The 2020’s arguably have started off with many worrying trends for the health of both the collective and the individual, and frankly both sides will simply need to fight together to protect the only chance that may ever present itself to take the power back from the few and give it to the many; be it many empowered individuals, or the many that make up a strong and healthy collective.
Bitcoin is innately an apolitical technology, but the implications on the political and social structures of the planet are massive and continually ever-presenting. The trick in this fight is not to blindly accept any and all proposals by everyone as if everyone is a good actor, but rather to encourage everyone to become a strong economic node to uphold the game theory incentives of the ideal money that is Bitcoin, regardless of their personal intentions of use. We should all be so lucky to see the authoritarian leaders of the planet adopt Bitcoin for their citizens, as long as it is done in a way that brings strength to the network and not bad faith actors attempting to chip away at the few potential attack vectors still present in the system.
We need tangible policy that encourages education, self-custody, and privacy-focused scaling solutions that enable self-sovereignty and not a dystopic co-opting of an open ledger technology that allows further surveillance state actualization against the rights of their people. These concepts will be addressed at length in a coming second part to this piece, but the proper utilization of Satoshi’s technological achievement alongside a social movement of kindness and understanding will give us not only the largest number of economic nodes, but stronger and self-perpetuating actors capable of prudently expanding the number of network participants that truly understand the necessity of upholding the Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin is only as strong as its users, and unfortunately the fiery passion of many in our midst gets misconstrued and manipulated by ignorant or bad faith actors to dissuade newcomers from joining the network with the best incentive structures towards equity and sound money available. This is not to say we should censor our voices or pocket our passion, but rather to focus it on lassoing and protecting newcomers from blindly becoming exit liquidity for the foundations responsible for these pre-mined networks that only offer solutions to artificially recreated problems, as well as for centralized, permissioned networks with a total addressable market far below the eventual scope of the Bitcoin network.
At the end of the day, the more people properly orange-pilled, the stronger and more robust the network will be; just having a handful of new participants that simply leave their coins on hypothecating, centralized exchanges with zero understanding of the ins and outs of the network does little to further the fight against the forces that have controlled our money and thus our human capital for centuries. In fact, in many cases, it actually hurts the cause of hyperbitcoinization, both by creating opportunities for newcomers to get wrecked by market volatility, as well as creating seizable capital for bad faith actors operating exchanges, yield generators, or margin brokers.
There are countless technical and social reasons why many of these altcoin platforms are simply not competing in the same field as Bitcoin, and thus inquiries should be met with sound logic and appropriate reason and tone. Some people are just jerks and should not be platformed or engaged in good faith if so, but for many it is simply a case of ignorance or naivety. Altcoiners are in all likelihood much better candidates for creating strong Bitcoin network economic nodes because they understand many of the concepts behind why Bitcoin matters, they have often simply misplaced them due to coercion from bad faith marketing departments and gross misrepresentations of these platforms by those incentivized to do such.
In much the same way a liberal should not try and box out an anarchist capitalist from participating in the network, neither should a Bitcoiner try and discourage an altcoiner from getting their head on straight and add their “close but no cigar” economic activity to the most secure network. Hardly anyone truly understands the top-to-bottom broad implications that a decentralized, scarce bearer asset like bitcoin brings to the world, and every darn one of us started from a place of zero understanding of this technological achievement when we started our journey. Too many of the loud voices in the Bitcoin space these days do more preaching than teaching, and thus many of the new nodes on the network, while good faith zealots, lack a true depth to properly explain some of the many properties that set Bitcoin apart, and instead fall back on isms and catch phrases rather than a humble approach to learning about the nuances of the network. We can all do a better job of both focusing our tone and message, and we should for the sake of arming our new friends with better arguments to take to their battlefields across the world. There is a false understanding that Bitcoin has already won, and while there are many reasons to believe in the long-lasting potential of this network, there are many things we all take for granted that could use a little humility and humble grokking to ensure the hopeful success of Satoshi’s protocol. Perhaps none more important is our ability to discuss with and encourage newcomers, be they ideological antonyms or those hypnotized by altcoin promises, in order to maximize our chance at taking the power back from those centralizing forces. There are many moments when we need to stay toxic and vigilant, but mass adoption will arguably take many approaches. Many of us are simply looking for a home after years of systemic abuse. Welcome them to Bitcoin; the water’s warm.
This is a guest post by Mark Goodwin. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
