I never finished bitcoin standard either. I already knew what bitcoin was when I started it, once I got through the whole history of money part (stuff I didn’t know) I found no use reading the bitcoin part.

Lowery’s thesis is different. He doesn’t even start from square 1. He fails to explain why nation states are going to adopt bitcoin in the first place. Nations won’t start hashing for the sake of hashing. They incentive - if they don’t believe bitcoin is good money, they won’t mine. Thus, the prerequisite for nation state mining is first having the nation itself or a heavy majority of its people adopt bitcoin. Which I’ve never heard him explain.