I would agree it changes nothing if he actually contributed to anything bitcoin related
Discussion
Softwar is a unique contribution expanding the broader implications of bitcoin
What is his contribution exactly?
Ownership of resources is a constant battle, humans can think abstractly so we come up with unique ways to not have to constantly fight over everything but usually that breaks down into physical war which has the same charactetistics of what the bitcoin protocol does therefore humans can accept the abstract nature of resolving our differences peacefully through ownership being represented as bitcoin. The mount of watts could be a nuclear bomb or the most hash. I personally benefit by securing and projecting power by keeping my property as bitcoin and using code that makes it nearly impossible to steal or alter my claim of ownership.
One of the major things that I remember lowery talking about is using pow to secure data. But the problem is that bitcoin uses pow to secure the Bitcoin network. How do you use pow to secure data at the dmv or at the social security office? Surely he’s not arguing we put all that data on the Bitcoin blockchain right? Well it’s never been made clear by lowery. He’s a very good speaker and a lot of his baseless claims were overlooked. He fooled me as well in the beginning.
What happens if the government starts mining bitcoin? The government has a money printer which allows them to mine at a loss. That would eventually make it unaffordable for mining businesses to continue mining. Then all of a sudden the government has a monopoly on bitcoin mining and can censor whatever transactions they want. So is lowery a spook? Possibly.
I recommend you read this article by Jameson Lopp where he picks apart softwar:
https://blog.lopp.net/critique-softwar-concepts/
It’s funny after he posted this article lowery criticized lopp for not reading the book. Lopp asked him for a link to the thesis and lowery initially tried to get him to buy the book. Lopp refused and said that the thesis is supposed to be published for free. He gave him the link to the thesis and Lopp read it then wrote another article destroying lowery and then lowery disappeared from twitter.
I will re read Lopp, however I remember he just simply refuses to see the actual argument and just dismisses it the same way Marty Bent did by using strawmen
Whirlpool coin join is an example of my property being obscured from bad actors with code secured by the full force of the network
I don’t think encryption is power projection. Encryption is more like a shield or a fortress to me.
Great! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Lopp agrees with most of the work, with major objections to the specifics of how to secure other data using bitcoin network. It seems like BitVM is an example of using bitcoin to prove off chain states as true or false.
What’s bitvm?
Downloaded and will listen later when I’m free
This is his review of the entire thesis after lowery finally gave him the link
Yes, reading now.