Since the dawn of agriculture, centralized violence has been the most efficient organizational form. If you kill the farmer, you get the farm. The modern nation-state is the apex (so far) of that violence-centralization trend.

A few things have slowed the consolidation into a single totalitarian world government. One is the armed public depicted in this meme. But perhaps the more important fact is the increasingly cerebral nature of work. Outright violence works for compelling manual labor, but it is ineffective at coercing intellectual labor.

#Bitcoin entirely reverses the trend. In Bitcoin, ownership is knowledge. If you kill the hodler, you’re even less likely to get their coin. Bitcoin ensures that consensual exchange outcompetes threats of violence, and in this way undermines the State.