FinnStin on Nostr: Bitcoin is NOT bitpower. Bitcoin is a distributed ledger whose canonical history is ...

Bitcoin is NOT bitpower. Bitcoin is a distributed ledger whose canonical history is secured by an open bitpower competition. Saying that bitcoin is digital violence because it requires someone to expend a huge amount of watts to find a new block is like saying that gold is analog power projection because it requires people to expend watts to physically lug it around.

You do have to expend watts to move gold and bitcoin. With bitcoin, that cost gets outsourced to someone who was always going to do it anyway in exchange for a monetary fee. A bitcoin pay wall imposes an economic cost, because I only need bitcoin to pass the pay wall, and I acquire bitcoin via mutual exchange, not raw expenditure of watts. I'll never have to do the mining myself, and the people who do were going to do it anyway.

Bitcoin is NOT violence. It's internet money that you can use to purchase violence. In the sense that armies need to be paid and weapons need to be bought, military power is underpinned by economic power, and bitcoin will dramatically change the monetary landscape. Yes, even militaries will need bitcoin to do their thing. No, that doesn't make it a weapon any more than it makes food a weapon.

I'm a 2A guy. I love guns. If bitcoin actually was violence, that would be a plus to me, not a drawback. It just doesn't make any sense.