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I fell down the rabbit hole. I'd had it talked at me for months by colleagues during the 2020 bull run and had been in a position to stock some money in various places (full disclosure I have financial exposure to digital assets now among other investments). Turns out putting some money in it cranks up the research incentive exponentially over my already aggressive bookish baseline. Also turns out that this space is raising a lot of questions that are fascinating to consider in and of themselves independent of whether or not you think bitcoin is worth anything as an asset or as a concept.

Considering "politics" in the digital space (because money is inextricably tied to politics) has forced me to evaluate and work with some things. Now of course cash (which is what Bitcoin is) in and of itself on a functional basis is non political. It's simply cash. Yet a lot of the innovations and cryptographic history behind bitcoin have come out of the more libertarian/anarchist mindset. Certain ideas of libertarians have always appealed to me and this book is a libertarian (Austrian school specifically) perspective. For example, none of us like big government and big tech peeking into our lives and date and I don't believe anything which doesn't directly harm another should be illegal. I certainly agree with the rules being the same for everyone, multinationals included.
Further, decentralization is incredibly appealing for the grassroots power it brings to people. That's politically neutral. It's facilitative and enabling for whatever end. Where I disagree with libertarianism is in the social aspect. None of us live in a vacuum and history is relevant. We aren't all fungible nodes in a network. Humans are unique and individual which will involve prejudices that lead to historical injustices involving economic disparities NOT simply accounted for by the market. Societies are rather complex on the macro it turns out.

But in the digital space the node concept works. Considering one equal to another becomes possible when you can't see faces and the potential for natural human bias is eliminated. You can see where this can take us as far as rabbits and holes. Decentralization as a concept opens up many many ideas and is one fundamental disagreement I have with the author who claims that this technology is only good for cash. I think cash will be foundational but we're already seeing a lot of uses he hadn't even thought of 3 years ago. Universal decentralized global forms of ID, social media and streaming are a few examples currently. Not to mention NFTs but I need to study that more. I'm not on board yet.

There's a lot of technical disagreements I have with the author which I won't get into right now and the reviews of many others considering the three sections is spot on. Particularly the middle, the idea of the gold standard's elimination killing art, literature, innovation, etc, etc was laughable. You want to tell this music nerd that the entire 20th century was shit because we came off the gold standard? What does that even mean? And that no great (unique) technological innovations happened after 1913? HAHAHA!

Spend enough time looking at "the crypto space" and you'll see a microcosm of human society like any other area. There's the charlatans and cringe worthy (have a look at some of the cult speeches at the Miami conference) but that shouldn't discount the technology...which is sound. I suppose the first question is - will digital currency be around in some form? Seems silly to say no. Now how does that look for you or me? As a speculative investment is one thing, using one on a daily basis in the coming years is another and further, using the apps and industries that spring up around it. Governments will have their version, China already does and 80 countries are working on it. Digital currencies and blockchain mean highly trackable. Not necessarily tied to names but that transaction history is there. In the case of government coins they can access whatever they want. Keep in mind this is a substitute for actual cash. This isn't simply online banking. Does that feel slightly chilly? There's alternatives for all this too but that's another write up. Yet I wish I'd been more aware when living in the Middle East. I could've put my ridiculously expensive 5 day wires into the form of a USD stablecoin and sent them in a couple minutes for pennies.

I'm undecided and cautious on the long term value of this whole thing and how society will value it, adopt it, etc. Digital currency will be around but how that looks exactly is presumptuous for anyone to say and starts to sound cultish the more dogmatic one becomes. This book has elements of that. Things evolve, 2.0 happens, problems arise, ideas flash that you can't imagine. I'm under no illusions from an investment perspective that "it will always go up eventually". It's still fundamentally tied to value outside of the sphere because (shocker) that's where 99% of the monetary value is in the current world. You can deny that all you want and yes someday it might be a hedge against inflation but we're not there yet and at the moment of writing we might just well be in the biggest everything bubble in history. But that's separate from thinking about the effects of decentralization generally and the new opportunities it presents. That's where I have to pull myself away from the blogs and videos...