Bitcoin’s People Problem

“I insist that it is not the handful of parasites [of capitalism and the state], but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be acquired without numbers? Yes, power, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom, never the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society.” –Emma Goldman

Bitcoin’s People Problem

Bitcoin has a very serious problem, and it has nothing to do with the technology of bitcoin–it has to do with the stupidity and ignorance of the common people. Everyday I hear from the common man the same damn foolish straw-man arguments for why bitcoin cannot work. Again, and again I hear:

“But how does it work?”

“Who controls it?”

“What if it fails, or the governments stop it?”

“There’s nothing backing it–it’s not even real money!”

And my personal favorite, “Bitcoin is dead”

Stupidity is a poor excuse for failing to understand how technology and money works, but alas, we are in a world ran by a union of morons, commanded by sociopathic capitalists and politicians. Those who believe in the demise of digital currencies are the same sniveling cowards who cannot see past their own avarice and callowness to ever accomplish something great–they simply want to punch the clown each day, satisfied at the safety of being commanded by another. They are cowards happy to obey governments and laws that can only be defined as illegal and tyrannical.

These are the fools who would pled that the bitcoin’s cause can never succeed. They do not understanding the purpose of bitcoin is the struggle against the system as it is. The fools bitch of being ripped off by banks, and then offer hollow stares when told of what bitcoin can do. They demand to be told how bitcoin works, without a damn clue how fiat works. The only problem that bitcoin has is that stupid people do not want to be free and independent–they demand to be ruled and governed, and to drag us all down with their sad need to be controlled.

These clowns tell me of how pleasurable life is on their knees, and how they are allowed so many of the scraps from the table of Empire! That a life of looking towards the ground is not only a great pleasure, but one of deep honor! These people love their duty to their God of the state, and their masters of capitalism. They will offer any excuse to justify the needs of their master, any reason to qualify the barbarism they execute daily. There is nothing that the state can do that the slaves cannot create a justification for. If these are the very idiots that we must rely upon to help us create our change, I must animate the seriousness of the dilemma in which we have been caught. We shall never succeed if we believe these people will welcome the liberation from Plato’s Cave.

A Confederacy of Dunces

There is a whole union of morons parading about the world as the false champions of justice, dragging innocent dead bodies behind them. How they scream their idiocy from the tops of their lungs:

“War is Peace!

Freedom is Slavery!

Ignorance is Strength!”

See their foolishness for exactly what it is, and let the crimes and injustices which they have taken part in speak directly to what they are. Understand with every fiber of your being that the enemy is not some nameless, faceless army of destruction; but the people in your community that tell you, “This is just the way things must be.”

These are the people that are gleefully celebrate the manufactured democracy of two-party totalitarianism. They are slaves to all of the trinkets they have collected through debt, they militantly pay taxes which are used to create illegal wars, and they demand that the law be respected at all cost–beyond that of even the law itself. They thinking nothing of the meaning of the law; only to obey.

If we are to build a new world, one that is free from the constant transgressions of corrupt states and their allies, we must insist on labeling the slaves for what they are: stupid, weak-willed cowards who would rather have temporary safety, than true liberty.

Forget them and press forward!

Let them stay at their bullshit jobs, where they can ever so happily be paid pennies for their own voluntary enslavement. Let the fools believe their masters of capitalism and the state would ever-so-kindly give them justice; and let them cry tears of shame when they realize the shall never receive it. We have no need for those kind of people to help us build a new and better world.

To Fight the Fascists

Our republic die a sad and quiet death long ago; swept under the rug and ignored by the media and public like all of crimes of the state. We are little more than the aftermath of total liquidation of democracy; the world manifested after the crushing of constitutional rule by weighty corporate hands. From the coast of the Mediterranean, the to the tip of the Arctic circle, and back to the peaks of Patagonia; every nation across the globe has been crippled under the weight of international fascism–the true face of transglobal capitalism. This happened before our generation, are we are the ones that have been left to clean up the travesty of the 20th century, and the bold-faced lies the inept generation before us insist upon being the truth.

Resistance would be nearly-impossible if it were not for the internet, crypto, and bitcoin. Despite the international terrorism that has presented itself under the banner of ‘freedom and democracy for all’ we know the truth for what it is. We need little more than to watch the videos of the aftermath of their drone bombings, extrajudicial killings by police, and politicians who voice their contempt for the very laws that create the throne they sit upon. Their world is slowly and surely slipping away from their grasp of power with each new piece of technology we have. They no longer control our media, communications, or economy–we will move away from them as we build our better world here, preparing to chop off their fat-fingered hands for when they interlope into the land of digital sovereign.

The battle of bitcoin is not for the hearts and minds of the people of the world today, but of the generations of tomorrow. Everyday more of the older generation who are suspicious of the internet are dying off and dwindling in numbers, while droves of brilliant young people from all around the globe find refuge in the internet, away from the tyranny of life as slaves under state capitalism. Great ideas take time to build, as if great rumblings of thunder before the lightning strike of revolution.

The Truth About Bitcoin

The simple matter of the facts is that bitcoin is a both a better payment system, a superior form of money, and the most powerful mode of economic resistance that world has ever seen. Lies, fear-mongering, and doubt all sort themselves out with enough time–and time is on our side. Bitcoin is barely 6 years old, and really only 4 years of that has it had any commercial application. Over the next 4 years the myth of fiat money will show itself for exactly what it is: a myth.

People are pissed off about the general illegalism, corruption, and graft that is the norm for banking and government cultures alike, and frankly there is little that can be done about it. Institutions of justice time and time again have proven themselves to be corrupt to the core, with no interest in defending the rights of the common people, or respect the laws as they stand. Due to the cozy relationships banksters have developed with governments from greasing the palms of politicians, they are given special treatment so they may operate outside of the law with impunity. If we are ever to reestablish the rule of constitutional law over our governments we must demand that people understand that our republic was lost to the very people who take oaths to protect it.

The considerable amount of lies, stupidity, and idiocy spouted by the trolls and detractors will come to bear the truth of their nature over time. Their lies about bitcoin, governments, and the ‘dangers’ of independent money are out in public for everyone to see, and to act as a testament against them in the coming years. Their words will be as bankrupt and hollow as their money; and people will seek for themselves the truth of what bitcoin and digital currencies can do. If people want to discover how to liberate themselves from an economy ran by gangsters in banksuits, and fascist masquerading as politicians, and it is simply a matter of time before they discover that for themselves. As for everyone else; they can keep their chains and I’ll take my liberty.

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Next: Class Consciousness of The Digital Age

The Revolution of Bitcoin Banking

One of the dirty secrets of the bitcoin world is that we are still in the 11th century of online exchange. Today bitcoiners are dealing with the classic issue that plagued humanity since at least the 7th century BC when the first piece of coinage were found. Coins, as all physical objects, are subject to physical theft, confiscation, swindling, fraud, and debauchment; but most of all, outright violence to seize it. These issues continue to this day; however there are apparatuses that as groups of people we can use to defend against such issues: Banks.

The Evolution of Banking

The remains of the London Mithraeum

Banks from their earliest origins have functioned quite autonomously of the state. Developing out of the rise of italian merchant class in Italy during the 11th century, banking evolved far beyond the meager protection of precious metals into financialization. I highly recommend reading Nick Szabo’s two essays, “Origins of the Joint-Stock Company” and “The Birth of Insurance” for an in-depth look how this process occurred.

At this time, lending and banking was not a concern of the Sovereign–He had the power of taxation, and war–this was how he would raise funds if need be. However, war economies don’t work if you are on the losing side, and this is where the english crown found itself at the conclusion of the Nine Year’s War. England had been crippeled by france at the Battle of Beachy Head where the Royal Navy was decimated. William the III could not raise the funds at the time, and so he developed something very, very sneaky: The Bank of England. Of intersting note, this bank was built physically on top of a Roman temple of Mithras–how fitting.

As a private corporation, the BOE was given the sole power to issue bank notes in england on behalf of the crown. This allowed for lenders to give cash bullion to the bank, who could then give a loan based upon a promise of repayment from the Crown in the future. The Crown essentially invented war bonds to raise funds for the transformation of england into the naval superpower it would later become. And this was all thanks to the seditious revolution of banking.

Moving from a coinbased economy as the main mode of exchange, to a reserved-based note system, is what allowed for substantial economic development to occur in England in the generations after. This was specifically due to the technological development of new kinds of financialization which were never used before, which gave england a substantial economic advantage over other states.

Slowly and insidiously this version of banking took over the whole world! Using this system states could create money that did not exist yet; one could spend tomorrow’s promise of repayment today! A revolutionary development, but as we see today, when stretched beyond the limits of the markets, it can, and will create havoc.

Transitioning From a Coinbase Economy

Today in the bitcoin world, were are shuffling about our bitgold forged into coins from the process of bitcoin mining. You can read more about the production process of forging bitcoin in my previous post bitcoin as commodity money for a more detailed explanation of this process. While this does have many, many benefits over contemporary banking, fiat money, and governmental interference in economics; it also has substantial problems–mainly incompetence. From the Gox fiasco, to the most recent Bitstamp compromise, it is the golden age of digital highway robbery, with the Black Barts of the digital age having the time of their lives.

Attempting to move from a coinbase economy to a fractional reserve one does have some appeal, but we all know how problematic, and antithetical this is to bitcoin. However, with the developments going on over at Blockstream, I think there is real hope to create something that will straddle the lines between a coinbased economy, and a fiat economy: transparent reserve banking.

Sidechains and Collateralization

Source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/sidechains-bitcoin-2-0-revolution-highlights-reddit-ama/

The team over at Blockstream has assembled a ‘Manhattan Project’ scale of crypto experts to develop sidechains. The sidechain project is one to essentially be able to create a two-way peg between coins deposited, and the creation of new assets. There are two reason I believe this is such a critical development:

1) Using bitcoins deposited via sidechains a new assets can be created which would be more difficult to steal, and would allow some process of restitution in the case of theft, similar to what banks provide today.

2) Bitcoins can be used as collateral for a unique model of debt-financing as follows:

Bob deposits 10 BTC today with Alice Bank via sidechains. This creates a loan that is a fractional value of the bitcoin he deposited.

Today those 10 BTC are worth around $2700, and once deposited with Alice bank, this will make a loan that is leveraged 1:10. Alice Bank will now give Bob a lump sum of $27,000 to be repaid in the future. In order for bob to recover his 10 BTC, he will need to make payment of $275 each month for 100 months. Bob is free to pay back the the loan + the fixed interest early if he chooses to do so. Once the total of $27,500 is fully repaid Bob will ‘unlock’ his bitcoin from the sidechain. Bob now has his 10 BTC back.

What makes this so revolutionary is that it solves the impossible trinity problem that all central banks face. This allows for a natural equalization of the USD value of bitcoin to occur through debt-financing via bitcoin, fixed in dollars. If the value of bitcoin substantially increases beyond the initial $270 that Bob’s bitcoin is financed at over the next 100 months, he will have all the more motive to repay quicker to get his bitcoin back. If bob defaults, Alice Bank will be able to keep the 10 BTC for itself.

By treating bitcoin as property, a sidechain bank could use a fixed amount of bitcoin as collateral just like a how a home is used as the collateral in banking today.

The Next Generation of Bitcoin

If bitcoin is to advance itself beyond the wild west of digital finance, while remaining true to its core tenets we will need sidechains. This will allow for a revolution that will be similar to the scale and scope of the one William the III ushered in when he created the BOE. This will help bitcoiners resolve some of the security issues that have plagued the coin-based bitcoin economy, but more importantly, it will help financialize the bitcoin economy. By using bitcoin as an assest for debt-financing in fiat values, bitcoin banks will be able to create loans for people, while still remaining free from the hands of the state–if they choose to do so.

As dangerous as this is to flirt with debt financing, I believe that sidechains offer a revolutionary way to financialize the bitcoin economy in a way that allows for those in the bitcoin economy to have their cake and eat it too.

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Next: Bitcoin is Political

Bitcoin is Not About Money

It’s about power

Bitcoiners are part of a new political, economic, and social class. At the core of our tenets is the recognition that bitcoin and digital currencies are powers in themselves, and that they cannot be restricted by the despotic tyranny of States, or their capitalist allies in banking. We are not united by our creed, nationality, or gender, but by our economic objectives and the advancement of our technology. We are the ones that shall force the fiat banks towards their death, and we are the ones that shall make the State capitulate on its monopoly on legal tender and the mode of exchange. It is time for the youth of this world to rise and take their rightful place in history by striking down the awful corrupt governments of the past that have sold us out. No longer do we need to remain subservient to this system of exploitation and alienation.

The Digital Vanguard

There is nothing that ties any of us together–no names, no identities, no bodies–just Bits of data being sent across the Great Commons of the Internet. Together we have created a multi-billion dollar economy from nothing just five years ago. Those who hodl bitcoin are far past the point of doubting the success of bitcoin–we know bitcoin will be successful. We see its power, we see its efficiency, and we see the world that we are to create with it–and governments of the world and their corrupt allies are not part of it.

We are the Vanguard of bitcoin. We are the ones who shall fight the Goliath of Finance and the Leviathan of the State and watch them fall from the pedestal of human they mounted themselves upon. We shall watch them fall, we shall watch them burn, and we will do nothing but stoke the flames. We will do simply laugh and walk away, disengaging them and continuing to build the new economy that is based upon the values and virtues that has been put into the code.

Over the last few years we have poured our hearts, minds, souls, and fortunes into this project. We have made the market, built the applications, and connected the nodes, and militantly worked on security to ensure our success.

Indeed, detractors will do everything they can to discourage us. Even in that very word, we can see their cowardice; to dis-courage. They lack courage; and are spineless, sniveling, fear-dominated people who couldn’t fight anyways. They only see a world of 9-to-5 enslavement as a favor that we should be grateful for. These people cowtow under the unjust laws of their masters; for anything their masters choose, for them becomes law and justice. We refuse to bend our necks to these men: we know the crime against humanity they have purported, and we shall resist them.

Together, united in the cause of building a better money, we shall also build a better world. We have made ourselves nearly invulnerable to the malice of the state, and rage of the banks though ensuring our Privacy. We know from the code that Privacy is our immutable Law; for privacy is what assures us not only our safety, but our equality in dialog as well. We know nothing of the other parties that participate with us, except for the Solidarity we have with one another. Together we are building an economy that is based upon fairness, equality, and individual sovereignty–and we are not asking for permission to do this.

To Build a Free World

We are the ones that have ensured the success of bitcoin, and we have been and shall continue to be rewarded kindly for such loyalty. No one came to us and said, “You need to invest and support this,” In fact, many of us were mocked and called fools for ever believe in it. But onward and upwards we went, making the long journey from the obscure origins of bitcoin to the multi-billion dollar economy it is today. No one told us we would make 5, 10, or 20 times what we originally invested–we did that.

Famous vulgar philosophers, politicians, investors, economist, and journalist from all around the world have insisted that bitcoin would be nothing. They said it couldn’t be a currency, and that it was only used by drug-dealers and pedophiles. Every single step of the way they laughed at us, mocked us, and insulted us…and yet we are still here, growing, building, and pulling more and more into our sphere of influence, and away from theirs with each passing day. So quietly and seditiously, people are coming to understand the nature of money, and realizing that the banks, and the state are using that to keep them oppressed, and divided from our true political goal:

Freedom.

True, unadulterated, messy, complex, Freedom.

Freedom that cannot be suffocated because of the fears of pathetic men who need to terrorize us into compromising this most sacred of rights. Freedom that cannot be taken at the whims of the states, or the cries from banks.

Freedom–despite being so thoroughly abused, manipulated, and contorted by men of power for nefarious deeds–is a word that still has meaning. Words will always seek to give themselves means for what they are and what they represent. The word ‘freedom’ will always sound hollow coming from the mouths of oppressors to justify their despotism, which will also make present the need and demand for what ‘freedom’ truly means.

Tragically, we were birthed into a world where the fascist won long ago, and created a sophisticated oppressive apparatuses of nightmares to terrorize us into giving more and more power to the state, and their allies. This manufactured terrorism from our masters has allow for us as a people–fearful, and trembling–to sacrifice our essential liberties, bastardizing our sacred constitutional rights, proving their worthlessness without the force of men, and the will to protect it behind them.

Bitcoin is not about money

It has never been about money, it’s about freedom and what that means for our society today. As we descend into the panopticon the state is erecting at this very time, preparing the gulags in the deserts, and military control of these states, we declare that we shall not go quietly into that dark night. We declare that a government that is marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Together we are building the mode of resistance that shall cause for the empire of paper to collapse, which will free everyone from the shackles of debt, and the chains of domination.

We shall no longer be force and intimidate us into playing by the corrupt and hollow laws of the state. We see the men of government, banking, and capitalism for the criminals they are, and for the damage they have done to us. We see how they have betrayed their oath, their nation, and their honor. Their words, and their threats are meaningless to us. We are building a better world that they are not a part of, nor will they be allowed to be a part of. We no longer need them.

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Next: Revolutionary Syndicalism of Bitcoin

Bitcoin, Economic Resistance, and Justice

“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.”

-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

I love Thoreau’s unapologetic diatribe against the state, and the banal evil of the hollow men of governments–I cannot recommend more highly to read Civil Disobedience. More than a century and a half ago, Thoreau could plainly see the preposterousness of the idea of a just government. Governments are institutions amongst men, and derive their power and justice from the magnanimity of the men within those institutions. When these institutions of government are taken over by cowards and make their objective to destroy the very constitutional rights from which their power is formed; such organizations can no longer be called legitimate. The whole world knows of the crimes of the American Empire and its axis of capitalist corruption. Now is the time to resist, and fight back before it is too late.

Direct Economic Action

I have always been one to believe that there is no revolutionary action except for direct action. Resistance is something that must be preformed at the exact time and space where injustice is occurring in order for true change to be manifested. This is deeply problematic when we live in a capitalist society that itself is the bases of injustice, exploitation, and alienation. How can one resist an entire social, political, and economic system that is based upon systematic injustice by the state working hand-in-hand with the corporate, oligarchic machinery of late capitalism? The totality, and wholeness of this vast complex of power relations finds their nexus within the legal structure of the state, seems impossible to change or resist.

That is until now.

Nation-States, from the most corrupt failed states, to the superpowers of China, Germany, and the United States; ALL maintain their power and control on their populations only and explicitly through the control of capital–if they cannot control the money, they cannot control the population.

If even 5% of the world’s population refuses to use their governments fiat currency; this would cause for a collapse of their unjust monetary system overnight. The governments, politicians, and capitalists who use our money to fund their wars cannot exist within the digital currency ecosystem. If you want to fight back directly, in a way that will true hurt these monsters; than withdraw your economic support for their corrupt money.

Through this single action–the rejection of using and holding fiat money–can cause for a financial collapse of the old, antiquated, corrupt system of money, while bolstering and legitimizing the new digital economy. This is a capital strike–a refusal to invest or participate in the corrupt economic structure that has left 3.5 billion people with the same amount of wealth as 85 people. I refuse to participate in this evil system, and I refuse to let these fascist use any of my labor, wealth, or exchange to support these conditions.

My revolution is now, and it is permanent–I hope you will join me.

Digital currencies will replace fiat government systems of money–it is simple too effective as a money system. At some point, be it 5, 10, or 30 years down the line, citizens across the globe will take the power of the purse away from government hands, and returning it to the people. By using new, alternative forms of money that the state does not explicitly control, people all over the world can choose to reject their government’s money systems and the endemic and systematic corruption of power enables.

If you truly want to fight back against the state and their oligarchic allies; than the most powerful action you can take is refusal. Refusing to participate in their official economy, using their money institutions, or being a cog in their machines. By refusing to use, or hold fiat currency, one can help start the process of stripping the state, and the banks they are lapdogs to, of their economic power. This single action alone can be what can take down the capitalist empires of exploitation, and return economic power to the hands of the people, where it rightfully belongs.

Student Debt Resistance

I need not to make the argument for the injustice at the price of education, nor the way that people are made into indentured servants of the state for little more than wanting to educate themselves. There is more student debt today that what the entire budget of the United States federal government was in 1965. Private profiteers, and banksters of the most unscrupulous sort, are allowed to leech profits from this debt, participating with the state in direct exploitation of students, and former students, as equitable partners with the state for this right of mass extortion. This is debt bondage in exchange for a certificate of graduation that offers one the false promise of employment upon graduation. You were scammed, and now you must repay them.

On the poverty of student life was an influential piece of writing from 1966 that helped ignite the shortly lived revolutions of May 1968. This work speaks broadly about the hope of youth for a future that was not determined by the exploitation of capitalism and the demand to fight for that future. The underlying point is that being a student is as subservient to the capitalist structure of the world today just as much as any other corporate job. So called ‘education’ within the ridged structure of capitalist universities is not education–it’s ideology. The apparent freedom of university is the iron cage of academia where the erudite elitism of the intelligentsia is a reflection of the same narrow, manufactured dialog of politics. The education systems are not about empowerment or agency, but subservience to the current superstructure of the capitalist world today.

To strike debt; to refuse to pay or service it can and will bring the whole system to a stand still. If a debt strike can be organized for people to default on student debts, or debts of all kinds at the same time, would cause for a total collapse of the monetary and banking systems–international financial contagion would be inescapable. If executed correctly it would take less than one month to see systemic economic crisis. This is the system that has sold out our future, has allowed for the total and complete destruction of the environment and millions of species, all while leaving our posterity broke and impoverished. This can only be defined as unjust and despotic. Resistance must begin somewhere, and I see no better place then here.

To Struggle

We have been taught, ingrained in a pavlovian way, to feel powerless against what seems to be an omnipotent force of the state that is fully against our struggle. It seems easier to simply give up, to not struggle, to find a way to compromise with the system as it is. We pretend that there is not a gross psychological damage that we undertake by living in this capitalist world where everything is for sale, nothing is sacred, and the largest criminals of all go free. We are permitted to have our own little fiefdom of superfluous trinkets and toys, in exchange for our compliance and silence with the machinery of capitalism. We are told by others and ourselves that this is a fair exchange only to find ourselves sobbing inconsolably on top of our piles of trinkets; knowing the price of our estrangement from our innermost self.

Suicide now one of the leading cause of premature death in the united states, and depression is the world’s leading debilitating illness. The estrangement of meaning and purpose from everyday live; ripped away and replaced with the meaningless, soul-sucking existence of bullshit jobs, and vacuous social connections has launched us headlong into the society of the spectacle unhinging itself. The world makes visible the primacy of commodities dominating all that is lived. The world of the commodity is thus shown for what it is, because its movement is identical to the estrangement of men among themselves and in relation to their global product.

It is nothing short of childish to not see the mental toil and exhaustion from living under this despotism. We must valiantly and passionately strike against this way of life that has robbed our lives of dignity, meaning, and purpose for far too long. Inside of each one of us is the drive to zealously seek for something better–the hope of building a better tomorrow is what drives us, and this force alone can change the world. The revolutionary struggle patiently awaits us; whispering to us to rise and taken our proper place in chronos of the liberation of mankind.

To Take Justice

Justice must be taken. It will not be freely given by these governments, or the political institutions that are part of them. That request was made in the streets years ago and it was met with the heavy truncheon of the state’s fascist police armies. Protesting is little more than being a lamb to the slaughter, displaying that political reform is impossible. If we are to have justice, it must be something that we make for ourselves, and refuse to compromise on.

To directly attack capital itself is to strike at the very root and essence of our struggle. Our quest is to fracture the unholy alliance between capitalists and the state through destroying the object that unites them: fiat money. This is a direct plan of attack; an offensive and purposeful mode of resistance that as it gains momentum, it can become the revolutionary force of a general capital strike. If you want justice, than go and take it!

Refuse to accept the conditions which have been impressed upon you! Fight back and struggle against those who keep you under the bootheel of poverty and totalitarianism for their own benefits. Disparage the cowardly fascists who sell your security, freedom, and rights for their own temporary safety. No one will come and tell you fight back against an entire system that seeks to exploit and alienate you from your own being and worth–you must find that inside of yourself and will-to-power the meaning to fight back and resist! The commanders of this economic and political system are cowards and fascists who care nothing for the meaning of justice, liberty, or freedom. They are scare and pathetic little men who allow for their morals and ethics to be commanded by others as thoughtless machines. Allow for the labor and wealth that you command to be a friction against the machine, and part of the great liberation of the digital economy away from the bloody and grimy hands of the state and the capitalist pigs that control them.

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Next: Financial Insurrection

The Creative Destruction of Bitcoin

A little more than a year ago I covered bitcoin’s creative destruction, and how bitcoin is more efficient money system on several economic levels. We also explored how the near-zero transaction cost of cryptocurrencies creates a monetary system that shall always be more efficient than fiat monetary systems. It is because of this fact that we shall see bitcoin destroy the contemporary models of finance, banking, and monetary systems; while as the same time building something new, better, and more egalitarian in its place. As the bitcoin ecosystem grows, we will see a radical shift of money, finance, and banking away from huge institutions that are embedded within the capitalist structure, to a decentralized, global framework of economic exchange divorced from the state. Schumpeter described this process of creative destruction in chapter 7 of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy and how capitalism incessantly transforms the economic landscape:

“In capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition [oligopolistic competition] which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)—competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.”

Smashing Monopolies with Advanced Technology

The superiority of bitcoin as a money system is something that will be proven in the long-run of decades. What bitcoin has accomplished in 5 years alone is astonishing. As a non-goverment money system, bitcoin is not subject to the same legal system, taxation, inflation, or political pressures that all fiat money systems must experience. Bitcoin explicitly lacks the charlatan features that all fiat money systems–this is a feature, not a bug.

Bitcoin exist outside the framework of sovereignty of the state. Bitcoin cannot derive any legitimacy from laws or enforcement, but only from its own merits as money. In doing this, bitcoin points out how corrupt our current economic and political system is, while creating a totally new form of money that is a radical alternative. Bitcoin points out the corrupt relationship between the state, institutions of money, and how that relationship creates oppression for all people.

Today, the oligopolist and monopolist have won. A small handful of companies control vast swaths of industry with the full cooperation of the state. Government pay huge subsidies to mega-corporations while child homelessness is at an all-time high. Governments use the money they control not to help those in need, but to make illegal wars both domestically and abroad. Politicians are paid off openly and without shame, while the banks readily kick hundred of thousands of people out of their homes and into the streets with the full support of the law. Police openly murder children and are readily acquitted and protected by the legal system.

This is a form of inverted totalitarianism monopolizes the structure of power through omitting any democratic process from the economy system. The monopoly of banking, the monopoly of the law, and the monopoly of the issuance of money have all been forcibly justified through extreme campaigns of fear-mongering around the ‘need for safety’. This has nothing to do with economics, efficiency, or safety–it is about corruption and using the state to create laws that protect incumbent industries and politicians.

Breaking these monopolies is the kind of creative destruction that bitcoin is engages in through applying a superior technology. The restructuring of economic power into a digital realm will not only dramatically redistribute wealth away from the old order, but it will also radically transform the size and breadth of the financial economy by several fold. The financial and banking systems will become much more accessible, the nearly 10 million american adults lacking a bank accounts today, and the 2.5 billion unbanked all over the world can now have a real opportunity at financial access in a way that has never been experience before. Those who build these new systems, and utilize the power of bitcoin to revolutionize the financial and banking industries, will be the champions of this new digital economy.

The Revolution of Accounting

The creative destruction of bitcoin strikes at the very root–the very object of exchange–of the capitalist economic structure: money. It is through the explicit destruction of the current payment systems, legal tenders, and the monopolization of those, that bitcoin will reinvent the entire economic. From destroying these old model of finance, banking, and exchange; the entire infrastructure around economic exchange will be recreated in a better, more effective model. A similar revolution happen around 800 years ago in the north of Italy with ‘discovery’ of double-entry accounting.

This novel approach to accounting allowed for merchants to have a much better understanding of their total assets and liabilities, as opposed to the old version of just keeping a daily diary of what they possessed. The real revolution that came from this accounting system was the way to measure, value, and utilize various assets and liabilities in new ways–equity was birthed into the world. This transformed non-active capital that was previously doing nothing, into doing something. Adam Smith talks at further length about this in The Wealth of Nations:

“It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country. That part of his capital which a dealer is obliged to keep by him unemployed and in ready money, for answering occasional demands, is so much dead stock, which, so long as it remains in this situation, produces nothing, either to him or to his country. The judicious operations of banking enable him to convert this dead stock into active and productive stock; into materials to work upon; into tools to work with; and into provisions and subsistence to work for; into stock which produces something both to himself and to his country.”

-Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Though this seems to be the most boring possible topic to be revolutionary, it certainly was. With the development the merchant banks in Northern Italy, now there was a way in which the ‘dead stocks’ of stationary capital could be commoditized. From the ability to much more accurately understand one’s own finances through double-entry accounting, there became a whole new way to utilize, and understand money. This was the revolution that helped create finance as we know it today, and is what also propelled the advancement of capitalism to its place on the world stage it is today.

The great advancement that came from double-entry accounting was the novel approach of pooling money through banks, and then being able to utilize that capital as an active, and productive investment, rather than a dead stock. This meant that many, many more people could access capital for investments than there ever had been available before. This new market for capital and mode to utilize it, fundamentally restructured the economic fabric of life in a way that would indelibly change the future, and advance it towards one of capitalism. This was the first revolution of accounting, and now 800 years later, we are having the second revolution of accounting and measurements.

Building The New in The Shell of the Old

The creative destruction embedded within capitalism can best be understood as a dual force of creative power. It seeks to destroy and defile old ways in the quest to create something more efficient, more masterful of the task at hand. The only way that we can build a new and better world, is through first through destroying the old ways. It is only once we have cleansed ourselves of the inefficiencies of the past, that we are able to fully manifest and powerfully produce the changes we wish to see in the world.

Luca Pacioli–remembered for writing down how to do double-entry account. No one knows who that other guy is.

The revolution of bitcoin is not just in destroying these old financial industries; but building the new system that will be radically better than anything we could imagine. In this brave new world we are quickly coming into, the financial industry as we know it will be crushed in order to make way for the new system of finance. Bitcoin and other digital currencies simply have too low of a transaction cost when compared to the transaction cost of any fiat money system.

The development of the triple-entry accounting system of the blockchain has at its core the same praxis and creative destruction that double-entry account had: to destroy the old order of exchange, to make way for the new, better, and more effective system that can reach and serve many more people than the old system ever could. What is so revolutionary about this new mode of economic organization is now the arbitrator of measurements within the system of exchange (bitcoin itself) is subject to the same accounting standards as all other actors within the system–the bankers and politicians cannot cheat this system for their own benefit. The bitcoin ecosystem has no way it can just make up new bitcoins, as the state and banks can do with fiat money, or how they can debauch commodity-monies. The real revolution within bitcoin is that makes the banksters, the financiers, and the state subject to the same economic laws that govern everyone else.

Through eliminating the costly, inefficient, slow, burdensome, and corrupt contemporary system of banking, finance, and money itself; there is a whole new economy world to be created. This will exponential increase the productivity of capital, as it no longer has to be subservient to the state, their regulations, or laws that protect their cronies. Bitcoin ensures there is no longer any physical space that must be defended to protect money, so the infrastructure of this new form of capital can extend well beyond the branches of banks, or physical kiosks. Money no longer has any masters–it is free to create the world it sees fit.

What Must Be Done

We have the tools, now we must build the new system. Rome was not built in a day however, and what we are attempting to do is to fundamentally restructure the most prominent aspect of our society and world today: money and wealth. This is an ideological battle of the greatest kind. We are not just trying to address the economic issues at hand, but the mysticism and magic of how money functions. These are huge political, social, and ethical issues that many people today would rather not question or talk about–they would prefer to simply shove their head in the sand and refuse to believe that this is possible.

However the younger, technologically inclined and technology trusting generations will soon come into power against a political and economic system that has willingly and enthusiastically sold them out, disparaging them each step of the way. Spite and the demand for justice is a very powerful thing, and the true revolution is going to come when the youth from all around the globe realize that they can economic and politically organize themselves against the respective systems that have exploit them. The revolution is already in motion; what remains to be seen is how quickly people are going to be willing to seize it for themselves.

—

Next: Hayek’s Promise

The Revolution is Here

Renzo Novatore Arcola

“History, materialism, monism, positivism, and all the “isms” of this world are old and rusty tools which I don’t need or mind anymore. My principle is life, my end is death. I wish to live my life intensely for to embrace my life tragically.

You are waiting for the revolution? My own began a long time ago! When you will be ready (God, what an endless wait!) I won’t mind going along with you for awhile. But when you’ll stop, I shall continue on my insane and triumphal way toward the great and sublime conquest of the nothing! Any society that you build will have its limits. And outside the limits of any society the unruly and heroic tramps will wander, with their wild & virgin thoughts–they who cannot live without planning ever new and dreadful outbursts of rebellion!

I shall be among them!

And after me, as before me, there will be those saying to their fellows: “So turn to yourselves rather than to your Gods or Politicians. Find what hides in yourselves; bring it to light; show yourselves!”

Because every person; who, searching his own inwardness, extracts what was mysteriously hidden therein; is a shadow eclipsing any form of society which can exist under the sun! All societies tremble when the scornful aristocracy of the tramps, the inaccessibles, the uniques, the rulers over the ideal, and the conquerors of the nothing resolutely advances.

So, come on iconoclasts, forward!

“Already the foreboding sky grows dark and silent!”

–Renzo Novatore Arcola, January, 1920

Renzo was a self-taught anarchist, who helped fight the fascist in Italy during the 1920s–he did this on his own terms as a man, not some apparatus of the state. You can find more of his work and poetry in “Toward the Creative Nothing.” What I find beautiful about his work is the hope and enthusiasm that he eposes about the permanent struggle against society. His writings seize on the core struggle to have sovereignty over one’s life, insisting that we are not to be owned by anyone other than ourselves, and that we must manifest that for ourselves in the world. You can feel Nitcheze’s influence bleed through his writing, demanding us to will to power ourselves to infinity. Through demanding that no one own our ideals, morals, or dictate to us what is right or wrong; insisting that that world we live in is the one of our choice.

Renzo understood that the revolution was something to be demanded, manifested, and taken for oneself. If you want to be free–Free in the truest, greatest, and deepest sense of the word

THAN GO TAKE IT!

“Anarchy is not a social form, but a method of individuation. No society will concede to me more than a limited freedom and a well-being that it grants to each of its members. But I am not content with this and want more. I want all that I have the power to conquer. Every society seeks to confine me to the august limits of the permitted and the prohibited . But I do not acknowledge these limits, for nothing is forbidden and all is permitted to those who have the force and the valor.

Consequently, anarchy, which is the natural liberty of the individual freed from the odious yoke of spiritual and material rulers, is not the construction of a new and suffocating society.’ It is a decisive fight against all societies — christian, democratic, socialist, communist, etc., etc. Anarchism is the eternal struggle of a small minority of aristocratic outsiders against all societies which follow one another on the stage of history.”

Anarchism seeks to display and oppose all relationships of power; from the overt and open forms of power; to the most hidden and sinister ones too. This is the philosophy of liberty; for freedom needs to protect no one, nor can it exist under conditions where anyone is exploited. Anarchist understand that liberty is not just a party slogan of vacuous feelings; it is a philosophical maxim and a categorical imperative from upon which a better world can be advanced.

However, the demand for freedom is something that each and every individual needs to discover for themselves–you must seek to be free from the dark of the cave for yourself.

There must come a time in one’s life where the choice is made to reject toiling under the yoke of another man’s plow. One needs to look in the mirror and demand that their life is no longer going to be dictated by others for any reason other than choices of their own. To own one’s body and mind wholly; to own oneself entirely is the philosophical praxis of anarchism, and the path towards a better world.

Bitcoin and Crypto-Anarchy

I explained in a previous post that bitcoin and the internet are ideological apparatuses that are explicitly anti-statist, and anti-capitalist. Within both the internet and bitcoin are modes to liberate oneself from the despondence of the drudgery of capitalism. If one can take the time, effort, and energy to learn how to use these technologies, one can fully break their relationship to the wholly exploitive system of capitalism facilitated by the state. One must seek this out for themselves; they must crave escaping from the doldrum, gray, passionless existence of the society of safety.

This is the real revolution. This is it.

The slow and precipitous change where people discovered on their own accord that they have the power to walk away from this awful and abusive system of exploitation, debt slavery, and materialist mania. Through educating oneself and critically analyzing the concepts of value, freedom of exchange, liberty, cryptography, and capitalism; one will freely come to the conclusions they need to.

I assure you that the yoke I bare is light, and it would be a joy for you to share in the wealth it will provide for all. My work, my labor, and my money is my own, as yours would be yours. But that is the choice that I made, in refusal of what they offered me, and you are free to do the same.

It may not be easy, nor may it not come without a price;

but such is the cost to not live on one’s knees.

Those who cannot see the vision we have, nor welcome it–that is their own business. Our technology is better, the money is more sound, and in the long-run this will prove itself. In the mean while the small, hollow men of yesteryear will gaze upon their twilight with the fervent belief it is dawn. We will simply smile, and welcome them into their night, for it shall be our dawn.

So Iconoclasts, Forward!

Bitcoin is a Commodity Money

We have discussed several different ways in which bitcoin creates an intrinsic value for itself. We also have discussed the absolute value that cryptography offers, and how States conjure up fiat money through legal violence via valor impositus, rather than creating money with real bonitas intrinseca value of metals that are coined. Now that we have an understanding of the above concepts, we can discuss how bitcoin is a commodity money, made from rare unique bits of data that create the whole cohesive framework that makes up bitcoin.

Satoshium

For this post I am going to pretend that bitcoins are real coins that are minted from a new metal called Satoshium. This metal is ugly, has few uses, and cannot be physically touched, as it is invisible–overall it is pretty useless. However this new metal is very, very divisible, malleable and it can be transported over any digital communication channel. All Satoshium that will ever comes into existence is created through the coinbase reward that ‘mints’ bitcoin units, which happens during the process of ‘bitcoin mining’.

The reason for the fictionalizing this alloy Satoshium is several fold:

1) To elaborate on the very important distinction between the legal creation of currency out of nothing, and how that is different from the minting of coins which must gain their value from the material the coins are made from. This is the distinction of legal tender under the force of law (valor impositus) and the nominal value states creates out of thin air (the expansion of the money supply), verses natural (bonitas intrinseca) money, which derives its value from no enforcement, or organization of men; but from the intrinsic use-value the object possess in-itself. This is seen most frequently with precious metals, but also with objects of use value like cigarettes.

2) Bitcoins can be used for much more than just money. When bitcoin units are creatively destroyed (proof-of-burn, colored coins, etc) it is similar to the melting down coins to use the metal for something more useful. Contracts, identity, transparent taxation, autonomous agents, etc. can all be created from Satoshium, or the outright destruction of bitcoin units.

3) Bitcoin is really a several dynamic systems working together (payment, identity, proof-of-existence, ownership, PGP system, etc) each with their own purpose. This is in addition to the fact that ‘bitcoins’–what one could think of as the cassacious coin, and I refer to as ‘bitcoin units’–is separate from owning a bitcoin address with no money in it.

Today we shall cover only the first item, and discuss how the bits of data that create the individual bitcoins have their own unique values that are not found within in the laws of men, but the laws of math.

Satoshium Mining

bitcoin monetary base

Let us think of Satoshium similar to gold or silver, with a few notable exceptions. Satoshium is rarer than gold; with only 2,100 trillion units (0.00000001 BTC–the smallest bitcoin unit, ‘a satoshi’) of Satoshium that can ever exist. Today there are about 1,350 trillion units of Satoshium that have been discovered through the ‘Satoshium mining’ process. More and more people are mining everyday with better, and better mining equipment–which is making it harder for current miners to find the mining reward. We will comeback to how bitcoins are ‘minted’ from satoshium using the coinbase reward process later in this post.

Another unique trait about satoshium is that it has a very, very steady inflation rate. For every 10 minutes of satoshium mining that is done on the bitcoin network (combining all of the mining power that everyone is using to find satoshium–be it 9 computers, or 9 billion) there are 5 billion units of satoshium discovered. After the first 4 years of mining, this amount was reduced by 1/2, to 2.5 billion units for the same 10 minute block of total work by the network. This amount will continue to divide in half every 4 years until there are no more units to be divided, which will be somewhere around 2138. Today there is much less satoshium available for mining than there was even just a few years ago–this is similar to the real deflation that metals, like gold, silver, and platinum experience over time, as they also have a finite supply.

Satoshium mining has become very difficult because so much mining energy is competing for these limited number of bitcoin units; the little guy can no longer mine satoshium on their own–it is simply too hard. This would be like trying to mine for gold with only a pick and shovel, while the guy next to you has a gold mining operation–you are not going to win. To resolve this, people discovered that if they ‘pool’ their work, everyone can share in the reward of satoshium mining based upon how much work they are doing for the bitcoin network.

The Minting of Bit-coins

Satoshium is really the coinbase reward, which is the raw material that bitcoins are minted from (fun fact, the only way you can truly destroy a bitcoin is through not claiming the full coinbase reward). In the same manner that gold is just a hunk of metal before it is minted into a coin; so is satoshium is to bitcoin. When someone is rewarded for satoshium mining, those satoshium units are grouped into chunks of 100 million units and ‘minted’ single bitcoin. This is the coinbase reward process. This ‘mints’ satoshium units into bitcoins based upon what the block reward is at that time, and pays that reward of new coins out to a new bitcoin address. This is the ‘minting’ process and how the bitcoin network creates new bitcoins.

Though each bitcoin is created equally, the data that comprises of each individual bitcoin is unique and different. Each bitcoin addresses has unique identifying properties, that differentiate each individual bitcoin to their owners, but to no one else. This is similar to the serial number that is unique to each dollar bill. This means that the history of that particular bitcoin (or subdivisions of that bitcoin) can be tracked, and can only be spent when the 53-digit unique hexadecimal private key authorizes its movement. If properly secured, it is impossible to ‘hack’ a bitcoin address and take the money from that address; as only the private key will be able to move it. This is why there are several bitcoin addresses that have tens of millions of dollars in them, and not a single one has been hacked.

The mining process is also what ensures that there are no ‘double-spend’ attacks. In lay-terms, a double-spend attack is similar to check-kiting, where one spending the balance in checking account twice before the bank can check to make sure the funds are there. We won’t go into details about this right now, but just be aware that the mining process also acts as the gatekeepers to the transference of funds, and offers mathematical assurance that no coins can be stolen, or double-spent.

The Money Supply of Bitcoin

The reason for us fictionalizing the metal Satoshium is to make clear the distinction between fiat currency that are made from nothing, and commodity money which must derive their value from an object’s intrinsic worth–the value is found in the money itself, not vice-versa. A fiat currency is a scrips certificate of exchange issued from a central bank. The scrip itself (such as a $20 bill) is just worthless paper–there is no bonitas intrinseca about it. An infinite number of these scrips can be created, as their values are created and set by the dollar accounting system controlled by the Third Bank of the United States (also known as The Fed–a misleading term that I hate). Each one of these scrips can be redeemed for goods and services for the nominal value printed on it, because it is legal tender–one must accept fiat money in exchange for goods or services. If not, you will face the wrath of the law.

Historically, once could exchange the nominal value of these worthless papers for a precise measure of commodity money, such as gold or silver. However, fiat currency no longer has any sort of value backing them–since 1973 they have been free-floating. Governments are now free to print as much money as the like, which they are happily doing. This is because there has been a low level currency war going on since 2008, and it is starting to intensify. This means that while there still is a finite, natural supply of all physical objects; there now is twice as much money (in the case of the US) that can purchase those same objects.

This is how governments expand the money supply to create inflation. This bleeds the value of the hard-earned savings of common people, in order to further enrich the current ruling class. All people in all nations are now facing these political calamities that will make us all economic casualties.

Velocity of Money

Velocity of USD

When more units of a currency are injected into circulation, this causes for a total number of units within the system to increase. If the velocity of money were normal today, this would mean that the prices of everything would double over night–but it has not. This is because the velocity of money is at historic lows, at less than 1/2 of what it normally is. This is not a mistake, but a response to the QE of the FED.

Let us compare this to how bitcoins are ‘minted’. Bitcoins derive their value from the bonitas intrinseca, the real economic work that has been preformed in the Satoshium mining process, and the use-value that Satoshium has. Each and ever single bitcoin in existence must have came from a coinbase reward–there is no other way to create bitcoins. In order to create the coinbase reward, real computational work that takes real energy–no different from the energy used to dig gold from the ground–must be preformed.

With Satoshium mining, this ‘work’ is done in the form of solving very, very, very complex mathematic problems that secure the network from ever being corrupted. This gives each bitcoin unit equal, market-based value due to the fact that it cost real-time energy to produce bitcoin today. There is no way to modify the number of bitcoin units that can be created (unlike fiat money), as bitcoins can only come from the coinbase reward, and that is hardcoded into bitcoin. This ensures all bitcoiners that no one can ever just change the supply of bitcoin in the way the US can, or any other central bank can for their currency (I’m looking at you Japan and EU).

Bitcoin as a Currency

Money can be held here and proven that it exist

This is a public bitcoin address. If you have the private key for this address you can control the money there.

For us to understand bitcoin as a currency, let us think of bitcoin paper wallet for the moment. This is a piece of paper that has the private key of a bitcoin address printed on it. When one inputs the private key of that address into a bitcoin client, they can access, and transfer the bitcoin found in that addresses. This is a currency bill in the most fundamental sense of the word; as it is not that piece of paper that has any value, but what it represents. What has value is the private key, as that can access the bitcoin–not the paper itself. The paper has only exchange value, not use-value. This is how banking classically existed for centuries with banking bills representing some value of gold until the 1973, when the dollar dropped its peg to gold.

Although bitcoin is called a digital currency, that is a bit of a misnomer. Bitcoin is not a currency but a commodity-money. Bitcoins must come from the coinbase reward process, and that process can only be done through the electrical labor of mining. Thus, like physical coins, a bitcoin can only be created when the correct ‘bits’ are ‘minted’ into bitcoins. Bitcoins cannot just be created willy-nilly–real computational work must be done, and real energy expended to mint bitcoins.

This is why we have differentiated the creation of bitcoin units from that of Satoshium mining. If we are to mint coins, physical or otherwise, we must have something to mint, we cannot make coins from nothing! And this is the very place that commodity monies are different from fiat money–fiat money does not represent anything other than the law, whereas bitcoins ARE something–very special data sets verified by the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin is a Commodity Money

Bitcoin is a commodity money because the cryptography that bitcoin is built on top of. This has created the contract that limits the supply of bitcoin units and protects the bitcoin payment network. It is cryptography that creates the immutable and fungibility of bitcoin units and the imperium of the bitcoin network. This immutability creates a use-value for bitcoin, which also creates its exchange value. Furthermore, the ‘satoshium’ units of bitcoin can be broken down and used for all sort of other various contractual functions. By understanding bitcoin as a commodity money, we can see the true value that bitcoin has is outside of the legal constructs of the state.

The internet now has money that is loyal to no political body, or statist organizations; but to digital ideals alone. This is not just the economic base of a new epoch, but a political one as well. Bitcoin is the economic praxis that will allow for humans to create a new class consciousness. We can use the internet to help us create a new society, and we can use bitcoin as the economic mode to create that new world.

Bitcoin is not about money, and has nothing to do with money. Bitcoin is about political power, sovereignty, and the freedom of economic exchange. This is in direct and antagonistic relations to any and all states. Bitcoin seeks to destroy the old institutions of political power, and replace them with new digitized, decentralized ones.

Once people start to see and reject the corrupt and worthless scrips of the states, there is going to be a great unraveling unlike anything we have seen before. The crisis will collapse the value of all fiat money to becoming nearly worthless, and the value of cryptocurrencies will explode. There will be chaos, and there will be anarchy–but these are the conditions of creative destruction that we must have in order to rebuild something better in place of this corrupt and wicked system called state capitalism.

—

Next: Bitcoin and The History of Money

The Legal Politics of Money

Digital currencies are a new form of economic organization that exist entirely outside of the reach of the State. This has far-reaching ramification not just for money and capitalism, but for the ideological super-structure of the world today. Forcing concepts like exchange and economics into a theorem where tangibility is no longer needed causes for an unraveling of the state power structure itself. Institutionalized violence is no longer prerequisite for the monetary and legal system to function.

The ideological structure of capitalism has embedded itself into the state via the legal system. The State then acts as a thug on behalf of capitalist by enforcing laws through means of legalized repression and violence. It is from this proof-of-violence concept that states are able to force people to accept the legitimacy of contracts, the law, and the value of fiat money at the point of a knife. If governments could not the violence of their legal systems to enforce the acceptance of fiat money, or the repayment of debt; the entire international monetary system would collapse overnight.

Sovereignty of Value and Legal Ideology

All contemporary forms of fiat money rely on the physical and legal enforcement of laws, and the monopolization of the payment systems in order to create exchange value. All state money systems operate on maxims of restrictions based in law, enforced with mystical propaganda in one hand, and a clenched fist of enforcement in the other. The propaganda that is used to convince people of the need for the State to control money is far more important than the laws that create that money, or the guns and violence that are used to enforce their value. It is only through the repressive apparatuses of the State, and the cooperation of their capitalist allies that allows for this system of fiat money to continue to hold value.

Legal restrictions create the nominal values of the currency bills from all states. It is the same for the EU’s Euro, the Chinese Yuan, or Malaysian Ringgit–the currencies have nominal, redeemable value for goods and services in those Nation-States (or unions), and not outside them.

The value of these national currencies are created explicitly from the monopolization of the payment systems, and the monopolization of the issuance of legal tender. The monopoly of money itself via legal tender, and the monopolization of the payment system by the banks working with the state, is how national currencies forces themselves into a means of value, unlike commodity-monies like gold, sliver, or bitcoin.

The value of fiat money is unnatural and is only create through legal force. The power to create fiat money exist solely in the legal realm. However, what forces them to have value is the violence in which the laws based around those nominal values function. There is no such law to make commodities into money; they are simply valued. Mises surmises this in the appendix of “The Theory of Money and Credit,”

Ludwig von Mises

“Another acatallactic doctrine seeks to explain the value of money by the command of the state. According to this theory the value of money rests on the authority of the highest civil power, not on the estimation of commerce. The law commands, the subject obeys. This doctrine can in no way be fitted into a theory of exchange; for apparently it would have a meaning only if the state fixed the actual level of the money prices of all economic goods and services as by means of general price regulation. Since this cannot be asserted to be the case, the state theory of money is obliged to limit itself to the thesis that the state command establishes only the Geltung or validity of the money in nominal units, but not the validity of these nominal units in commerce. But this limitation amounts to abandonment of the attempt to explain the problem of money. By stressing the contrast between valor impositus and bonitas intrinseca, the canonists did indeed make it possible for scholastic sophistry to reconcile the Roman-canonist legal system with the facts of economic life. But at the same time they revealed the intrinsic futility of the doctrine of valor impositus; they demonstrated the impossibility of explaining the processes of the market with its assistance.”

This difference between valor impositus and bonitas intrinseca: the nominal value of units imposed by the state–such as the dollar or shekel–and that which holds real intrinsic value; such as the metals, minerals, or other storage of value.

The best example of how these two values act against one another would be a gold coin that has a lower face value than what the coin is worth on the open market–it is not the stamping of the metal that creates value, but the amount of gold that it is comprised of.

Mises spoke further of the historical difference between the nominal value of coins, and their weight as metal:

“Nevertheless, in defiance of all official regulations and prohibitions and fixing of prices and threats of punishment, commercial practice has always insisted that what has to be considered in valuing coins is not their face value but their value as metal. The value of a coin has always been determined, not by the image and superscription it bears nor by the proclamation of the mint and market authorities, but by its metal content. Not every kind of money has been accepted at sight, but only those kinds with a good reputation for weight and fineness. In loan contracts, repayment in specific kinds of money has been stipulated for, and in the case of a change in the coinage, fulfillment in terms of metal required. In spite of all fiscal influences, the opinion gradually gained general acceptance, even among the jurists, that it was the metal value—the bonitas intrinseca as they called it—that was to be considered when repaying money debts.” Part 1, Chapter 3

Today because of the structure of late capitalism, where the state monopolizes the currency, and the banks monopolize the exchange of currency, there is no way to demand repayment in anything other than more fiat. It is from the insidious brilliance of forcing all exchanges into legal structures with no alternative payment forms, that fiat money both creates its own value, and also becomes a legal power.

We can see that money today is not valued because of its bonitas intrinseca, but only its valor impositus. This means that the only way that the state can make its money hold value is through explicit legal means, which are reliant on repressive legal enforcement, and nothing else.

Physical World Against Digital Laws

There is a glaring issue with this mode of money creation when we start to consider for a moment that the world that we live no longer is orchestrated by legal enforcement of the state, but digital communications.

There is no physical footing in this world, no place for the apparatus to establish itself.The repressive violence states use to enforce their laws simply cannot exist here.

If we return to Foucault in Truth and Power he provides us with more hints about the functions of the state and why ‘cutting off the king’s head’ has been impossible until recently:

Moderator: The King’s head still hasn’t been cut off, yet already people are trying to replace it by discipline, that vast system instituted’-in the seventeenth century comprising the functions of surveillance, normalization and control and, a little later, those of punishment, correction, education and so on. One wonders where this system comes from, why it emerges and what its use is. And today there is rather a tendency to attribute a subject to it, a great, molar, totalitarian subject, namely the modern State, constituted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and bringing with it (according to the classical theories) the professional army, the police and the administrative bureaucracy.

Foucault: To pose the problem in terms of the State means to continue posing it in terms of sovereign and sovereignty, that is to say in terms of law. If one describes all these phenomena of power as dependent on the State apparatus, this means grasping them as essentially repressive: the Army as a power of death, police and justice as punitive instances, etc. I don’t want to say that the State isn’t important; what I want to say is that relations of power, and hence the analysis that must be made of them, necessarily extend beyond the limits of the State. In two senses: first of all because the State, for all the omnipotence of its apparatuses, is far from being able to occupy the whole field of actual power relations, and further because the State can only operate on the basis of other, already existing power relations. The State is superstructural in relation to a whole series of power networks, that invest the body, sexuality, the family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so forth. True, these networks stand in a conditioning-conditioned relationship to a kind of ‘meta-power’ which is structured essentially round a certain number of great prohibition functions; but this meta-power with its prohibitions can only take hold and secure its footing where it is rooted in a whole series of multiple and indefinite power relations that supply the necessary basis for the great negative forms of power. That, is just what I was trying to make apparent in my book [“The Order of Things” which was originally titled “Words and Things.”].

To cut off the king’s head we must venture into a realm where a footing for his power cannot be found. A realm where the physical violence, repression, and thus the capacity to physical enforce nationalistic laws cannot exist. The meta-power of the state and their various laws end where they do–in physical territory, in a physical world. There is no need to cut the heads off of false prophets whom we are immune to.

Digital sovereignty departs from the theology of law, and builds a new economic system that operates from a critical bias of math, instead of physical enforcement. These systems are based upon non-physical knowledge alone (knowledge of the private key), which means these systems are built solely around their mathematical soundness. The code upon which these currencies are written is their own sovereign valor impositus. The computer code itself is the legal-mathematical structure that enforces the rules of bitcoin, and other digital currencies–no State or third-party is needed.

Digital Sovereign and The Banishment of Physical Force

Digital currencies are the kernel of power that a new economic and legal superstructure will be built from. Power is no longer something that comes from the sword, but from the pen.

Violence cannot be an explicit tool of enforcement or appropriation in a nearly-anonymous, digital system like bitcoin or other digital currencies. Economic independence outside of the control of the state or the banks is now a real possibility. This severely underminds the power of the State, the banks, and state-capitalism in total. Digital currencies allow for a new frontier of economic freedom and independence, that is not achievable with the current monetary and legal systems. With bitcoin, people are free to choose who they conduct transactions with, without the permission of the state, banks, or the violence they use to enforce their laws.

When we start to critically assess the current money systems of the world, along with the ideological and mythical structures of sovereignty, law, and the state; we find that they quickly break down under scrutiny. We come to understand that the dominion of the ideologies over our lives is not based upon some holy, progressive knowledge that protects us and gives us salvation; rather, it is barbarism wrapped in blanket, upon blanket of lies, obfuscations, and deceptions.

We see that it is not magnanimity or justice that governs the actors of the State; but selfishness, greed, corruption, and cowardice. We come to see the world as Angelus Novus did, and the horrors of what is stacked in front of us and growing with each passing day. To make whole that which has been smashed is possible, but we must wake the dead in our quest for redemption. The gate is strait, and it is our duty to show others the liberation that can come with each passing second.

In the declaration of independence of cyberspace we declared our virtual selves immune to state sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to the subjugation of our bodies. In the mean while we have spread to every corner of the global to ensure that our thoughts cannot be arrested, and so that the crimes of the state and capitalism will be seen by all, for all of history to come.

We now have the means to reappropriate our sovereignty, our economic independence, and ultimately our political organizations and the State itself. This can and will be done to end the era of state-capitalism, and usher in a new era of global digital organization. We are creating a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace, and using digital currencies to economically unite us is the first step towards this new world.

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Next: Bitcoin as a Commodity Money

The Absolute Value of Crypto

Secrets have a value. How much, it is hard to say, perhaps invaluable would be a more apt description. Invaluable because a secret can mean the difference between life and death; that which can lead to victory or defeat in war. Secrets have an absolute economic value as well because it can truly mean the difference between life and death. Cryptography understands that the security of communication is essentially to life and death, and there is real value to both privacy and secrecy.

Bitcoin and other digital currencies are built on top of strong cryptography for this reason. This cryptography is strong enough to be considered unbreakable at this point in time, and most likely for the next several decades. Due to the mathematically assured, provable secrecy that bitcoin is built on top of, bitcoin creates additional value outside of the energy spent mining bitcoins by creating a cryptographically strong system of digital exchange. The ability to exchange through strong cryptography, and the secrecy it affords is part of what creates the economic value of bitcoin.

This value comes from the commodity that bitcoin is made from. Just as gold’s secondary values comes from its fungibility; the proof-of-secrecy function of bitcoin gives each unit their fungibility, which in turn creates secondary value. The provable mathematical security of bitcoin means the system is totally secure from legalized theft. No state, banker, or military general can steal your securely stored bitcoin; no matter how powerful they may be, or how many guns they have pointed at you.

A Very Short History of Crypto and War

Cesar’s Shift Cipher

Even before Julius Cesar first used his simple shift cipher for encoding his messages; ciphers, and stenography were wide used to conceal information throughout ancient history. These tactics of hiding information and keeping that information secret, or Crypto, developed as a tactic for war, and has had a large role within power struggles throughout the centuries.

As Napolian Bonaparte said, “The secret to war lies in communication.”

Over several millenia the developments of stenography and shift ciphers got better and better, as they were used for diplomatic and military purposes. A major advancement in the field occurred when poly-alphabetic ciphers, such as Vigenère cipher in 1553. Several centuries later the developments of cryptography were culminated in Kerchoff’s “La Cryptographie Militaire” in 1883, which are now surmised in Kerchoff’s principals. This was a scientific manifesto on the military application of cryptography, and how to understand the security of cryptosystems and breaking them. Of these principals that Kerchoff established was the need to make the system based upon mathematical principals, and the supremacy of keeping the secret key secret, as if you do not, the system will be know by your adversary.

Just as in war you have an enemy, in crypto there is an adversary–an opponent that is seeking to compromise your system, and break it of its secrecy. If your secrecy is compromised, and if the secrecy of this communication is based upon life and death, you will die. This value of secrecy is absolute, and nation-state’s wars against one another accelerated the improvement of cryptography at a startling rate. This arms race in crypto ran parallel to the arms race for nuclear weapons in the 20th century, and was just as pivotal to its outcome.

The Mechanization of Cryptography for Advanced Warfare

Enigma Machine

The mechanization of ciphers with the rotor machines were developed in the early 20th century. It was the first true attempt to apply a more robust computational principals to ciphering with machines. The mechanization of ciphering reached its apex during WWII with the German enigma machine. In order for the Allies to break the encryption of the enigma, they had Alan Turing develop The Bombe. This was one of the first computers ever created in order to crack the code of the German enigma machines. These ciphers had become so complex, they now needed computers to help with the complex mathematical calculations to crack their code.

Like the wars that the empires throughout the ages have fought; at first their tools were rudimentary and crude, but developed with sophistication, technology, and scientific precision over the ages to what they are today. States now command weapons of mass destruction that can wipe out millions of people in a moment, and they use this as a token of power within the realpolitik of statecraft against other states.

This is called brinkmanship–the art of pushing dangerous scenarios for favorable outcomes on ones own terms. It is within this same vein of power that the tools of cryptography were developed as a means of war. We must ask ourselves: why has this technology been so zealously guarded, with so much human energy expended upon it?

Privacy and Secrets as Power

It is because within the realm of secrecy and privacy that people can organize independently, and outsmart stronger, more powerful enemies. Encryption is a weapon for the weak against the powerful, and a way for individuals to be given a mathematical assurance against the invasions of privacy, both for personal documents, and communications. It is a mode of mathematically assured protection. One needs not to trust people with money or secrets any longer. Now they only need to trust the code upon which their secrets are hidden. That code is only mathematical, and is binary in nature.

From being built on top of this mathematical encryption technology that cryptocurrencies create a true use-value. Proof-of-secrecy creates both fungible, and security. These features, paired with the limited number of bitcoins, and computational and electrical energy that goes into creating bitcoin units, creates the total concept that gives bitcoin, and other digital currencies, their value. Bitcoin and other digital currencies give rise to a new mode of sovereign economic power. It is this economic force that over the coming decades will deconstruct, and depose of the old concepts of money, value, banking, exchange, protection, and finally the state itself.

The Digital Sovereign

Digital currencies are the economic power that will become the bases for a new way of organizing. This new form of power will create new social, economic, and political organizations which together will create a new superstructure of power I call the digital sovereign. Echoed in the sentiments of the declaration of independence of cyberspace, this is the process of creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. The digital sovereign is the space in which the civilization of the Mind will make itself victorious over the world of flesh and steel.

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Next: Bitcoin and The Internet as Ideological Apparatuses

Bitcoin and The Internet as Ideological Apparatuses

Bitcoin is not about money–it’s about power. Bitcoin is a political force, technological ideal, and mode of economic independence for the internet itself. Using Louis Althusser’s concepts of ideology and ideological state apparatuses from, “On the Reproduction of Capitalism” we can analyze bitcoin and the internet as as anti-state ideological apparatus.

Here is an excellent introduction to Althusser’s concepts and an explanation of what exactly is ideology, ideological apparatuses(IA), and repressive state apparatuses (RSA) are. In his work, Althusser offers a powerful way of understanding the organizations of capitalism. He shows how various ideological apparatuses operate in conjunction with repressive state apparatuses to create, organize, reinforce, and reproduce the conditions of society today to serve the current capitalist paradigm through the state.

For our purposes we can apply this same logic to understand where the internet fits into the capitalist society. From this we will see how paired with the power of bitcoin, and other digital currencies may develop.

The Internet as an Anti-State Ideological Apparatus

The Internet is a new territory, and today is controlled by States for the use of capitalism; but they are quickly loosing control. This occurred by design as the internet grew from the small U.S. government project it once was; and developed into the global world wide web it is today. Today they internet rivals G7 states in terms of its population, GDP, and most importantly its ideological norms.

Though there are many internet cultural groups today, the original ‘internet culture’ would be the cypherpunks. From the cypherpunks came publications like, “Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete” wrote in 1985. Even before the world wide web existed, the anti-state principals of the digital movement were already entrenching themselves.

Those involved in the cypherpunk movement would later go on to write the declaration of independence of cyberspace, and would help advance the internet at every new crossroads it came to. This early vanguard of the internet operated on tenacious, uncompromising principals of freedom of information, communication, and the right to privacy. These ideas imbued themselves into the internet and became an ideological backbone that allows for the open web to function.

The Internet is antithetical to the State.In this realm people can create new identities that could not exist within the physical realm.We given the right to developed our voices and identities free from the constraints of the panoptic police state. Our physical bodies no longer constrain our ideals; we have moved beyond being mere sinew and flesh and into the Noosphere. Here exist a mode of communication where we are stripped of our human bodies and become only the political body of the words and information that we convey here. Our names, national identities, religions, educations, and every other form of inscription that we are subjugated within contemporary society are secondary within the internet.

The identities that we are allowed to created for ourselves on the internet, unmolested by the forceful ideology of the various state apparatuses and under the guise of anonymity; we become more than mere objects to be subjugated to the desires of a capitalist society. We are allowed an entire universe where we can choose who to become, and to seek out the information we desire to know. Everything that defines us as subjects, and the territory of physical space that we occupy becomes secondary. Our physical bodies cannot exist within this medium; nor is it definitive of who we are in this space–we are truly free here. These are the murmurs of the new class consciousness that is forming inside of the internet itself, and it cannot be stopped.

Althusser believed that the education was the most powerful ideological apparatus that there was. Education as an institution is a tool exclusively owned by the ruling classes explicitly to control the dialog of what is knowledge and what is education. The so-called fields of factual hard sciences focus their narrow pursuits in the name of capitalism, to the same degree that fields like history, economics, and political science seek to justify the capitalist world we live in. What is considered ‘education’ becomes part of a great dialog that is no longer about facts, critical think skills, and self-empowerment; but learning obedience as truth.

This has profound and far-reaching ramifications when we consider that scientific knowledge is the bases of power in a advance technological capitalist society such as ours. With unrestricted, unfettered access to information, along with the assurance of what one is search for and coming to understand is private; one is freed from the ideological chains of the system that controls every aspect of lives. Here it is possible to develop one’s own truth without the taint of capitalism– we can form truths of the world from our own standpoint without fear from of the panoptic police state watching us.

Education as Ideological Entrenchment of Capitalism

Do as I say, because as I say is correct

The internet stands in direct contrast to the educational establishment and its ideology. The education establishment is reliant on authoritarian knowledge official, state-sanctions communication channels (teachers, libraries, degree programs, etc.). Whereas the internet is antithetical to that. There are no minders or masters to deem what is appropriate ‘knowledge’–only facts that present themselves for what they are.

This implies that ‘education’–or the acquisition of knowledge via the internet–is something that must be done autodidactically. One must disseminate information for oneself, and to compare and contrast sources to discover the difference between what is ideology, and what is fact. This can only be done alone, and using one’s own faculties.

The Internet is an endless well of information for those who seek it. There are no minders or masters to approve of fact which establish themselves by the truth of their being, rather than the sanction from official sources. This destroys the ideological monopoly that education institutes have on the source for knowledge, which can call the paradigm of classic education institutes, and their relationship with capitalism. The impact of this is not unlike the Protestant Reformation challenging what was the authoritative source for knowledge.

Through the domination and monopolization of ‘what is knowledge’ vis-a-vis educational institutions, there is a wicked contortion of knowledge. Knowledge is no longer fact, but idology. This is reinforced repeatedly incessantly to such an extent that one becomes confused between what they know to be true for themselves, and what one has simply been told so much, that one believe that to be true.

Money as an Ideological Apparatus

So how does this all relate to bitcoin and money? Money as a concept is deeply, deeply embedded into us as a ideology and religion. Due to the constant bombardment of misinformation about how money works, from all ideological state apparatuses (media, school, work, etc.); money becomes a very complex and convoluted topic. Due to all of these various influences, money ends up taking on its own mystical weight, and becomes a powerful ideological component of the current economy paradigm.

Through the education system we are taught that governments are good, and the world works the way it does for good reason. We learn from this system that economist can explain why the economy functions as it does, and why we all must work hard to take home our day’s pay. Included in this ideology is the notion that our noble business leaders, who lift the world upon their shoulders, are entitled to a king’s share of the wealth for directing his firm to make a profit; even if this is at the expense of many.

This ideology serves to alienate and divorce economics from its original purpose as part of philosophy. Today almost all economist are exclusively modern monetary theorist who are heavily relent upon complex mathematical modules to explain economics. Any economist who does not accept the concept of seigniorage as fact, are simply disposed of as not being ‘real’ economist. From the get-go, we are taught to believe in the righteousness the economic system and to not question it on a fundamental level.

This is how government are able to control the money supply and keep huge portions of the globe under the despotism of poverty without anyone blinking. We have been taught to believe that capitalism in its current form, backed by the state, is the only way to organize the economically and politically. We have been told that money functions perfectly being controlled by bankers and the state, despite all factual evidence against it.

Bitcoin as an Anti-State Liberative Apparatus

Due to the influence of the internet, and the way that people use it to discover information for themselves; there is an autonomous space for an non-state money to exist. Bitcoin is the antithesis of both repressive state apparatuses and ideological apparatuses.

The main purpose of bitcoin is to act as the central bank of the internet. Like the Internet, bitcoin is distributed, decentralized, and ran by a protocol which allows for communication anywhere in the world. Its first and primary economic loyalty is to the internet itself–no internet, no bitcoin. Its secondary function is one that represents the ideology of the internet itself.

Digital currencies are revolutionary because they were built with revolutionary ideology at their core. Bitcoin is money built for the internet, and the internet alone. There were plenty of other digital monies that came before bitcoin, they died because they did not have the capacity to stand against the state. Bitcoin was built on top of strong crypto because Satoshi knew that if any money for the internet were to truly gain traction, it would become the implicit enemy of any and all states.

What I find the most fascinating about this ideological function of bitcoin, is that it uses the logical exploit of capitalism, and how capitalism holds the sanctity of itself (capital) above all else (or as Marx put it, the valorization of value) to turn capitalism against the state. Through removing money from the hands of the repressive state apparatus of banking, bitcoin makes money more effective than it has ever been.

Bitcoin can do this not because of the powerful ideological argument it offers, but because of its economic efficiency over other moneys. Bitcoin and other digital currenices have the capacity to take on all of the economic roles that the states, and can do it for a fraction of the cost.

As we catapult into this brave new world, we will find that other ideological apparatuses will slowly change their perspective about bitcoin. This will not be because there will be some radical awakening to understand money; but rather the reproductive purposes of capitalism will fulfill the role that Althusser predicted it would. The capitalist paradigm will shift from that of being in alliance with the state, to being in conflict with the state. And this will be because the state itself will become inefficient to the service of capitalism via the internet, and thus can be disposed of like everything else that does not serve capitalism.

As bitcoin gains more economic power, it will also gain political, and ideological power. It will utilize this base of power to pull back the veil of corruption and expose the powers that be for the banality that they are. Another world is being build where the State is not allowed, nor any of the ideological apparatuses that serve it.

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Next: The Magic of Money, The Science of Bitcoin

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