Last night, Mass Adoption was lucky enough to have Jason Lowery come and give a speech to the patriots in New England who are determined to ensure that the world does not fall into debt slavery. Before our co-creator, Hoff, handed the microphone over to Lowery, Greg Foss grabbed it to remind the crowd that what we have here in Boston is special. He said that “New York is Fiat and Boston is Bitcoin”. While New York continues to harm itself with foolish Bitcoin policy, Boston is building circular Bitcoin economies and helping the United States remain a beacon of freedom, prosperity, and hope. Of course, those at the top in New York are afraid that this new system will mean that NYC is no longer the financial capital of the world. Unfortunately for New York, the cat is out of the bag. Fighting this new technology will do more damage than it will do good. Luckily, New Yorkers and Bostonians have been known to compete fiercely, and when those in the Tri-State area start see how much those in New England are thriving, I believe they will change their tune. It is fitting that Boston is leading the charge on this peaceful revolution, considering the Boston Tea Party is where the Colonies made it clear to Britain that taxation without representation is not something the people are willing to accept. Fast forward ~250 years and it seems those who are running the abstract power hierarchies that make up the United States Government have forgotten the principles that brought our nation into existence.
Abstract power hierarchies are what make humans the most powerful species on the planet. They are also the thing that has caused horrible atrocities to take place throughout history. If you can get people to buy into your made-up hierarchy, then you can exploit their belief system to get them to do almost anything. Think about the patriots who lost their lives fighting for the chance to create a country that didn't actually exist outside the minds of those individuals who believed in it. When you look down from space you don't see the United States carved into 50 separate states. These states only exist because enough people started to believe in the abstract idea of the United States. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy and now we have maps on our phones showing us where these lines are drawn. The idea of a nation-state is so powerful that you can convince the majority people within said nation-state that they need your permission to do something. However, it is important note that we are just animals and people don't actually need permission to do anything. Most rational humans just weigh the cost and benefit of doing something, and often decide that doing things outside of the law is not worth it.
The problem with nation-states is that they are run by people. It would be great if we could trust people in high-up positions not to exploit their abstract powers, but thanks to human nature, someone always gets compromised. When a nation-state stops respecting the ideas that made it great, it runs the risk of people organizing to revolt. There has never been a time when animals haven't used physical power to create their abstract hierarchy. We can try to convince ourselves that there is another way, but over a long enough time horizon, this ultimately leads back to war. Sometimes these wars end up being between various nation-states, and sometimes they are revolutionary civil wars.
It is clear that war is inherently bad. Losing lives on the battlefield is always a tragedy. Yet, there is merit to the idea of physical power projection. The United States would not have become the country it is today if we had not used force to kick out the British. When all other options have been exhausted, sometimes war is necessary. It is a nation's fiduciary responsibility to know when their citizens are being exploited through their belief system and to take action in order to protect them. For a long time this was all done in an analog fashion. Then we invented computers and created digital abstract power, giving "system administrators" and "software engineers" tools that can influence and exploit human behavior. Software began as a way to have full top-down control over slavish, obedient machines and this quickly grew into a tool for manipulating humanity. Since the inception of computers, people have been trying to use logic to keep our bits of information (data) secure. Unfortunately, no amount of logic can prevent the systemic exploitation of a logical system. That was until the advent of new technologies like Bitcoin. A network full of decentralized systems that can give individuals more control over their own data and reduce the potential for exploitation. Check out this graphic from Lowery that I recreated.
Our current internet has no constraint on how big it can get. Before Bitcoin there was no way to use physical power to protect your bits of information. Today we have a client-server internet model where we need to be granted access to a remote server in order to access our social media, bank account, Netflix, etc. Bitcoin is a permissionless system that does not rely on the approval or permission of any central authority and is a projection of physical power, rather than abstraction. It allows for a decentralized system that gives individuals more control over their digital information, making it more difficult for hackers to exploit them.
According to Cybersecurity Ventures, cybercrime is predicted to inflict damages totaling USD 6 trillion globally in 2021 which would be the world's third-largest economy after the U.S. and China. This means there is a massive benefit to attacking people’s bits of information. How the hackers choose who to hack typically involves looking at the benefit of attack divided by the cost of the attack. It’s unlikely you can change the numerator in that equation unless you just want to get rid of your wealth. What you can do to combat this exploitation is increase the denominator. In the old internet we had to leverage, and often get permission, from third parties to increase the cost of attack. Think signing up for 2FA, using a credit card so you can cancel transactions you didn’t make, or paying 8 bucks to Twitter so you can get a blue check mark by your name. Now with Bitcoin humanity is able to use bits of information as a way to prove the projection of physical power was used to secure these bits. The key difference between power and abstraction is that power is tangible and can be imposed, while abstraction is intangible and relies on belief systems. For example, if I see a blue check on someone’s Twitter I am more likely to believe they are who they claim to be. This is because I am relying on the belief that Twitter’s servers are not feeding me a false blue check. With Bitcoin I can run my own node and verify for myself, on my own server, that these coins are part of the Bitcoin network and at some point in time these bitcoins were extracted from a block subsidy by a miner who was expanding energy to get said bitcoins. Since Satoshi called it Bitcoin the majority of humanity looks at this new technology as money, but Bitcoin is so much more than just money. Lowrey likes to call it Bitpower because bits of information can represent any kind of data, not just money.
The rise of computers and the internet has also led to the rise of data mining and the manipulation of information for commercial gain. Companies collect and analyze data on individuals in order to figure out how to influence their behavior. This can be seen in targeted advertising and personalized offers, such as a discount for a smoothie shop on your daily commute. I wouldn’t necessarily call $2 dollars off your smoothie an “attack” but for lack of a better word bear with me. Bitcoin represents a new way of projecting power and protecting our digital information. By increasing the cost of someone wanting to exploit your personal bits of information, individuals can now take control of their own data and protect it behind a paywall that requires satoshis (smallest unit of bitcoin) to unlock. Bitcoin changes the bottom of the technology stack, rather than the top. Bitcoin is an internet revolution that allows individuals to take back control from those who abuse their power. It’s becoming more apparent everyday that the majority of the world is being exploited by our current technology stack; Bitcoin fixes this. Projecting physical power in cyberspace can be both a force for good and a force for evil. As the world continues to evolve, we can't expect the next war to look like the last war. Bitcoin offers humanity a way to wage soft war based on creating more robust grids and faster hardware through innovation instead of a hot war where everyone dies from nuclear fallout.
The path ahead is not going to be easy. Thomas Paine wrote in his legendary pamphlet Common Sense,
Until an independence is declared, the Continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity.
Breaking free from the current system controlled by a select few individuals is not going to be easy. Those with incredible amounts of abstract power to control our money and the flows of information we see are not going to give up that power willingly. If the Twitter files have shown us anything it is that the state is already colluding with big tech to push their agenda. You can rest assured they will continue taking steps to exploit and control the actions of others for as long as they can. If you are reading this substack I probably don’t have to explain that this is not right. Join the peaceful revolution with Bitcoin. Stop putting it off because the longer you do the more it’s going to continually haunt your thoughts. Self-sovereignty ain’t easy, but it is a lot better than asking a kleptocrat for permission to use your money, data, and (digital) voice.
Thanks for reading! Hope to see you at the next Mass Adoption meetup.
This piece was written by Conor Chepenik. If you are a fellow Bitcoiner who wishes to share their insights from a Mass Adoption meetup get in touch with us on Twitter @BTC_Mass. We are happy to post quality submissions and share as many Bitcoiner perspectives as possible 🫡 The Peaceful Revolution Starts With You!
Excellent article Conor!! Very helpful. Thank you!
Way to work, Conor! Great distillation of the lecture.