The Bitcoin Constant
The Center Cannot Hold: 10
We can agree that the conditions on Earth are sufficient to support intelligent life. We are a product of the universal environment. Therefore it is safe to say the conditions in the universe at large are consistent with those that can support intelligent life, however slim the odds.
We can also agree that the conditions on Earth are sufficient to support Bitcoin. Bitcoin is emergent from and a product of 300 thousand odd years of our intelligence evolving. While the invention of Bitcoin can be attributed to Satoshi, there is no such thing as causation. Humans can perceive only a succession of events. Attribution allows us to arrange events chronologically in language. Attribution is a history more or less agreed upon, so that the conversation can continue in any meaningful way. One could easily continue to reach further into history, attributing the invention of Bitcoin to the cryptographic and electronic cash innovations that came before it. Although, in my opinion, it is ultimately Satoshi’s packaging of prior innovations, paired with simple but hugely consequential traits such as the difficulty adjustment, the scheduled supply issuance, and the terminal scarcity, which signaled Bitcoin’s invention.
Invention can here be differentiated from innovation, as the implications of Bitcoin, its consequences, its effects, are irrevocable. Inventions cannot be put back in the bottle, as the course of humanity is on some scale altered after their advent. Innovations on the other hand alter the course of inventions. The Lightning Network is a remarkable innovation that has altered the course of the invention of Bitcoin. (I’m fairly certain Pete Rizzo[1] first taught me this distinction in conversation.)
The emergent fundamental guarantee of property[2] immune to governance is perhaps the element that most
