The world is digital, and digital currencies with zero value are taking over, honestly, money is already digital anyway. They convince us that printing billions with a single mouse click equals real value, while Bitcoin, which is backed by massive energy, real technology like blockchain, proof of work, nodes, the Lightning Network, and more is called a scam with no future.
Because for the very first time in history, a human being can truly be free, independent, and actually own something. You can "own" a house, but if you stop paying property taxes, they will take it away from you. It's like that with everything. But how are they going to take the words stored inside my head without my consent? Sure, through physical violence anything is possible, but you get the point.
Think about it: all wars are sponsored by money printers because they can create infinite amounts of currency out of thin air. As a consequence, innocent people, women and children - die. Infrastructure gets destroyed, people starve, prices skyrocket, and citizens are squeezed by state authorities. Bitcoin and the Lightning Network fix these exact problems.
With global adoption (which in my opinion is inevitable) all of this stops. People will learn how to save again because they'll know that their satoshis today will buy more bread and milk tomorrow. This mass production of cheap and fragile goods will finally end. People will start making high-quality products again. World leaders won't benefit from waging wars anymore because it simply won't make sense to waste all those resources for nothing and risk bankrupting their own nation. Everything will align.
It will happen. I don't know when whether tomorrow, in 10 years, or in 20 years, but it is inevitable.
It's either the scenario I just described, or humanity, drowned in its own greed and malice, will destroy itself!
War is as central to human DNA and culture as death and taxes.
Every generation hopes vainly this might change but it never has.
Life and DNA are fundamentally a competition for territory and resources and war is the most elemental expression of life and DNA.
Every virtue signalling dreamer, prophet and politician claims otherwise, but they lie.
Believe me, many cultures avoid paying taxes; I think it's only in the Anglo-Saxon world that paying taxes is considered an unavoidable duty.
Same thing with War.
Yes and the anglo saxons have enjoyed global resource hegemony for more than 200 years so taxes and the wars they fund have proven a good investment for anglo saxons...
Everyone else- not so much.
200 years from 4K of human history , that’s not enough to prove your claim
Go back through history and taxes were always ultimately the source of funding of wars.
In times of peace they could be used to build infrastructure and a stronger economy to be in a better position of greater wealth to fight the next war more successfully.
Inability to fund wars lead to subjugation.
Without the ability to fund war you will be over run by those who can and do.
Fiat money was an innovation that enhanced the ability to fund wars by debasing the monetary savings of all citizens.
Yes, that’s true, but there have also been long periods of time when cultures thrived without war or taxes. A snapshot of today doesn’t necessarily mean that these things can’t be avoided in the future.
Hope springs eternal.
The wealth of nations has always been determined by their ability to defend territory and project power over others.
Competition for territory and resources is written in our DNA.
War is the ultimate expression of DNA and the life force it encodes.
ok, you won, go to war, pay your taxes :D
Cope. Of course Cain would say that murder is an inevitable facet of human existence.
Jesus committed no murder, collected no tax, and rose from the dead, despite being human. This debunks your narrative.
Without agreeing on either stance (I simply don't know and haven't thought about it), that's a brittle argument to bring into the field.
Both murder and taxation happened aplenty in his name.
But that's not Jesus doing it.
If I collect taxes in Satoshi's name what does that say about him? Nothing. My commentary means nothing.
That's why I called it a brittle argument, not a false one.
You could've argued that unboiled committed no murder, collected no tax and you'd still be just as correct. Heck, I'm on a roll and even managed to dodge death so far.
It only takes one person getting it right to prove that life can be lived without war.
I agree.
Yet it's not a as definitive a refutation as you seem to believe of the claim made that war is as central to human DNA and culture as death and taxes.
Centrality does not require exclusivity. In that sense, your claim can be true at the same time as the other one.
I think a reasonable case could be made that Nephilimic DNA is contained in the Y chromosome, which would explain the uniqueness of Jesus in a deterministic way, but I prefer to give individual agency the benefit of the doubt and insist that millions of years of past wars are no excuse for aggressing today.
But in regards to @Solomonsatoshi's point as it relates to Bitcoin, the key innovation is not that Bitcoin abolishes war entirely, but that it reshapes the environmental incentive structure such that territorial land claims on real estate are practically worthless compared to the benefits of holding a relatively small refuge in cyberspace where free market competition enables such a vast array of technological advancements that traditional methods of warfare are rendered obsolete.
The Ukraine war is a 20th century war, 14 years and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Primitive. The Iran war is a 21st century post-Bitcoin war, thousands of deaths, less than one year, and Iran is already in basically the same position as Ukraine if not much worse.
Most people are lazy sheep.
Ipso facto Bitcoin is not guaranteed to succeed in separating money from the state.
To assert it is is pure naive wishful thinking.
Sorry to pop your hopium bubble.
Bitcoin has been around now for 16 years but its acceptance as a MoE is extremely low and generally obstructed to a point where it is not easy to use as a MoE.
The reason most people still use fiat money is because the state has ensured there are no convenient MoE alternatives available.
Bitcoin is not a convenient legal MoE almost everywhere... and that is no accident.
Unless people demand change and force change it is very unlikely that this central pillar of state power will go away, no matter how much hopium is written on obscure Libertarian forums.
You are completely right that the state actively enforces its monopoly on money through taxes and regulations, and that most people naturally follow the path of least resistance.
However, claiming Bitcoin cannot succeed misses the fundamental economic and technological mechanics driving its adoption. Historically, no asset becomes a medium of exchange before first proving itself as a store of value. People naturally spend depreciating fiat currency and hoard hard assets with a fixed supply, which is standard economic behavior rather than pure laziness. Furthermore, convenience is a solved engineering problem.
Bitcoin's base layer is built for final settlement, while Layer 2 technology like the Lightning Network handles instant, low-cost microtransactions far more efficiently than traditional payment processors. Bitcoin does not rely on ideological motivation or forum debate to succeed, but on economic necessity.
As central banks continue to dilute fiat currencies, individuals turn to alternative assets out of self-preservation, a pattern already visible in high-inflation economies worldwide. Bitcoin does not need to instantly replace fiat currency to achieve its primary purpose, by functioning as a censorship-resistant, non-confiscatable alternative, it strips the state of its absolute control over money and offers an unalterable choice to anyone who wants out.
The masses do not need to be libertarians or seek freedom. It is enough for the fiat system to continue eroding their savings through inflation and money printing. In countries with collapsing currencies (Argentina, Nigeria, Turkey, Venezuela), the adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is not a philosophical choice, but a matter of survival.
Well put. Still LN is not reliable or convenient yet- far from it.
But with time you may be right- one of the biggest obstacles related to the massive loss of power that replacing fiat monetary system with Bitcoin would be that it would hugely limit the ability of any nation state adopting such a stance to wage war.
At the outbreak of WW1 all the major European powers dropped gold backing so that they could debase the savings of all citizens and fund their war efforts.
The larger your nations collective monetary savings the larger is your war chest.
Bitcoin standard nations would be at a significant disadvantage in the event of war and that is a problem, surely?
That is true. And here comes a big fundamental question: Are we as a human race really as advanced as we think we are, considering that we continue to wage wars? Are we ready to leave our differences behind and live in peace, rather than in fear of whether our neighbor might attack us to seize our resources?
At the moment, we are not. Not as long as our priority is how to colonize Mars and the Moon, rather than protecting our nature and wildlife. Because everything and everyone matters.
DNA has for billions of years been fine tuned to maximise the spread and dominance of the organism it builds.
That is competition.
That is war.
War is in our DNA.
Is it possible to consciously overcome such an inherent imperative that is coded deeply into every cell of our bodies?
Religions have tried and ideologies have tried.
The ones that fight wars best have always predominated.
Can Bitcoin fix this?
Doubtful - But it can provide some preservation of capital, perhaps.
"Adoption." I think adoption was already here; it’s just not how most people expected it to be.
The Ukraine war is a challenge to the petrodollar empire post GFC when it became clear that China is now the dominant productive economy supporting the global economy. The IMF was forced to accept China onto the exclusive board of reserve currency issuers because the Yuan and China were the major pillar preventing collapse of the petrodollar empires institutional framework and protocols.
China is still the only member of the board that is not both a monetary and military tribute state to the USA.
Iran war is the USA pushing back against Chinas growing challenge to the petrodollar. With the development of mBridge and CIP enabling Yuan denominated oil trade and that trade expanding to more and more gulf states who joined mBridge protocol.
How much fiat debt issuance has USA expended upon the Iran war?
Would the US petrodollar be able to even launch the Iran war if it operated on the Bitcoin Standard and was already $40 T in the red? No.
Iran war is last hurrah as the petrodollar empire is flogged like a dead horse by its Zionist puppet masters as they launch their Greater Israel land grab to build a regional hegemony resistant to Chinas emerging dominance.
Bitcoin fine as a refuge - a virtual tax haven and SoV hedge against the insolvency and collapse of the petrodollar...but it does not and cannot enable you to debase all citizens savings in a war and that is a fatal strategic disadvantage for any nation state where control of territory and trade routes is fundamental to both credibility and ultimately, survival.
Suez-Hormuz-end of empire.
https://m.stacker.news/158202
https://m.stacker.news/158200
https://m.stacker.news/158201