Meditations On A World With No Inter-Nation Settlement Censorship
In regard to this tweet and the blog mentioned in it I think it is interesting to consider the contrasting beliefs between Bitcoin maximalists and the Nashian orientation of what Bitcoin is and what it is to become:
It is also interesting to read a blog article (The €300 million cash withdrawal) talk about censorship resistance in the global economy in regard to currencies but not also include considerations on Bitcoin:
The fate of this transaction is important not only for Iran but the rest of the world. It gives us a key data point for answering the following question: just how resistant is the global payments system to U.S. censorship?
The blog also talks about something I was meaning to write about in regard to the (possible) cause for a failing economy:
We already know that the global payments system is highly susceptible to U.S.-led censorship. From 2010–2015, Barack Obama successfully severed Iran from the world’s banks, driving the nation’s economy into the ground and eventually forcing its leaders to negotiate limits to their nuclear plans.
And this paragraph specifically becomes relevant:
Europe is responsible for managing the world’s second-most important currency: the euro. Its reluctance to sign on to the U.S.’s new censorship drive is a sign that the global payments system may be a little more resistant to censorship than the first round of Iran sanctions might have implied. If a nation is prohibited from using one end of the global payments system, the U.S. dollar end, but not the other (albeit smaller) end, then they haven’t really been cutoff.
Currencies in Competition and Re-Orientation
In the near future there may be a smaller number of major currencies used in the world and these may stand in competitive relations among themselves. There is now the “euro” and the old inflationary history of the Italian lira is past history now. And there COULD be introduced, for example, a similar international currency for the Islamic world or for South Asia, or for South America, or here or there.~Ideal Money
Bitcoin maximalists most often tout bitcoin as something you HODL. You hold it to increase the price and gain financial sovereignty and you benefit from the rational self interested action.
The Nashian view is (quite obviously) not a solution proposed that relies on altruism and cooperation but it speaks to a different frame of view: the games between nations.
But I think that the way Bitcoin was introduced allowed it to be bootstrapped by individuals trying to get rich regardless of their understanding of the ultimate ramifications.
IN regard to a global coffee money or an individual savings and private digital cash Bitcoin can play a certain role.
But the role it will arise to serve-the problem JP writes about-is far more significant. And so I think we should be thinking about a world in which there are no settlement issues that arise from state over state censorship.
