The Bitcoin stalemate
When I discovered Bitcoin in 2011, I had an intellectual orgasm: Here was something that I didn't understand and was super elegant.
An inquisitive nature relishes strange observations — territories where normal models break down and new ones must be built. The Bitcoin community is full of such people. For a lack of a better word, we are the Bitcoin nerds.
My model for Bitcoin views it as pioneering three items at once:
- Bitcoin is first and foremost, a template for building organizations differently. Thousands of humans and machines follow a Constitution (generally called Protocol) creating large scale co-ordination without hierarchies or management. It’s a proof of concept for the Anarchist dream.
- Bitcoin pioneers a new kind of decentralized database technology. Users can leverage the scripting language ‘Bitcoin script’ to control the flow of bitcoins. Extending this capability to enable more complex flow control drives the Ethereum project.
- Bitcoin demonstrated that a digital token without commodity utility value or Government backing can be used as money. This had historical precedence, but was generally considered unfeasible until conclusively demonstrated.
Proof of Work consensus is omitted from the list as I consider it a tool not an end goal.
Bitcoin rightly attracts a lot of layman, academic and commercial interest. The development possibilities seem immense. Perhaps Bitcoin is really the new like the Internet circa 1993, as posited by Marc Andreessen.
As seductive as the idea of holding bitcoins and becoming a millionaire looks, I am a contrarian here — I bet that it will remain a niche curiosity. It will attract a lot of conversation but not real legal commerce.
The issues
