Categories
Technology

How My Views On Bitcoin Have Changed Since 2012

This is the first time I have written on bitcoin in a considerable amount of time. However, my views on this technology have changed considerably since I first heard about it in 2012, and so I will explain how my understanding of it has evolved.

When I was first learning about bitcoin, my understanding of it was that it was destined to become a payment layer that would rival national currencies. I thought bitcoin allowed a person to sever their ties to the national economy and live entirely on the “bitcoin standard” (as I described it in 2014). At one point, I even spoke on the idea of bitcoin “ending the nation state”.

This is not so.

Although bitcoin is indeed a new, and potentially disruptive payment mechanism, it is not meant to replace central banking any more than electronic mail has replaced postal services. Indeed, bitcoin is a technology complementary to national economies when applied effectively.

It is also important to note the relatively impersonal nature of bitcoin as compared to national currencies.

Bitcoin does not provide an “escape”, but rather, a tool to wield in the ongoing struggle between good and evil.

It is not meant for quick, small transactions, but as a medium for authorizing access to digital information. The currency unit “bitcoin” is the commodity used to redeem network resources, and without bitcoin, a user cannot timestamp information to the network in order to prove authenticity.

Here is its key use case: authentication. As the bitcoin industry continues to develop, I expect authentication services to emerge that will give a person the ability to access information instantaneously and securely from anywhere in the world using only the “turn” of their private key.

The sovereign citizen will be able to “live in the cloud” by encoding their public identification in the bitcoin blockchain. The authentication mechanism of that blockchain protocol will, in many regards, supersede that of physically-enforced regulations because the network functions independent of any single point of failure. Destroy a bitcoin node, and a multitude swarm to take its place. Similarly, destroy information hosted by the bitcoin network, and an identical backup will be downloaded instantly from the nearest service provider.

In this sense, a form of digital immortality will be possible.

I am reminded here of a 1993 academic paper by Vernor Vinge where he predicted that “large computer networks and their users will ‘wake up’ to super-human intelligence”.

At the Bitcoin Embassy in Montreal during the Scaling Bitcoin Conference (September, 2015).
A breakout session amongst core developers at the Scaling Bitcoin Conference in Montreal (September, 2015).

And so although bitcoin in its most adolescent stages could be used to make purchases as mundane as a morning coffee (I recall paying for lunch using bitcoin numerous times in Toronto around 2014), its primary use case is monolithic, meaning that, large transactions where important information is made available to the network ought to take precedence in the development trajectory of this technology rather than conducting as many transactions as quickly as possible and with minimal fee.

Definition

monolithic – a large, impersonal social structure regarded as uniform and unmovable.

Like any other technology, bitcoin is a tool in the hands of its users. Ultimately, it is up to them how to make use of it, and whatever our intention may be when wielding that tool, expect something like bitcoin to magnify it beyond a merely human artifice.

Categories
Policy

Nothing To Apologize For

Shortly after the death of Pope Francis, I am reminded of his willingness to apologize for bringing the teachings of Roman Catholicism to the Indigenous of Canada.

The residential school system, although inappropriate in its linguistic approach, was a noble attempt to bring Roman Catholicism to the Indigenous. The fault here is not on the concept of residential schools themselves, but their attempt to linguistically assimilate the Indigenous: they often resorted to physical abuse in order to do so.

The missionary can only succeed if they speak to the Indians using their native language (rather than forcing them to speak English/French). If the residential schools were offered to Indigenous in their native tongue, they would have been a success.

In demonstrating to the Indigenous the superiority of our faith, we can only assimilate them in accordance with their mutual consent. We must not punish them for using their native language, for these people called this land home before we colonized it.

This was the problem with the residential school system in Canada. It was not because of Catholicism that the Indigenous suffered, but because the deployment of the residential school system forcefully removed the Indian from their native culture.

We should have residential schools in Canada, but if they are for the Indigenous, then they must be used to develop their culture within a Roman Catholic context.

Categories
Judicial

Beware The Parasitic Tribe

The question remains, as it always shall: is he a member of that Parasitic Tribe?
Is he the Black Sheep?
A member of the so-called “inside manipulators”?
Everywhere these people go they infiltrate the media, they hijack the central bank, and they infect the body politic like a parasite.
These people, they walk among us and you could walk right past them on the sidewalk.
You wouldn’t think twice about it.
While we focus our attention on our brothers and our sisters (who are with us, not against us) these Black Sheep hide and they perpetrate and they pull the strings.
And they laugh about it.
And they watch us.
And we fight each other.
And they profit from our wars.
And they seek to control and demoralize us in every aspect of what we try to do.
It’s their world and we’re just a number to them.
If they had their way, our entire way of life would be eradicated. They don’t like us. In fact, they despise us because of what we are and the spirit we represent. They cannot co-exist with it.
And what we need to do, perhaps more than anything, is remove these people, once-and-for-all, from our country.

Addendum: The people we speak of are not truly ‘Jews’. They are liars and deceivers attempting to hide from criticism by adopting a false identity. Let us be aware and expose them for what they are: a tribe of parasites.

“Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, those liars who claim to be Jews, and are not; behold, I will make them come before thy feet and know that you are my beloved.”

– Revelation 3:9