GLOBAL CONSENSUS

Exploring The Thesis That Bitcoin Miners Can Replace Global Consensus
By Level39

An intriguing narrative on Bitcoin emerged this year around the physical security offered by its proof-of-work consensus method. This narrative evolved from Jason Lowery, a commissioned officer in the U.S. Space Force and a U.S. National Defense Fellow enrolled in MIT, whose full-time job is to research Bitcoin for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). His opinions on the topic are his own and do not represent those of the DoD.

As part of his master’s degrees, Lowery plans to write his thesis on how proof-of-work miners are functionally identical to the role of militaries and could be adopted as a surrogate to war with respect to achieving global consensus on the current state and chain of liberty and digital property. What’s particularly unique about Lowery’s thesis is that it fits proof of work as an evolution from the biological and physical patterns of the universe and life itself.

EMANCIPATED IDENTITIES

Satoshi’s Seed: From Mental Slavery To Bitcoin Emancipated Identities
By Kristen Cozad

“Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature. In a society accustomed to dominating or 'improving' nature, this respectful imitation is a radically new approach, a revolution really. Unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Biomimicry Revolution introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what we can learn from her.” — Janine Benyus

Where we are headed appears more complicated than perhaps understanding how we got here. Because history is our teacher and can inform how we choose to cocreate our future, we must pay homage to our past. The early web was about connecting machines to machines, and the early digital engineers in social media and gaming realized they needed a machine-to-human design prototype, one which interfaced their digital constraints with human engagement.

Given their industrial-era legacy thinking and proclivity toward skeuomorphism (overlaying an old design on top of a new technology), this new interface inevitably needed to somehow involve the measurement of user behavioral outcomes to “validate” what they constructed. But how?

THE DAILY BITS

PROGRESSIVISM AND BITCOIN

Progressivism And Bitcoin Are Not Opposed

By Margot Paez

It’s time to set the record straight. Too many who write or pontificate about Bitcoin do not know what progressivism means in the political realm of American politics — looking at you Daniel Kuhn. In reality, many ideas among progressives and the left, are wholly aligned with Bitcoin’s mission.

“Progressive” is really an umbrella term that lumps together many left-leaning political ideologies under a set of demands that we deem to be inalienable rights of any human. These are education, healthcare, a living wage and housing. It is true that progressives do put demands on the government to protect and nurture these allegedly inalienable rights. However, you shouldn’t believe that progressives and the left are defenders of the state simply because they demand better of it.

In practice, progressives do their best work when they are not focused on electoral politics. At the local level, progressives focus on mutual aid, trade unions and grassroots organizing. These stem from the revolutionary anarchist tradition which came about due to horrific working conditions during the early centuries of capitalism.

MEME OF THE DAY