happening against all people right now–a grand civil war that has all states engaged against all people. This war is pervasive, all-seeing, and complete in the most insidious ways. The web of torment and despair we have endure can only be made present by the catastrophe as Angelus Novus sees it. This is about far more than just money and economics–this is about justice, redemption, and the creation of a free future for all.

As people start to see through the illusion of money and how governments use that to control their populations; their will be a slow abandonment of government fiat currencies for cryptocurrencies. Through withdrawing our support of fiat money, the old system will collapse upon itself, and there will be a grand jubilee. States will be forced to acknowledge our economic power, and ask for our help–to which we will say no, and we will watch them burn.

The war by the state against citizens is larger than about simply having privacy, or a right to personal wealth–this is about fascism. The insidious, hidden mode in which intolerance and oppression is allowed to exist through an authoritarian state masters commanded by capitalist. These people in government care more about controlling people through violence, than to resolve the problems that propel their populations to demand justice. We can now create that on our own; without their help and beyond their control.

We are creating a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

What Is To Be Done

“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”

At the end of the 20th century humanity was given the most powerful tool that the world has ever seen: the internet. In less than 20 years, the internet has evolved from being a slow, complex, obscure piece of technology to connecting billions of people today with just the flick of a button. Despite the fact that we can use the internet to communicate more efficiently, and exchange information with magnitudes more efficiency then just a few decades ago; we still find the shadow of fascism grow larger with each passing day…

Control of our respective economic, political, and social systems have been overtaken by corrupt capitalist and their political stooges, and now they seek to take over the internet itself. It does not matter if you are German, Korean, Argentinian, or American–all of our systems have been corrupted in the same way, with the same methodology, by the same class of people. Corruption reigns supreme, while the basic needs of society as a whole are ignored. Self-determined humans everywhere have been hamstrung by economic corruption, government impotence, and social cowardice to ensure that the wealthy will always win.

This is THE defining feature of ALL so-called democracies around the world. Unless we choose to fight this corruption directly and to strike at the single root which unites them; we will continue to suffer under their exploitation. The single feature which unites them is fiat money; and that is the very structure–the very object–which we seek to destroy. Through the promotion, advocacy, and use of digital currencies we can destroy the contemporary financial system, which is controlled by the 0.1% at the expense of the whole of society.

Politics and Economics are Inseparable

We must understand that there is absolutely no division between economics and politics. It is by the very make up of our political and monetary system that all economic conditions are determined. It is only when we fully recognize that political power is only economy power that we will be able to create the revolutionary struggle against all state monetary systems and their kleptocratic allies.

Never has there been a greater need for true radicalism to emerge to challenge the fascism hidden in the folds of all governments. We must radically divide ourselves from every other supposed ‘political’ group in order to make our struggle clear. Each and every sort of progressive movement throughout the world today finds itself under the constant glare of the fascist machine to ensure it remains complacent and broken. Threatened to be violently crushed back down each time we rises up; the people callow under the glare of the machine like cattle calmed by the hushes of butchers. For the first time in history, there is a real possibility for true international proletarianism, if we choose it.

We can use the internet to as our revolutionary vehicle to organize ourselves, and digital currencies as our method to create economic independence. All that is left is to create the organizational structure that will create a new future, in solidarity will all oppressed people everywhere.

As this new form of power grows to show what it is capable of, a new power structure will form–a polis within the internet itself, which will become the citizenship of the future.

From this base of power we can start to organize against all states, and the corporate machines that control them. As our membership grows, so will our political practice, and our political consciousness. This is how we build a new future outside and beyond the horrors that currently haunt the future which we are marching into.

Beyond The Spectacle

Despite the incredible power of the internet, today we stand stunned and seduced before it; subject to it, rather than subjugating it. We are hypnotized by the taste of the social architecture; the dazzle of infinite distraction. We succumb to the inertia of the impossibility of our task; feeling no more than a hollow glimmer that a different world is possible. Today even the most ‘radical’ solutions are little more than an impotent sigh; a sign of caring imbued with defeat from the start. Not an action of true struggle, but the compromises of slaves who know freedom can never be a reality.

The Left, crushed and broken for decades, has become little more then a false idol to placate the the liberal masses. To offer some illusion of progressiveness is the sole duty of liberalism, while allowing for nothing to change. Even socialist today are little more then apologist for the capitalist system, only wishing for a more ruthless exertion of state control upon capital.

If want to create a new way forward, the only way is to break the bonds of the old system itself: Money.

By break the antiquated money system of old, while cultivation any new one they do not control; we can change everything.

The New Way Forward

Every party today wishes, beg, and cowtows for The Machine of State-Capitalism to change its horrific ways.

Where is the party to which would stand and fight against this Machine? Where is the party that would crush it where it stands and to uncompromisingly disassemble each and every last cog of the machine to make way for a better tomorrow? Where is this party that proclaims to be a true representative of the people? This party is nowhere to be found, which is why we must lead to a new way of life that is beyond parties and politics.

It is this false hope that a ‘party’ can steer the state and use that power for good which is the greatest enemy of our cause. To believe in the legitimacy of a corrupt electoral system only empowers the corrupt, and legitimizes their evils. To truly create change we must go beyond the false political consciousness we have been given, and construct a radical new one.

No Gods of Government, No Masters of Money.

We radically divide ourselves from the liberals, socialist, communist, and libertarians who refuse to work towards a better tomorrow without the state, and against the capitalist machine. They beg and plead to reform this horrible system, and would rather tolerate a corrupt, inept government; then acknowledge the puppet democracy for the false idol it is. It is only when we realize reform is impossible, that we will be free to achieve inevitable:

Revolution!

To Create a Revolutionary Future

We must create our own organization that stands against the evil anachronistic ways of the past, while radically embracing the liberative power that digital technology harnesses. We must make a global technology union for all people that will stand, serve, and protect the rights of each individual against the interlopings of all thieves; be it in the form of banks, the state, or violence itself. This is what will become the citizenship of the new society that is forming in the shell of the old.

Everything we need to change money–which changes everything–is in our hands. The only thing left to do is to build, collaborate, and create the future we must have.

“For the anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility of every human being to bring to full development all of their powers, capacities and talents with which nature has endowed them, and turn them to social account.” ― Rudolf Rocker

Introduction

Over the last several years I have worked on this body of articles in an attempt to create a cohesive Theory of Bitcoin. Here is my abstract:

The Internet is a sovereign territory that exist outside and above the control of all state governments. Due to the international nature, and economic dependence that all states have on the internet; the internet has now become a spectre that is beyond any of their control. This combine with the imperious nature of bitcoin forms a new kind of money and power that can render the state useless. This power can supplant state institutions, and allow for all people of the world to economically and politically unite in 21st century, but only if we struggle to make it so. Using the internet and bitcoin we can create an international digital sydicate that will allow for the free economic and information exchange of all people around the globe as a single political body.

—

I have divided my writings into three (I, II, III) distinct sections. Part one explores the legal history of money; part two covers the economic functions of bitcoin; and part three covers the radical political, social, and economic ramifications of bitcoin.

Part One

This rather long section is of necessity to understand what exactly money is and how it functions from a legal and historical standpoint. There is a long and complicated legal and economic history of money and we must have some understanding of it in order to see how money is a distinct and separate object from value. We must understand that legal power over a long history has literally striped the intrinsic value from money, and replaced it with a false idol of fiat money. This is a form of theft that is only possible through legal means. This has allowed for all States to steal from their citizenry with great sophistication and guile through their alliance with the bankers. It has been over the course of several generations that money has ever-so-slowly lost its power as an intrinsic vehicle for wealth, and been enshrined in the legalist framework of state-capitalism. It is through the State’s monopolization of the mode of exchange–money itself–which has allowed for the State to divorced fiat money from intrinsic value. This in turn has created the great number of economic issues we face today.

To divorce intrinsic value from money itself is an incredible feat for the state; however, it is not without its problems. The state can only monopolize money through force and ideology, not majesty or science. States will always be unsuccessful with the monopolization of money, and history can testify to that.

This is where understanding the mechanics of bitcoin becomes extremely important. Because of bitcoin’s known, fixed monetary supply, infinite divisibility, and imperious security through cryptography; bitcoin becomes something much more than just money, wealth, or value. Bitcoin creates a totally independent, stateless system of economic and information exchange that is pseudonymous over the internet. This is extraordinarily revolutionary, as it creates the basis for a new economic system built on top of cryptography outside of the mortality and corruption of law. This will usher in an epochal change that happens only a few times each millennial!

Once we understand the mechanics of bitcoin we can see that it is truly digital gold. And just like gold, it will be impossible to eradicate from the world. However, there is one feature that dramatically separates bitcoin from that of other commodity monies: its non-physical nature.

The power of the non-physical nature of bitcoin eludes to what I have taken to calling The Digital Sovereign. This is the real power of the internet to affect and change society from without, as a sovereign force. It is with bitcoin that the internet has an economic mode for itself. This economic mode is what will start to radicalize the internet on a whole. When the internet sees the true power that lies within it to change the world, how it can do it with its own money, there will be nothing to stop it.

Part Two

Section two mainly covers the economic functions of bitcoin. First we will explain the mathematical and cryptographic features that make bitcoin provably better money than any money that exist today. We will go into detailed analysis of the features of good moneys, and how bitcoin exudes and embodies all of those ideals in the most scientific manner. This will allow for us to go into a detailed analysis of current system of fiat monetary exchange as a commodity itself. This commodity is the network that is money. Through treating fiat money in this way, we can directly contrast and analysis it against bitcoin.

It is from this lens that we can drive a wedge between the value of money itself as a network, from the value of the legal force embedded within that money. This is explained in the first section in regards to bonitas intresica, and valors imporium. Once we can see all money as being only a network of exchange, than we can see how that network operates both inside and outside of the hands of governments, and their limited economic control.

When we take various economic theories such as Grehmsham’s Law, Course’s Transaction Theory, and the works of Keynes, Gesell, Hayak, and combine them with the praxis of crypto-anarchism, we are given a radical new understanding of bitcoin. It is once we understand how bitcoin functions economically, and why it is superior to other forms of money, that bitcoin shows itself to be the technological tour-de-force that it is.

Finally, taking Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction, we can see laid out before us the radical and revolutionary technological power that bitcoin will use to change the world. This is not an opinion, but a fact of economic function. This is given to us by Hayak, who offers us a glimpse into the future with liberated money. In his magnum opus “The Denationalization of Money,” he describes how a world of competitive, non-state currencies would work, and how it can answer the economic and political crises of today.

With the application of understanding bitcoin as a commodity money, we can apply classic banking practices within bitcoin to create a new form of money through transparent fractional banking. This will be the model that will allow bitcoin to become the rails of the financial system, and for bitcoin to build its own debt-based units. This will spell the doom of the contemporary banking and monetary system.

This new form of money is the bridge to the future, and is the core nexus of the ideological development that will be the next epoch of humanity: The Digital Sovereign. It will be the answer to how humans are going to solve all of the monumental and heart-wrenching issues that plague our world today. With the historical and economic ramifications of bitcoin explained from the first two sections, we can now go into the third and most important of the three sections: The political power of bitcoin.

Part Three

Bitcoin is not about money at all… it is about our core values of human-beings and what it means to be free people. Freedom is a condition and identity that is acknowledge through condition alone, and today we are not free, but we can be. Through organizing around the use of bitcoin for ALL of our economic exchange and holding of bitcoin as a form of economic resistance, we can exert true political pressure on a corrupt system through economic means. If just 1% of the world’s population would be militant enough to use bitcoin in this way, as a revolutionary tool to help people organize against the machine, it would be but a week before the system started to seize, and less than a month before it were in cataclysmic turmoil.

This is the power of revolutionary syndicalism on a transglobal scale; we can use the internet and bitcoin to organize ourselves and achieve revolutionary ends. We can organize politically, independent of one another, while having economic solitary together against our respective governments. Using bitcoin as an economic weapon against the corrupt state-capitalist machine to which we all belong, we can realistically create dramatic change in our world. Pulling from the historic traditions of anarchism, we can ultimately organize around the theory of the general strike. This will cause for a complete collapse of the State-capitalism as we know it so we may transition to a new way forward.

This is only possible if we proactively start building towards a better tomorrow now! We must do this through the formation of a revolutionary political union, and advocate from this seemingly radical stance. Through the use of the internet as an ideological tool, we will create a new class consciousness. This class consciousness will fully contain and represent the international proletariate through the ability of all people everywhere to use, interact and organize with the internet itself; and to use bitcoin as the economic vehicle to bring about change.

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Next Section: Sovereign Violence and Legitimacy of Law

The Revolutionary Vanguard of The Digital Age

“How is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct.” -Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Vladimir Lenin was the leader of one of the most profound and powerful revolutions that the world has ever seen. Today he has been turned into little more than a goblin of the past by the powers that be. Comprised, defiled, and disposed by the masses due to a century of relentless propaganda against his ideas, and communism itself, most have never read anything of Lenin’s, but will still tell you his ideas were a failure. If we can take the time separate the filth from the facts, we can see that Lenin presented the revolutionary praxis through which the State can be destroyed. Over the course of the 15-years after Lenin released, “What is to be Done?” he build the largest vanguard party in history and destroyed one of the most powerful nation-states that ever existed. The tactic that allowed for Lenin to accomplish this is called vanguardism.

The Digital Vanguard and Proletarian Internationalism

To have a deeper understand of what exactly the vanguard is, we can look to international revolutionary and hero Che Guevara, who implemented Lenin’s ideas to help liberate millions across the globe:

“The vanguard group is ideologically more advanced than the mass; the masses understand the new values, but not sufficiently. While among the vanguard there has been a qualitative change that enables them to make sacrifices in their capacity as an advance guard, the masses see only part of the picture and must be subject to incentives and pressures of a certain intensity… All of this means that for total success a series of mechanisms, of revolutionary institutions, is needed.”

-Che, Man and Socialism in Cuba

What strikes me about this comment is this is the same sort of ideological position that Anonymous and other hacktivist groups have taken without exposing their statist identities. Though the ‘institutionalization’ of the revolutionary values found within digital technology, activist have been able to strip their physical bodies from the struggle, and enshrined them within digital practice. This allows for the entirety of the revolutionary vanguard to exist solely upon digital means alone. What makes this so incredible is that it allows for the fusion of anarchist and communist principals through practice alone. This practice allows for organization around the principals of strong crypto; which blinds the state, and stripped them of their ability to bring violence to revolutionaries.

The second important principal that comes from this digitization of the vanguard is the completeness in which it embraces proletarian internationalism. Through stripping our physical selves from the revolutionary praxis of the internet, we are forced to operate on only a global scale. There is no way to see our nationalities; only our mutual humanity–we can only deduce from our online interactions that the other person is human, and that is it. With the physical protection that is afford to us through this medium, it allows for us to see the full vulnerability of other humans within this system. Though we may not know the physical bodies of those we interact with, we can still see the fundamental properties that make them as flesh and blood as you and I. To see humans first and foremost as humans, and not as nationalities, sexes, races, or labor, is what forces the perspective of proletarian internationalism on to the digital vanguardism. This principal is forced upon from without, unlike communist vanguardism which vulgarizes its own principals in the name of one official power.

To Build a New Way Forward

When we can understand the internet as a revolutionary apparatus to destroy the state and usher in a new epoch based upon digital practices alone, we can see that the first two of Lenin’s principals of the vanguard have already formulated themselves. Heros like Ed Snowden and Julian Assange among many others, have seen the truly revolutionary power of the internet, and have used that power to show the world what a single human can do against the catastrophe of governments. They have set an example that shows the truly revolutionary power of the internet. This is why they have been so ruthless pursued by states, because they show how vulnerable their corrupt system is to our digital power. This power has been know for the better part of a decade, but it has only been with the advent of strong crypto that a single person can stand against the supposed omnipotence of the state; and prove that omnipotence to be little more than smoke and mirrors.

The second of Lenin’s principals (to organize with the broadest swaths of society) has been seen in the Arab Spring, and the failed Occupy uprisings. It proved that the internet can be used to communicate, and organize around revolutionary change. Since 2011 we are seeing more and more direct action being taken by hacktivist groups and individual strikes against various aspects of the state capitalism machine. Each victory in the form of data theft, a site take down against a major corporation, and the advent bitcoin all are displaying the weakness of the political-economic system. However, we also know from the aftermath of these events that the final, and most essential component of Lenin’s theory has not been enacted: Political leadership, strategy, and tactics.

The Need For A Revolutionary Vanguard

To quote Che again, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible.”

We must know and understand that is through our conviction that people shall always matter more than money, that we can change the world. To know that it is we who will fight against the wicked and corrupt, that it is us that shall liberate the impoverished and smash the chains of the oppressed! We do not do this for our hatred of those who oppress us, but for the love of those that we demand to be given the freedom they are rightfully entitled to. It is only through the revolutionary zeal and infinite capacity of our love for humanity over all else, that we can create a new, and better world.

Today we have a choice: we can continue to work within the system, when all evidence points to the corruption, and impossibility of creating substantial change, or we can take it upon ourselves to start actively organizing against this system. The only way that we will be able to create revolutionary change is through embracing the third and final principal of Lenin’s revolutionary vanguard: through political leadership, strategy, and tactics to help steer the masses towards liberation. The only way that this can be done is through the open organization and promotion of revolutionary tactics against the machine. By using the power of bitcoin, and the censorship-resistant blockchain we can create an alternative economy and society that is fully outside of the hands of the state.

Bitcoin, Newspeak, and The Blockchain

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

-George Orwell, 1984

Newspeak was the fictitious language of the world of 1984. It was part of the process of using propaganda to mold and manipulated thoughts and dialog of the masses. It is through the corruption, contortion, and disembowelment of words from their meanings that language itself becomes a weapon of the oppressors. They seek to create a world in which we cannot explain things as they are–they create a world in which there simply are no longer the words to do so.

It may seem like an insignificant point at first glance, but this is the exact nature of the use of the word ‘blockchain’ to replace bitcoin. Through the repeated ‘blockchain good, bitcoin bad’ rhetoric there is a slow manipulation of the facts as they truly are. They are to make bitcoin little more than a financiers plaything, not a revolutionary tool for the masses. By divorcing the blockchain from bitcoin; bankers, financiers, and capitalist scum of all kinds are trying their damnedest to make bitcoin into a kind of technological revolution that has nothing to do with bitcoin! This is the same process that every form of personalized power has gone through at every stage of their advancement–a manipulation of the facts as they stand in order to disempower those who it would benefit from it.

Divorcing Value From Money

Money plays the greatest role in the formation of history, and it was not too long ago that most people would laugh and scoff at the idea of using paper money that was backed by nothing. Furthermore, they would think it is insane that you could not use gold or silver for a transaction–a money that has proven its worth over millennia, and has value imbued within it. Today the trillions of dollars that are circulating around the global economy are backed by nothing more than the violence of whatever state controls that money–there is no value whatsoever behind their worth paper; just the threat of their violence.

Bitcoin can be compromised in the same fashion that money itself was more than a century ago. Governments and bankers will try to take it over and tell us that it is for our own good. They will try to make the blockchain a settlement layer for themselves, while criminalizing the use and acceptance of bitcoin. This process is already underway with media conversation about bitcoin being the money criminals, hackers, pedophiles, and terrorists, while the blockchain is the ‘revolution’ that can change banking for the better.

As this conversation continues, everything will be done to attempt to delegitimatize bitcoin and drive a wedge between it and the blockchain. History will show us that people are more likely to believe that which they are told, then to go and discover for themselves what the true nature of things are. It is through this very path that everything will be done to stop bitcoin from becoming the sovereign economic power that it is destined to become, while making the blockchain into a powerful tool for only the economic elite.

Bitcoin is Political

The Crisis in United Kingdom is a warning to all of us. We can all be subject to the whims of incompetent governments who were never given the right to control our wealth, or we can choose to fight back! Again, and again we have seen governments debauch their currencies for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. We can choose to continue to allow these buffoons to exploit us, or we can resist.

Bitcoin is not about money, it’s about power. Through understanding the history of money and banking we know that every fiat money is subject to fail; and it is in that same vein that we can see the economic power of bitcoin. To understand that bitcoin has no loyalty to any state or corporation displays its very political nature. Instead of being controlled by politicians and bankers, bitcoin is powered by a league of cryptopunks scattered around the global. The internet itself has become an ideological apparatus with its own society, culture, and now economic tool. This is what makes bitcoin political.

Together we can reappropriate our respective economic system using bitcoin and other digital currencies. We can use bitcoin and the internet to free ourselves from the hands of the crony capitalists and political scum alike. Through a capital strike we can exit the fiat economic, and strike at the very heart of the financial tyranny that we all are forced to live under. Through advancing digital currencies and the power they hold, we will boycott fiat money, and we will forge a new political identity and way forward. In order to do this, we must build a new class consciousness around the economic liberation and international solidarity that is found within a free global internet and the economic tools to create that: Bitcoin.

The creative destruction of bitcoin will create a new world of digital institutions in the shell of the old. These new institutions, free from the hands of the state, and the corporate oligopoly structure, will create better modes of economy facilitation through superior economic model that has a lower transaction cost than that of any fiat money system. We are building a revolutionary syndicate for the free economic exchange of all people and that syndicate is known as Bitcoin!

Using the power of crypto to shield ourselves from the state, to abscond into bits and to resist where they cannot touch us, we continue to push our revolution forward. This is financial insurrection! The start of a global economic revolution!

This is the start of the struggle. Using and holding bitcoin is a form of direct economic action and a form of resistance that we must engage in if we are to build a new way forward. If we are to conquer the demons that are haunting the future–the crisis of global environmental catastrophe and cleptocapitalism that is destroying the global–we must do it as a single people united under that one cause! Bitcoin is the political tool that can allow for us to fight our respective economic struggle as one. A single people standing as a leviathan against our common enemies: Governments, Megabanks, and Transnational Corporations. It doesn’t matter if you are a Greek citizen that needs to protect what little wealth you have left from the banks, an Italian that is worried about the coming crisis, or a Chinese citizen looking for safe-harbor, bitcoin can give you hope.

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Next: Bitcoin is Not About Money

The Reappropriation of Our Economic System

What we have been taught about money and the economic system is little more than a collection of lies, and propaganda shoved down our throats at the point of a knife. Our economy is far from being fair, or free; and we are exploited by the whims of capitalist whom have received the seal of approve from all governments. The financialization of the economy by the state started with the creation of the Federal Reserve, and finalized with the abandonment of the gold standard. This was the beginning of the end of money having independent value from governments. When governments of the world discovered at Bretton Woods that they could simply end the convertibility of gold, and all governments could move forwards with only fiat money they were exuberant. This removed the greatest check on government power that has ever exist: the power of the purse.

To Smash the Chains

The legacy of capitalism is deep, profound, and all encompassing within our society. The reification of everything by capitalism has left no stone unturned, and has sucked every facet of life into the economic sphere. This is not the capitalism that Smith and Ricardo understood; but a distorted, anti-human Deus ex Machina careening toward the destruction of both humanity and Earth. This greatest evidence of this is in the near complete and total environmental destruction that we have experiences all over the world with the sixth great extinction of species from this planet. Indiscriminate of nationality, race, or origin; our oceans, skies, water, and land has all been polluted and raped by the powers that be. The very governments that were empowered with protecting our sacred rights were overthrown by capitalist gangsters; thugs in suits who auctioned everything off for a meager thirty pieces of silver.

The issue is not with the capitalists who only know corruption and theft–this should be expect from them most of all! The issue is with the state, politics, and the corruption that has enveloped all aspects of our social spheres. This system is corrupted and festering to the core; it cannot be saved, nor should it. The men of politics who hold themselves in such high esteem for being the negotiators of the prostitute our political system are the very ones that hold us down to be raped and used, again, and again by the capitalist machine. Our cries of consanguinity are never heard; we are little more than objects to be tolerated by them, while they exploit us to our deaths. If we are to be liberated, and free, as we were promised by our forefathers and the constitutions that govern us, than we must smash the chains of economic enslavement which we keeps us tethered to the destructive machine that we call capitalism.

To Break a Monetary System

We must harness the power of markets and entrepreneurship for the good of all, while dividing ourselves from the parasitic nature of capitalism. We must rip power away from a corrupt state which empowers a very small, exclusive class of people to the right of destroying the world of tomorrow, for a collection of trinkets today. If we are to ensure that we have something to offer to our children other than imprisonment, and a burned Earth, than we must choose to end this system of abuse now, today, and permanently.

This can be done. We have the means to break this totalitarian socio-political-economic system of the old world, and usher in a new era of global development outside of the hands of both the state, and capitalism. We can reappropriate our respective national monetary systems, for new, independent digital ones. Through this single action alone–through the reclamation of our economic power–we shall create a domino effect that shall ripple throughout the economic, political, and social structures of the world. Through using an independent money whose control and power comes from outside of the state, people can reappropriate their economic power for themselves. This will come at the direct expense of the state and capitalist who bleed us like the vampires and leeches they are. By breaking the monopolistic control of the means of exchange by the state, we shall expropriated the system of exchange, and the means of exchange itself back to its rightful owners: the general public.

We see the corruption of their system. Beneath the shimmering veneer of capitalism’s accomplishments and supposed progress, lay the untold billions of shatter lives. At its base we see that the law is nothing more that offical violence–state sanctioned terrorism with propaganda from a capitalist third estate. To fight their violence we must use the most powerful weapon at our disposal to rid ourselves of this barbaric system:

Non-violent, direct economic action

Through simply using another form of money, we banish the violence and vicious fist of the state from the economic power that each one of us generates. No longer would the state have the ability to rob us, nor would they be able to fund their crimes, or continue their corrupt regimes. To cripple the monetary system would strike at the very heart of the corrupt state-capitalist machine, and would cause for it to come to a grinding hault.

International Money for All

Each state is invested into its own system of governance, money, and taxes so that the small powerful elite can rule over all for their own pleasure. They keep their power not through democratic means, but through oppression, division, regulations, controls, taxes, boarders, prisons, levies, and so much more. This is not for protection of the masses, but their oppression. This is not create justice, but to maintain injustice. Governments create these artificial rules and regulations so that they may steal from their people, and keep them divide and silent. We must see their petty tactics for what they are, and see the magnitudes of our own strength which we have in our numbers.

For the first time in human history we can smash these artificial boundaries and false consciousnesses of nationality and statism, and find solidarity in working together through simple rejecting their corrupt economic and political systems. There are billions of people across the global that create trillions of dollars of economic wealth each year; and yet these very same people live a life of poverty and insecurity from the exploitation they face. Through creating a new popular front against capitalist exploitation under the guise of the state, we can create a new economic and political movement that can break the bonds of debt that have enslaved us.

Using digital currencies as a political action, we can reappropriate our economic wealth away from the hands of corrupt politicians and their capitalist allies, while create a revolutionary new way forward. This single action alone can ensure that we will no longer be enslaved to the same system of debt bondage that has created the conditions of the world today. Together, as a single unite body of free people, we can banish the last vestiges of slavery from this planet for all history moving forward.

The crux of power within this system is control of the economy. This control is exerted through the monopolization of the object of exchange: Money. Governments steal fragments of the wealth from each and every person on this planet through taxation and inflation, while also give themselves the power to punish with legal violence and death to anyone who opposes this monopoly. The minders of this monopolies are the capitalist banksters, thugs who strut about in fine suits with no shame of their avarice, or the blood that taints their money. Through the direct expropriation of the system that benefits only the 1% at the expense of everyone else, we will create better conditions for the great tide of all.

International Direct Economic Action

We do not seek to create a party or to organize with titles and salutations; we simply demand direct action. We understand the most significant action we can take is to refuse to participate within the old economic system, while building our own independent one. Through boycotting fiat money and using digital currencies instead, we create a dual power of both economic boycott from the current system, and economic solidarity with the new emerging one.

This new system of exchange is not based upon the false nationalities that have been assigned to us, but upon the permanence of mathematics that applies to all of us. It is a form of money that is inclusive of all peoples, regardless of whatever oppressive state one may be forced to live under. Most of all, bitcoin is a form of exchange that is outside of the control of both statist scum, and capitalist pigs. It is a totally new form of money upon which we can build a new system of exchange, and an independent economic system. If we are ever to liberate ourselves from the chains of capitalism, and the impressment of debt, then building a new and independent economic outside of their control is the only way that we can move forward.

Bitcoin and other digital currencies can be the tools upon which we build this great new economic and monetary union–but only if people are willing to learn and participate. We know that there is a deep people problem with bitcoin, and that we will need to educate and agitate if we are to create a real and substantial change. This is the start of the global economic revolution that will smash down the artificial boarders that separate us, and will economically unite us against our respective oppressors. Bitcoin is the new economic Popular Front against the exploitation of capitalist, and enslavement from tyrannical state governments around the world.

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Next: Bitcoin, Economic Resistance, and Justice

Bitcoin: A Utopian Response to Nightmare Capitalism

I recently ran across this piece, “Bitcoin: utopian reflection of a capitalist nightmare” on Marxist.org. Upon reading it I felt deeply saddened that comrades in the struggle against capitalism could be so misled from the facts of what bitcoin is, and how it is the most powerful tool we have ever had to fight capitalism. Sadly, the author lacked the technical understand of bitcoin, which has allowed for him to write bitcoin off as having flaws that are not actually there. I will take this opportunity to respond to this erroneous essay with many inaccuracies, and offer an explanation for why marxist of all colors should radically embrace digital currencies, and organize around them.

Bitcoin as a Currency

First and foremost, we need to dispel the myth of what bitcoin is, and is not. Bitcoin is a commodity money. It is disingenuous to state that it is backed by nothing when there is a very real energy cost that it takes to create each new block of bitcoin’s blockchain. What makes bitcoin just like gold coins, silver bars, oil barrels, or cigarette cartons is that these are all commodities which are very uniform, have a commodity use-value, and a standard count or measure, which in-turn creates an exchange value. This exchange value is separate from the commodity value, and creates its additional value through ease of exchange. This ease of exchange and measure is what makes these commodities special: they are commodity-monies.

The commodity value of bitcoin comes from the real physical electrical energy that must be spent in order to create bitcoins. For each block of bitcoin that has been mined, there is an explicit amount of electrical energy that it took to create that new block reward of bitcoin. Bitcoin is not just a currency, but it is a commodity money, and a fully self-contained payment and storage of value system that needs no third party arbitrators because of the real commodity value that is imbued into bitcoin.

Means of Exchange

It is important to note that like other commodity monies bitcoin also has a concentration of socially necessary labour time. It does this in a two ways through having both a commodity value, and a use-value via exchange. The explicit electrical cost to ‘mine’ bitcoin creates the base commodity value of bitcoin. The use-value of bitcoin is created through the divisibility of value, ease of exchange, and advanced security of bitcoin. These features allow for bitcoin to act as a universal equivalent in which the value of all other commodities can be measured, while offer a total security that no fiat money, or other commodity can ever offer. What sets bitcoin apart from all other commodity monies is that it is impossible to seize bitcoin if they are stored properly.

All other commodity monies and forms of wealth throughout all of history have been perpetually seized by force–stealing under the banner of government is as old as society itself.

In the United States executive order 6102 was issued in 1933 to allow for the US government to seize all gold on deposit in US banks. This was the start of the global government scam to make the storage of value that money was, into an ever inflating debt bubble backed only by the force of government. This is what allow for the financing of the great wars of the 20th century, and for the great extension of transglobal imperialism under the banner of capitalism and democracy. Never has so much been taken by so few, with such a great cost to the whole of society.

Money now only exist as government issued debt tokens. The whole modern economic machine hinges on people using and exchange these ever-inflating government tokens in order for them to keep their value, as there is no commodity value–only exchange value by the decree of law. This is especially true for the United States Dollar, which due to its exorbitant economic privilege allows for it to continually expand its money supply dramatically, while having it sucked up by other nation-states which have struggled to issue their own currency, so they use the USD. Money is no longer a social agreement, but an imperialist tool that governments and corporations alike have forced on to their populous.

We must understand that state-issued currencies are the objects that allow for the perpetuation of corrupt, state-based transglobal capitalism. It is through the state’s monopoly on the issuance of money which allows for government debt financing, costly illegal wars, and the fusion of state power, and capitalist power into a single totalitarian power. This power is based upon the willingness of the general populous to use the state’s debt tokens as their form of exchange. If people simply refused to use the state’s money, their entire economy system would collapse overnight.

It is only through creating economic exchange outside of the confines of the state that we can realistic create independence and sovereignty for ourselves. Through using digital currencies as the primary mode of economic exchange, we can nullify the state’s ability to steal from us through taxation and inflation, but we also banish them from our sphere of economic activity. The internet and digital commons are sovereign; bitcoin and digital currencies are the mode of economic exchange that explicitly disallows for the participation of the state.

Money as Social Relations

Bitcoin is the money of the internet. Digital currencies can allow for all economic transactions to be self contained within the digital sphere of the internet–no governments, no banks, no Gods, no Masters can dictate what you can, or cannot buy. The real question at the end of the day, is who do YOU want to control your money?

Banks and governments who have proven time and time again, that they will inflate the money supply, steal from their own citizens to make war, and are more than happy violate any and all laws to enrich those that are part of the established order. Again, and again through history we can see that every single government that has came into existence has used the power create money as a mode to enrich themselves while impoverishing their people. The social relation of money under state governments is one of their ability to force you into their economy system–it is not a relationship of choice or economics, but one of power and corrosion.

Money is a social tool, and we cannot separate it from the societies that are part of it–yet, somehow, that is the exact world that we live in today. Money today is not some democratic project of economy agreement; it is a relationship that has been forced on to every individual with no choice whatsoever. The US dollar is freely printed at the will of those that are part of the federal reserve, and money can be freely seized by the state for pretty much any reason it wants. That is not a social relationship, but one of power. If we truly want to be free people, we must first have economic freedom, and that can only be achieved when we are not subject to poverty by the whims of government bureaucrats, and exploitation at the hands of capitalist.

Governments and Central Banks

Capitalism today is not merely an economic force that displays itself in the world of commerce, but it is a total panoptic zeitgeist. Every facet of our individual lives are decided by this total force that has made itself the predominate mindset, lifestyle, and the very bases of law and government in our society today. Capitalism has merged with the state itself to create state-capitalism–the fascist merging of state and corporate power to further the exploitation and environmental destruction all in the name of corporate profit.

Banks and financial institutions work directly with governments to steal money on-behalf of them, and to also give themselves unfair advantaged in business. The close relationship that finance has with governments allows for banksters to freely violate the law with the known expectation that very little, if anything, will be done to stop them. Banks like HSBC can work directly with terrorist and violet drug cartels to launder their blood money, and even when found guilty, our government refuses to stripped them of their assets, or their power to bank. Governments work hand-in-hand with powerful transnational corporations to allow for and facilitate crimes and human rights violations.

I cannot understand how after so much betrayal, corruption, and outright constitutional violations by the state how anyone could trust these psychopaths who claim they are here to help. It should be clear and obvious to anyone who is paying attention that these are the very people and organizations that rob us, keep us oppressed, and seek only to have power over us. The relationship between the state and oligarchic corporations is fused together with money–the capital which the state issues, and banks inflate via debt. Understand the domination of the political class by the bourgeoisie is done with fiat money. The sooner we can come to understand that this money system is their money system and not ours, the sooner we can set to work at building our own.

A Utopian Fantasy

We now have the tools to create a world-wide global revolution where there no more Gods or Masters of the economic system. We can allow for our peer-to-peer relationships via the internet to become a new paradigm for social, economic, and political organization. No longer do we have to believe in the false divisions of nationality, obey the repugnant laws of states that keep us oppressed and impoverished, nor tolerate governmental theft via law, or the exploration by capitalist allowed by their laws. Through forging a new economy that is built on top of non-state based currencies, we can create a new way forward free from the hands of both statist and capitalist, and their desire to exploit others for their own gains.

The macroeconomic money system has been built in such a way that it ensures the conditions of exploitation exist, and that governments and capitalist alike can systematic steal from the whole population. So long as governments have the power to issue currencies, and work in alliance with banking and finance to enforce their laws; economic power will continue to concentrate itself in the hands of those with that power. This economic system was designed to ensure that 85 people can own more than the bottom 3.5 billion people on the planet–its not a mistake, but by design.

If we are ever to throw off the yoke of capitalism, and to have lives that are more than working at bullshit jobs that we hate, we must first have objects of exchange that are outside of the control of the state, or their crony allies. Bitcoin, and other digital currencies present the most powerful opportunity in a century to create a new, alternative economic system that is outside the control of the state.

We now have the tools to build our exit from the awful system of exploration and purposeless consumption. Together, we can make a choice to reject the state-based system of money, and choose our own kind of money that works best for ourselves and the communities we choose to be part of. Freedom and liberty can only be created when the conditions of oppression are forbidden from existing. By pulling money into the digital realm outside of the hands of states or bankers, we can create a new system of economic exchange and money that does not need the violence of the state, or the exploitation of capitalist.

Revolutionary Syndicalism of Bitcoin

Buried deep in the annals of history we find the powerful revolutionary praxis of syndicalism. Originally a radical movement for trade unions; syndicalism pulled its principles from “Reflections on Violence,” by Georges Sorel. In this revolutionary text, Sorel explores violence and how it can help humanity save itself from the barbarism it finds itself stuck within. The influence of this text helped create the largest working class movement in France and around Europe in the early 20th century.

During the October Revolution in Russia when the bolsheviks seized power, it was the anarcho-syndicalist, armed with these teaching, who valiantly fought both the corrupt communist army of the bolsheviks and the imperialist white army of the West. In the 1920s the fascist vulgarize syndicalist teachings to give themselves powerful, personalized mythos, in which they anointed themselves with divine right to rule over all as emperors. As dangerous as this praxis may be, it also may hold the key to liberation from the tyranny of our time. If we are to take the teaching of syndicalism and imbue them into cyberspace, we may develop one of the most powerful modes of organization ever conceived: The Digital Federation.

Revolutionary Syndicalism

The profound power of Syndicalism arises out of the nihilistic tradition of taking the mantel of God for oneself. Those that are of the Syndicalist’s teachings seek spiritual meaning, and a bond with one’s own God for which they fight: themselves and their communities.

This is not some imaginary, castrated god found stapled up on sticks; pathetic and defiled, to be made an example of. Not a god of religions or institutions, but the God that lives inside of us and insists that we forge a better world. The is a personal spiritual meaning that can only be found inside of ourselves; a personal knowledge that our struggle is righteous and meaningful. In many ways syndicalism is the jihad of the working class, and the General Strike is the apocalypse of the ruling class. Sorel, who has been called ‘the most powerful socialist since Marx’ is widely unknown today. This is mostly because of the spectacular conclusion in which Sorel presents his theory of The General Strike:

“Syndicalism conceived the transmission of power not in terms of the replacement of one intellectual elite by another but as a process diffusing authority down into the workers’ own organizations. Those organizations, unlike a system of political democracy replete with Rousseauian baggage, provided a pattern of genuine and effective representation. Most importantly, the violence employed by the proletariat in the course of the general strike bore no relationship to the ferocious and bloodthirsty acts of jealousy and revenge that characterized the massacres of The Reign of Terror.”

Sorel unapologetically embraced that we must understand violence as a tool that the state has monopolized for themselves to create the oppression we experience today. The Revolution can only be created through direct struggle against the illegal transgressions of the state unified with capitalism. It is only from demanding from ourselves, and our communities that we can build a true, and radical change that does not allow for the putrid slime of politicians and capitalists to keep a foothold in our systems of government.

A Breif History of Anarcho-Syndicalism

The power message of syndicalist can and is easily be vulgarized to serve national socialist, and their racist, authoritarian, ignorant perspectives. Fascism is the greatest form of government for the weakest and most sniveling cowards of democracy. This is what happened in Italy in 1924, Germany in 1932, and Spain in 1936 where the fascist seized power because of the cowardice of pathetic democratic governments that could not stand against them.

The fascist were able to come into power through this mystical perspective they carefully constructed with sinister propaganda that created the cult of the Great Leader. However, each of these seizure of power were valiantly resisted by the people on their own accords. The largest anarcho-syndicate ever created fought a long and bloody civil war with the fascist in Spain from 1936-39. The blasting cap of syndicalism finds its praxis in direct action, personal liberation, and knowledge that the revolution must be built and fought for. When Franco seized power in a coup in 1936, the CNT–the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist–rose to the occasion and heroically fought the fascist for three long and bloody years. Great citizens from around the globe answered the call of justice, and fought shoulder to shoulder with men and women of all nationalities, including 2,800 brave Americans. With the defeat of the CNT, and with the most powerful anarchist having been killed or jailed, anarchism moved underground to be forgotten for another age when the people would be ready to struggle again. That age is now upon us, and the spectre of anarchism has risen from its shallow grave to haunt the digital realm until its prophecy is realized.

The Digital Federation

The time is upon us to create the organizations that can lead a new way forward. We have the technology, and we have the will power–now we must organize. Over the coming years we will find one another in the streets, and on digital forums spread through cyberspace. We will organize from the shadows, and will strike out viciously from the night, only to abscond back into the digital sphere where we are Sovereign. Using the powerful ideology of revolutionary syndicalism we can create the digital-political organizations that shall allow for us to break the state, crush their capitalist allies, and build a new way forward. We openly declare that our ends can be attained only by the subversive overthrow of all existing social conditions through the empowerment of all people within the digital sphere. Let the ruling classes tremble at the revolutionary power of bitcoin, the personal empowerment of privacy through crypto, and the auto-didactic nature of the internet itself. There is nothing to left to lose but our chains, and there is a whole world to liberate.

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Next: The Reappropriation of Our Economic System

Antifragile Bitcoin

Thieves love bitcoin. Why wouldn’t they? Pseudo-anonymous digital cash that can easily be laundered, and taken while being personally physically secure from any sort of immedate counter-aggression. What more could a thief ask for? Not to mention that you can make off with much more than in any typical bank robbery, like the most recent bitstamp hack, where the bandits made off with around 19,000 BTC.

At first stealing bitcoin was pretty easy–here is a list of several early hacks put together on bitcointalk. But you can see that over time it has been getting harder and harder to rob exchanges. Why is the good life of a crypto-thief going extinct?

I’m sure that bitcoin thieves dress like this.

It is because crypto-thieves are putting themselves out of work–they are helping solve the security issues of bitcoin! We can see this evolution over the course of the last few years with hacks becoming more sophisticated, detailed, and sneaky as the price of bitcoin grows, and the network expands to include more people. Now altcoins, with less savvy developers, and smaller exchanges which lack the same resources as major bitcoin exchanges are being targeted more frequently. This is occurring because the security infrastructure around smaller exchanges that cater to altcoins are less developed than bitcoin, so altcoins are being targeted more like the NXT hesit from BTER last year.

As the various altcoin ecosystems develops, they will either gain enough traction to exude the same antifragile properties of bitcoin, or drown under the weight of major attacks. Either way, the whole ecosystem evolves so that with weak coins die, and powerful ones survive. The same is true for exchanges as well; with each major attack or exploit that is carried out, a ton of money is stolen, but then the hole is then almost immediately fixed, or the exchange dies. This one-time ‘security fee’ now raises the bar for all hackers; as the post-mortium analysis of what happened is generally shared with the whole ecosystem of exchanges. The more people try to exploit exchanges or the crypto-currencies themselves, the more flaws are found and fixed, making the system strong and harder to exploit in the future.

The Antifragile Nature of Bitcoin

From http://www.innoguru.nl/

Bitcoin is antifragile, meaning that the more you try to break it, the stronger it becomes. That is why the exchanges with horrible practices like Mt. Gox have died, or at least will be reanimated under much better security. This is not a fluke, but is how distributed networks function; as they are antifragile.

In fact, the only reason that bitcoin has even evolved to where it is today is because of its antifragle properties. No matter what has happened–the demise of the Silk Road, Mt. Gox, and almost 1/2 of major exchanges have failed–bitcoin is still here. Furthermore, bitcoin has not just remained, but security has improved dramatically both on the side of consumers, and exchanges in response to these catastrophes. Even the core protocal is getting more secure as more time and energy is spent developing bitcoin, with features like multisig not even being introduced until 2011. I am sure after the most recent bitstamp heist there will be a post-mortem amongst the major exchanges to ensure a theift like this does not happen again.

This antifragility goes beyond just learning from mistakes, as the whole bitcoin ecosystem works offensively in response to such events. Major exchanges are not sitting around waiting to respond to a heist, they are innovating and developing to make themselves more secure and more difficult to steal bitcoins with each passing day. Coinbase’s vault is a great example of this. When people started to complain that Coinbase could go the way of Gox, Coinbase responded with multisig vault, which means they couldn’t even steal bitcoins stored there if they wanted to! I’m not one for keeping coins with any service, but it’s good to know that such features are available for those who may not want to secure their own coins, or spend the extra bits on something like Trezor.

This kind of development in turn makes it easier for the average consumer or business to have confidence in bitcoin. This paired with already low economic barriers to entry to use bitcoin creates a payment system that is both more secure, and cheaper to use that any other payment system that has ever existed. Anyone with a computer can setup an webpage and sell something to people directly for bitcoin with much more ease, and less expense than any other payment system. This lower barrier to entry is also creates a greater degree of resiliency within the network, as it distributes the risk for the ecosystem among many actors, unlike centralized payment entities.

The price of bitcoin, which has taken a major hit in recent days, also works in an antifragile nature. Having made absurd gains over the last two years (for good reason), the market was overheated, and so a large sell-off started. Although this became a vomit-inducing ride for some noobs to the game, this was actually a good thing! Such an adjustment in price not only shook out speculators and capitalist of all kinds, but it allows for the price per bitcoin to become ‘reasonable’ to people who were looking to invest, but thought bitcoin was overvalued. This drop in price allowed for a whole new wave of folks to invest, which in turn distributed the network even more. As the price rises and falls, we will see this process happen over, and over again.

The Evolution of the Bitcoin Ecosystem

The advent of colored coins, multisig wallets, and properties contracts all seem like they will come to fruition in 2015, and are all going to bring forward a new boom in the bitcoin ecosystem. Again, it will be through a string of thefts, hacks, and exploits which will allow for service providers to improve themselves and allow for the network to get stronger. It is this process of creative destruction that allows for the demise of smaller weaker parts of the network which will allow for more evolved ones to take there place. I am confident that as we move into the coming years that service, security, and creative thefts will only get better, along with the security response to each event as well.

So this one is for the thieves, criminals and neer-do-wellers! Keep doing what you do best, it improves the security of the bitcoin network and ecosystem, and reward those for their unsolicited pen-testing services.

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Next: What is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin?