Regulating Crypto: How we move forward as an industry from here
When it comes to crypto, no one is thinking <i>big</i> enough, with the exception of maybe Satoshi Nakamoto.  Bitcoin is much bigger than people realize.  I have a better idea on “how we move forward as an industry.”<p>Money is just a piece of the social contract generalizing specific work into tokens of value.  It allows a specialized worker to transact with another specialized worker such that we all have our needs met.  It is a mechanism of decentralized organization enabling deep specialization absent needed to trust of even know someone else.  You can see the production of someone, and transfer value to them without them needing to trust them personally.<p>You could say finance is the backbone of modern technological society.  It is implicitly pseudo-democratic, in that where it flows, resource allocation power is afforded, which results in production of resources based upon the usage of whoever wields resource allocation.<p>If you analyze systems from this lens, look at the production of money itself.  What work is being distilled into generalized value with money systems?  What is the minting processes relationship with governance and democratic institutions?<p>There is a theme here.  Money is directly coupled with <i>governance</i>.  That coupling comes in the form of resource allocation, and it comes with an assumption of government control — where government is entrusted with the interests of public good.  Hence, taxation comes into play, and a treasury, and tax collectors, and penalties, and policing, and military — the full faith and confidence of the people.<p>With something so tightly coupled to democracy, would a free and democratic people not want their money system to also be free, open, and democratic?  Yet before the invention of Bitcoin, it has been anything but that — and if you can’t see that, you have some reading to do.<p>Long story short:  bitcoin is part of a bigger picture.  It is the backbone of government.  Of a new form of government.  Of a government bound in the laws of physics, codified as subservient to the governed.  Of a government true to the cause of freedom.  Of a government mathematically and verifiably auditable, in which no man can corrupt the fundamental rules of governing, in which every human has a voice, in which the evils of the world have no recourse nor cracks to hide in.<p>Imagine that for a moment.  What that means for all of us.  Imagine taxation as an automated component of crypto, for instance.  No more taxation by force, no more complex paperwork, no more statistical enforcement, all of that process and ruling by fear — ALL of it — gone.<p>There are countless additional ripples here, but I will leave you with some food for thought on the possibility and dire necessity of this:<p>- houses are no longer affordable to most people who do not own one.  This means that <i>family</i> and <i>community</i> is no longer possible for most people.  Many of you here enjoy this.  What would you so if you lost your house and had to care for your family in a cramped, crime-laden apartment?<p>- food is increasingly not affordable.  What happens when people can no longer eat?  How stable is that?<p>- medical care is not affordable for anyone, without  perpetual servitude, and often times the insurance is a joke coming with it<p>- transport is out of reach for most people.  This means you have no mobility to change your physical circumstances<p>- police are out of control.  Their union is too powerful and their primary interest is securing <i>property rights</i>.<p>- tax payer funds are stuck in a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the mega rich.  Look at the military industrial complex, the medical complex, and all the other complexes across industries.<p>- the politicians are bought and paid for.  You think any of those people have power?  How effective have any of their policies been on solving these basic and ancient problems?<p>- the climate is killing life as we know it on this planet, and while society is increasingly aware of this and want it to be fixed, policy makers and corporations are barely changing.  Who really controls everything if not the people?<p>I could go on all day, but the summation is: the current system is tyrannous and oppressive to most.  It is faceless and has no central target to blame.  The people are left in darkness, condemned to having no present, no future, reduced to a fragment of themselves, consumed in servitude of a faceless shadow.  We have a resource allocation problem.  A big one.  Bitcoin was stage one of the cure to this problem.  It has done something most people thought was impossible before it: it made the minting process accessible to anyone, and liberated the opaque financial system into the hands of the people, turning a shadow system into a beacon of light.  It gave humanity its collective spine.<p>What comes next?  It is inevitable what comes next.  And it is unstoppable.  Our current society is having trouble feeding its people, housing its people, healing its people — these are the most basic upon basic needs, in a world of automation and light speed communications, we can barely manage even the basics.  It isn’t just sad, it isn’t just pathetic — it is negligent, it is malicious, and it is not necessary.  When government in the information age, an age of mastery of atoms, of space, of light, of matter, how is it possible society CANNOT HOUSE AND FEED THEIR PEOPLE.<p>It makes my blood boil.  But I keep it in.  I keep it calm.  I imagine the suffering of billions and feel their pain.  It is paralyzing.  But cool heads prevail.  We all must carry on and not let the flames of rage consume us.  If you don’t see or understand the connection to bitcoin, I just don’t know what to tell you.  Maybe, in your relative luxury, you don’t see the reality of the suffering your fellow man is enduring.  And so maybe, you haven’t had cause to investigate the root causes.  If you did, you would inevitably be lead to the mode of thinking I carry.<p>I don’t want to spoil the next steps, you all know it already, you feel it in your hearts, but here’s a raging clue for you to chew on:<p>&gt; WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.<p>&gt; We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.