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I smell what you're stepping in but to caveat, money shouldn't be political. It's only the most sellable good which only became a political paradigm with the normalization of state backed fiat. In its natural state as the shelling point between market participants, it would be apolitical.

You can call that resistance and obviously Bitcoin was designed in that light, but when all of this is said and done, Bitcoin will just be the money. So I guess right now it's political but only because it became politicized.

But inherently, it's just a near perfect monetary system, which, if not now, will be apolitical.

Bitcoin has one value statement… that is outside state control

That is inherently anarchical and Satoshi himself said “this will especially appeal to the libertarian community” in his original correspondence

It has several tho. Borderless, absolutely scarce, digitally native, uncensorable, mineable, consensual.

And you're right, he did, and that was his motivation.

My point is anything can be many tools just like a pencil can convey a message, make art, kindling, a shank, etc. Use it politically to your heart's content, and trust, I do.

But in my view, the protocol is not inherently political. It is inherently deflationary, digital, scarce, all the things. The political part is a great angle but I don't see how it's base properties have anything to do with politics. If anything, it's just not fiat.

The more I think about it, the only thing that makes it political is that it isn't political 😂

That’s like saying Banksy can be reduced to neutral art because people stole his graffiti and put it into art gallery’s that people pay $250 to attend….

A Banksy is a Banksy- political af

A bitcoin is a bitcoin- political af

But Banksy IS political. I get what you're saying. But that seems like an effect of Bitcoin being introduced to a highly political world, not a principle of Bitcoin on its own. If we'd been using gold this whole time, it would only be more transferable and more scarce, but the politics around it wouldn't, and still don't, change the protocol. The corn's gonna corn no matter who is in office.

I don’t understand. The white paper IS an inherently political document. Satoshi was an inherently political operator.

I see what you’re trying to say but it doesn’t make sense- if that’s the case…Why wouldn’t I just use Monero? It has all the same features of everything you mentioned aside from being in tails emissions

And it’s pleb mined

That's what I mean when I say it was his motivation. It reads to me like "these dumb fucks keep ruining our lives, so we made this thing so that they aren't physically and probably mentally capable of changing it." I'm saying its creator was political but none of its functions are.

I'll take scarcity over small blocks. I'm not ruling monero out either tho. The inflation for it barely matters after a long enough run, but I don't know enough about it to debate much more than that.

I understand your point that blockchain technology itself… cryptographically linking a chain with hashes at the L1 is not inherently political

But attaching monetary value to that tech shifted it into political territory

The terms “political” and “state” are not synonymous

Operating a money transmission technology outside of state control is an inherently political tech

As far as fiat goes, they are. As far as money goes tho, as far as most sellable good, the market decides that on its own. Which also is not political, so much as an effect of each individual acting out of their own best interest. We've been conditioned to associating the state and the currency, that we call money. So in that paradigm, anything that can behave like money would look political.

So do you consider someone not voting a political act?

Yes I opt out of voting as a political act often- my non-participation is a statement about opting out

Politics is defined as how a society organizes, distributes, and/or contests power, authority, and resources

Bitcoin is a money yes… in the sense that UTXOs have a spendable monetary value but the network itself is a “network of nodes”- a society, so to speak and rough consensus is the means by which that society is exercising decision making

How do we decide softforks? That’s a political activity

Programmable electronic cash has to upgrade regularly

Those upgrades require political activity- rough consensus for a soft fork

Well right, but if you don't participate in the politics, then you aren't being political. If politics is how we participate in decision making and you don't participate-you don't make a decision-how can it be political? You can't be moving and still at the same time.

By that premise, then sure Bitcoin is a decision making machine. But it's literally only machines doing the decision making. I don't decide that ocean finds the next block, ant finds the one after that, and I find the one after that. No one does.

It's an organization of sorts-of transactions-but to my initial point, the participation in that unit of account only enables the individuals to participate in every other aspect of their lives. If we didn't live in this shit storm, it wouldn't be political and neither would sex, gender, the climate. All of that shit got thrown in and manipulated in order to manipulate us. It made those things political that it gave other people the ability to manipulate us.

Bitcoin can't manipulate. It can't be manipulated. If everything is political, then yes, Bitcoin is political. But in the world outside of that purview, it's just a store of value and medium of exchange. It's just money.

Fiat is political. Bitcoin is the abstention from politics.

I see your point but I think we’re just going to have to realize we are operating from two separate axioms

And as long as that is true, from our own foundational premises we are both right 🤷🏼‍♀️

Lol. Yeah, I was getting there. This was very thought provoking. Thanks for the food for thought.

The pleasure was mine! Thanks 🙏

I wouldn't have taken it that easy on him

Dude ignored the dictionary and made up his own meanings of words and wasted a bunch of your time refusing to clarify his made up words

That's just bad behavior, not much of an "axiom"

He's also one of my gangstalkers on here

He gang stalks you?

He's not a core driver but he's one of the many people that have joined the bandwagon. Basically all the high follower npubs have though, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it since it gets really annoying to everyone if I keep pointing them out to everyone all the time

Oh well… it seems like you’re a dev of some sort so I’m sure you know about good opsec

But I would say maybe start wearing some black obsidian 😉 always works in a pinch

I don't believe you but I might try it anyway because you could know something I don't 🤙

If you decide to give it a shot… let me know what you think :)

How would not being political make something political?

It sounds like you just don't know what political means

You're still here huh