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Phil Connors is a cynic who wakes up every day at 6am in Punxsutawney to see the same scene over and again. Stuck in a time loop, Connors tries everything to get his life back to normal – he gets stabbed, shot, burned, frozen and electrocuted, only to wake up again the next day as if nothing had happened. Connors is forced to admit that he’s a deity.
In wartime or in other situations, thinking that you are unbeatable is not a good strategy. If we believe in cosmology, from Nietzsche to Hinduism, time is a loop, and there is a finite realm of possibilities which infinitely repeat – the only thing that we can really do is change how we react. We are destined to repeat the same mistakes unless we learn from them.
Though often priding ourselves in exceptional intellect – I’ve found Bitcoin early, I must be very smart – it seems that learning from mistakes comes hard even for the most seasoned ‘Bitcoin advocates’. Public discourse seems to have shifted from the discussion of technological challenges and limitations to Deutsche Bank afterwork chats – Anything is possible, we’ll just need returns to remain on track.
When Bitcoin was first discussed in German Parliament back in 2014, ‘experts’ highlighted the ease with which bitcoin payments could be deanonymized via network analysis, speaking to the risks of widespread bitcoin adoption to lead towards total financial surveillance. Today, ten years later, as Bitcoin has returned to German parliament, ‘experts’ have been exchanged for influencers proposing Bitcoin as CBDC alternatives. Current ‘Bitcoin political debates’ cannot help but remind us of Bart Simpson running in circles banging a pan on his head.
We have succeeded in replacing academic debate with cheerleading squads as we close on the echo chamber of the opportunist. As long as you are willing to remove your tits, everything will be fine. ‘We’re winning!’ has long become the prevalent meme – Between ETF approvals, stablecoin issuances, and possible nation state adoption we are so confident in Bitcoin’s success that we seem incapable of realizing that this is precisely how you lose. The arrogance that precedes most falls is deliberately exploited. Even the best-trained commander can lead his sheep to death by instilling manic delusions that they are unbeatable.
Groundhog Day
In a galaxy long ago, computers were connected to landlines in order to get the 3 Ws. For anyone who didn’t live alone, this practice was often doomed to reap a fair amount of havoc – Get off the computer, mom is waiting for a phone call.
We can all agree it was a bad idea. It was convenient, but due to the lack of advancements in technology and ability to wirelessly communicate across distances. (Think of your favorite Mesh Network here). It was a great idea, but it also led to the monopolization of web access points by telecommunications companies. In 20 years’ time, we know that telecom companies monitor and analyze everything we do online and then report it to the government under the pretext of national security. The technology that people thought would liberate them quickly became their biggest enemy.
Linkin Park has been a major influence on the development (and demise) of peer to peer technologies. Linkin Park, who was still known as Hybrid Theory at the time, had a lot of their music shared on Napster, which was the very first P2P file-sharing network. Linkin Park music could be downloaded for free from the computers of others. Hybrid Theory is their first studio album and it remains in the top 5 most-sold records worldwide with over 15 million copies in just the first 3 weeks.
Napster was a real world internet revolution – And the music industry was furious. While people infected their computers with potential computer AIDS bands like Arctic Monkeys or Dispatch were building their fanbases before they released their first major record release. And the music establishment was not having it. When Metallica sued the P2P platform for copyright infringement, clearly unhappy that their cult status and its consequential returns felt threatened, peer-to-peer music file sharing did not exactly die, but was quickly incorporated into more corporate friendly formats – from buying music via iTunes to music streaming via Spotify.
It was unthinkable that a new technology, such as Napster, would be added to the CD box. But convenience won out. As a result, most listeners don’t own the music they hear, and instead subscribe to corporate databases from which no artists, producers or labels profit. In the end, it was surveillance that emerged as the biggest winner in the music file-sharing industry. Spotify’s cookie policy was updated last week and a notification sent to EU users informed them of the 695 data brokers who would have access to their personal information. Downloading files like ClapYourHandsSayYeah.mp3.exe (RIP) clearly was risky business, but the risks of surveillance capitalism reach much farther than a trashed computer.
Search engines experienced the exact same fate. It was the same as being thrown in Yellow Stone park in its early years without a guide. It was possible to visit thousands of locations, but it required that you know their location. Platforms like Yahoo, AskJeeves, or Google offer comprehensive links collections that are extremely valuable to people who don’t know their way around the WWW. You no longer had to ask your friends where cool stuff was on the web. Instead, just Google it. But, with moving away from word-of–mouth formats, we ended up with what has today been termed the great enshittification. First, there are affiliate links, then those that have figured out Google’s SEO format, all packed with your needs. Google today is the largest global surveillance company. Software that was intended to help in the liberation of information has essentially become a tool used for censorship.
Again and again, thinking that ‘technology has won’ only exacerbated its demise. The comfort we feel now can be a trap for us in the future. And before you know it – BING! As the weatherman strikes once again, it’s that whistling bellies at the talent show. We’ve messed up, to put it plainly.
The Filters Are the Problem
Ignorance is rampant in today’s Bitcoin pop culture discourse. Let’s put millions of dollars on Bitcoin, until lightning doesn’t work.
When Ordinals hit Bitcoin – think of them what you will – we suddenly realized that we were in trouble. People in the global South were unable to conduct non-custodial transactions. You told DCA about all the people who were suddenly faced with exorbitant fees and unable to transfer their money. Coinjoin rounds became prohibitively costly for those who value their privacy, even if they are only spending a small amount. There is a problem with scaling no matter which way we turn. It is not because Ordinals exist that this problem exists. This problem exists because of our inability to control ignorance.
Over the past four years, the majority was more concerned with furthering its own narrative – everything is awesome and Bitcoin is the bestest currency on earth – than facing uncomfortable truths. Our response was a massive amount of short-sightedness. It’s all about the filters.
It is not a good idea to filter out transactions that are part of the Ordinals. This will only solve a temporary problem. Blocking arbitrary data from the blockchain may reduce fees, but you are not helping yourself by suggesting selective solutions for systemic problems. Being angry at JPEGs can be easy. Taking on problems that challenge the ‘greatness of Bitcoin’, which some appear to have turned into their whole personality, is not. For every tweet that claims for Bitcoin to bring world peace – clearly by pure magic, or what the Wall Street losers turned Bitcoin economists call some backwards form of game theory – a little of the system dies.
Your hopium is not needed. We are looking for real solutions to real problems. That includes laying down the crack pipe and talking about the uncomfortable stuff: we are not winning – we are doing the opposite, because our ‘long time preference’ reaches about as far as our investment portfolios. Bitcoin is a sham. It’s much easier than you think.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
Over the past few years, debates around Bitcoin ‘winning’ looked pretty much the same. See, Senators have embraced Bitcoin. BlackRock has embraced Bitcoin. See, we’re on the right track. Then they mock you and ignore you. Finally they realise that what you really want is just a little pat on your back before the officer comes to steal away all of your toys. Although the laughing is still happening, they are doing it behind you.
The most plausible death of Bitcoin would happen less in name than in its total incorporation, at a point where the technology is simply not yet ready for ‘mass adoption’ – just like we have killed all peer-to-peer technologies that came before it. Bitcoin’s death isn’t the end of technology, it’s the end of usability.
The scaling debate continues to be at the heart of Bitcoin’s demise, at least in its essence. It was obvious when Gigablocks first came out that a chain that took 10 years to sync would lack decentralization. Lightning Network seemed to be the answer for all our problems: scaling off-chain and securing data on-chain. Smart. Except that we can only fit around 5000 channel opening and closing transactions inside of a block – hardly enough to let 8 Billion people use Bitcoin non-custodially.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop influencers – or really anyone – from proclaiming their Hail Mary of desperation; Scaling Bitcoin obviously is a problem for future me. The thrill of being able sit down at a corporate dinner and say ‘I warned you so’ was too high. First, we had to make sure that the non-believers were put in their proper place. After all, if Bitcoin wasn’t there to boost our fragile egos or our little sad bank accounts what was the real point? Freedom, Carajo! We welcome you to the Church of Satoshi’s Witnesses, your unvoluntary convert. Here we make speeches about saving the world against tyranny as often as Biden changes diapers.
We are here. Six years after we bought our first stickers at the Blockstream store – the only thing you were able to buy when the first Lightning implementations launched, besides beer – and we’re still scrambling. In lieu of encouraging a wide range of discussions about covenant proposals that come with trade-offs as well as risks, we’re busy labeling everyone who isn’t willing to ossify Bitcoin a spook.
We’ll be wishing for a return to the days of fees as low as a hundred vBytes. Then, Bitcoin will become a necessity. Bitcoin, as we currently know it, will die if we keep making the same errors.
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com
