50 independent states, a federal government, all held together by a distributed transparent legal document called the Constitution. 1/3 of the federal government is represented by the independent state lawmakers. And those state lawmakers are the only ones with power to change the Constitution. The Executive and Judiciary have no say.
That's a decentralized form of government, even if we don't think of it like that. And it's brilliant.
The transparent legal document over the x-axis (time) has distributed freedom relentlessly for 234 years. If you don't believe that, consider when the Constitution was ratified in 1790, slavery existed, women couldn't vote, native Americans were not citizens, judicial review hadn't been established, property rights... What happened over time however, is legal precedent built on top of legal precedent, as people asserted those transparent rights, and anybody standing in their way was essentially obliterated. The same thing will happen to anyone standing in the way of trans persons, like it or not, a repeat of 90s gay rights victories. Scientology couldn't even be stopped from a religious tax-free designation in 1993 for godssake. Or gun rights. Check this out, the first map is concealed carry state licensing from 1986. It's quite surprising to see Texas and so many red states as no-issue right?
The second map is today. Not a state that doesn't issue concealed carry permits, and most states are now fully unrestricted!
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It's important to note that gun rights were not particularly well protected early-mid in this country's history, and are stronger today than at any other point by far. That PoW legal precedent...
Not a single word of our Constitution (Bill of Rights) has changed in 234 years, going through 46 presidencies, 118 different congresses, a civil war, unfathomable economic and cultural changes.
I feel bitcoin's design pattern is quite similar to all this; and what America did for decentralizing government and separating powers is what bitcoin aims for with money — globally. This isn't some manifest destiny nationalist bend I'm on either, rather, it's just what time has revealed to me, so far as government praxis and data go.
Thomas Jefferson was the first Secretary of State (this coincided with the French Revolution making it an important post) and his letters at the time read like monologues, talking through the necessity of government decentralization writ large, and specifically, the need for the monarchy and religious authority of France to be deprecated.
The problem isn't government design I feel. Perhaps controversially, I posit government design is for the foreseeable future solved, as explained above. We have the nonce for that. There are of course problems, but conceding anecdotal time frames, and anecdotal events, and considering the whole of America as a two-century experiment, it's mind-boggling how much success we've had in all ways contending, and it isn't by accident, but by design. Life relatively, has never been better for most humans. And as an aside, I've lost patience for crisis narratives in any political or tech corner. If subject matter bottoms with:
- impending doom
- a mass casualty event
- extinction
then it's likely ideological, and not objective. If this is you (it's been me), crack a window, take a deep breath, and listen for the birds singing amongst the green contrasts.
🌳
Anyway, it's the money that's the directional problem, not the government design. The 1%, cantillionaires, mindless consumerism, wars, all the golden oldies DarthCoin reminds us of. Money isn't part of the constitution though, it's a discrete addendum, given to oversight of a quasi-independent central bank.
Now regarding bitcoin, mathematical inquiry informs us bitcoin was never designed to scale globally in a self-custodial way to individuals on L1. There are 10 minute blocks, of 1MB size, 4MB weight, maxing at 3000 tx's per block — excepting segwit multi-outputs. Thusly, we reach around 158M tx's per year. But 8 billion people live on this round island floating through space.
Bitcoin's layers can scale bitcoin globally quite easily — in a centralized way, just like what we're doing on StackerNews now—which is smooth as butter; or what we do amongst peers on CashApp which has some 60M users.
My wonder is how nation states, island state tax havens, and large businesses, scale in self-custodially
Here's a fascinating tidbit: bitcoin already has more annual settlement volume in USD than Visa does transaction settlement in USD. Then when you ask the hypothetical question, how much value can you fit in a single bitcoin block?, things get interesting. An astronomical amount is the answer. Which brings me to recent mining musings: Blackrock buying ownership in large public miners; El Salvador starting their own independent pool; Iran national pool ambitions, Russia... This doesn't seem to be a game of let's try and beat the mining economy of scale to profit. 92% of BTC has already been mined. The potential profits from mining are insignificant to most nation state budgets, even major businesses, even if bitcoin was say $1M per. If we're being honest, most large publicly listed miners don't turn a profit and don't even consistently add to their BTC treasuries. Mining seems significantly more valuable as a censorship resistance tool for nation state value settlements, when single blocks can fit however much value needs to fit, because when you mine, you can add whatever tx's you want to your block after sniping a nonce. Tx fees are more or less what you choose them to be.
Binance (I'm no fan) is an example. They're an exchange AND a mining pool, boasting about 3.5% of BTC hashpower (down from 8% yoy), which equates to roughly bagging 5 sniped nonce per day.
They add their exchange's own transactions to their pool's block temp, most of these tx's seated way back in the mempool with insignificant fees. That's the power of vertical integration in mining, being able to add whatever tx's you want to your own blocks. This power was instrumental in Binance's money laundering game that the DOJ is coming after them for. We don't know the scope of it.
It feels the often discussed block subsidy and tx fee issue is irrelevant in this hypothetical reality I'm having fun riffing here. And as a ratio of the tx value arranged into these blocks, fees will fall. For individuals, fees today are already too high for most in the world anyway. $14 per tx is more money than 3rd world denizens save in a month.
Embracing bitcoin minimalism, bitcoin already scales, it works, has a community of maintainers, and is boringly dependable. It's a robust tool, with L1 there whenever you're willing to pay for, and need its fixed liberties. Even indie mining is still manageable for some. We did it. Hurray.
Embracing bitcoin maximalism however — that base layer global money thing — I feel L1 will necessarily become the domain of nation states and business if successful, mining will coalesce around that, and it will bring a leveled playing field (same rules), censorship resistance that benefits everyone, pooling cooperations, and a dramatic aligning of global incentives. The transparent distributed ledger is quite powerful in this case. Below all that, the renewable energy transition with decentralized input sourcing, microgrids, HVDC interconnectors and international grids levering demand, time zones, and storage will align incentives and cooperation further amongst countries. When renewable energy infrastructure becomes sufficient enough in capacity to produce all the infrastructure for more renewable energy, it'll be like a high-rez 3D printer that can print a copy of itself. Subsidies will slowly shrink. And since the biggest dictators will all be beyond the statistical age of death early next decade, I think all of the untenable disruption, friction, and cost they add to the world currently, will dissipate. And since oil is rapidly on its way out, the bloodlines determining who you are in the countries where anti-trust never happened will be checked.
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A great peace. 🕊️
A world capable of building a bitcoin standard in the decades thereafter, replete with fusion, photonics, where the BTC quote price (USD) yields right of way. Commodity money loves abundance. It soaks up that value.
At least that's the most frictionless way I can imagine it going down. Nobody's prepared for that world. You'll have to be born into it. Many will misidentify it, fight it.
But none of this fantasy really deals with layer 2, scaling, nodes, our domain. Who knows, I needed to make my return to Stacker and stretch my fingers. Feels good. Great site updates since I was here last btw. Let the image talk:
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