A Force for Good
The Superiority of Decentralized Systems:Nature doesn’t do hierarchical systems, humans do. And normally we create hierarchical systems to solve the problems of scale. Bitcoin solves one of the main problems of hierarchical systems, which is that the people who rise to the top become corrupted and gradually subvert the hierarchical system to serve their own needs. Hierarchical systems don’t scale and they don’t deliver equality for very long. Decentralized systems scale and as long as the rules they are based on operate, they can level the playing field for all participants. If you can put a decentralized system next to a hierarchical system and people have a choice to choose between the two, the decentralized system will always deliver more value to every node within the network, and it will do so with better accountability, better predictability, less uncertainty, less risk, and it is much harder to corrupt and co-opt, and now we’re doing it to money for the first time in history. That’s a very big deal.
Bitcoin as a Force for Social Good:
Bitcoin is really all about the other 6 billion people. About 3 billion people have no bank accounts. About 1 billion people have ample access to credit and large pools of liquidity, so they can start businesses, buy homes, etc. They have access to international finance, transferring money and conducting international trade without many restrictions. The middle 3 billion may have bank accounts, but those bank accounts have currency controls, and those people don’t have the ability to do international trade. They are stuck in a currency controlled by a central bank that uses inflation as a means to steal from the people. Essentially inflation becomes a form of taxation.
This stolen money usually goes to buy guns and tanks and bombs, which is why I’m in Bitcoin. In the state of human affairs, if you ask a nation to divest its wealth in order to fund war, the only way you can do that is by stealing, by lying, by cheating. If you ask for the consent of the governed to fund war, they will say no. They would rather fund healthcare, education or development. So when you have a currency that is not subject to central bank control, you achieve separation of money and state. You take away the power of state to use money as a means of control and enrichment. Until now, each government was able to apply control through money, by issuing it, taxing in that money and controlling the flow of money into and out of that country. Bitcoin is not the 194th currency, it is the first global currency. It is the first algorithmic currency. We can trust mathematics because we can predict exactly what will happen on the Bitcoin network.
We have the opportunity, not to bank the other 6 billion, but to unbank all 7 billion of us. We have the opportunity to allow the developing world to leapfrog directly from cash-based societies to digital cash societies and bypass the entire failed experiment of central currencies from the western world. They will take the opportunity just like they leapfrogged landlines and went directly to cellphones.
Global Remittance Innovation:
One of the most exciting financial solutions is the ability of the payment networks to do peer-to-peer payments, the most important of which is global remittances. Global remittances are a $510bn market, where migrant workers send that money back home to support families in the poorest nations in the world. Today, Western Union and similar companies extract $74 billion in fees for those services. Even as the developed world provides $150 billion in direct foreign aid to the top of the pyramid in the hopes that it trickles down, we steal $74 billion from the base of the pyramid. That money could go to sanitation, clean water, healthcare, food. This is not our money, it’s theirs, and it just means we need to take it away from Western Union. And that couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of crooks.
Bitcoin as a Global Reserve Currency:
In North America, we have the world’s reserve currency. It’s a good, stable currency. A lot of libertarians and Austrian economists will say: "The dollar sucks." Yes, the dollar sucks, but it sucks 193 times less than the other 193 other currencies. So when we ask why does Bitcoin matter in North America, the answer is: it doesn’t. It matters far more in every other place in the world. You go to Argentina; their currency is devaluing at 30% per year. People’s savings are disappearing before their eyes. Their futures are being stolen by a central bank. For these people, Bitcoin is a choice that allows them to achieve economic independence.
