The Bitcoin Strategic Advantage
The Center Cannot Hold: 12
In gaming, as in the real world, a decisive strategic advantage can be used to consolidate a dominant position, forming a power singleton. The United States nearly achieved such a dominant position in global politics when it used the threat of nuclear war to attempt to persuade Russia to adopt the Baruch Plan. The Baruch Plan was rejected as Russia realized the plan would give the US a decisive strategic advantage of nuclear armament, or at the very least an unfair authority to police atomic weaponry with controls and inspections under the guise of the United Nations, where Stalin knew Russia would be easily out voted in the Security Council and General Assembly.
Acquiring Bitcoin can give an individual, a company, or a country a decisive strategic advantage, because as we know (and can audit individually with our nodes), Bitcoin’s issuance does not respond to demand, and there will only ever be 21,000,000 Bitcoin. We can presume Bitcoin adoption will continue to grow, and there will be far greater than 21,000,000 entities vying for even one whole coin. (Note: As of 10 November there are over 34,000,000 Bitcoin addresses with a balance greater than or equal to $1 US dollar. This is an all-time high. While one party can and does of course control more than one Bitcoin address, and the number of addresses is not a direct indication of the number of Bitcoin holders, the exponential growth in populated Bitcoin addresses would suggest more people are exchanging their local currency for Bitcoin en mass.)
As we’ve experienced this leads to massive price appreciation in US dollar terms. Thus, Bitcoin rewards early adopters not only in terms of wealth storage and appreciation, but from a game theoretic perspective Bitcoin adopters are
