As part of an on-going Tweetstorm Series, we showcase excellent Twitter threads on the most interesting topics in the industry and publish them here in blog format for easier consumption and sharing beyond twitter.
Today, we feature Yassine Elmandjra and his analysis of the implications of Bitcoin based on the book "The Sovereign Individual".
A thread on the implications of Bitcoin: The Sovereign Individual edition
There is no development that will contribute more dramatically to the disaggregation of sovereignty and the rise of government à la carte than the emergence of a non-state money that transcends physical borders.
Human cultures have blind spots. We have no vocabulary to describe paradigm changes in the largest boundaries of life, especially those happening around us. Before an age can be reasonably sandwiched in the "middle" of two other ages, it must have already come to an end.
What many fail to understand is that government issued money is a modern invention. For people reared in a century saturated in politics, the idea that life could go on without it seems inconceivable. But Bitcoin allows individuals to declare monetary independence. It gives diplomatic immunity from the political woes that have beset humans in times and places. It puts into question the megapolitical basis of economic organization. As a result, the unspoken theories about the way the world works become increasingly irrelevant and obsolete.
Bitcoin's unapologetic rise will make it crucial that you see the world anew. It means looking from the outside in to reanalyze much of what you have taken for granted. Bitcoin transcends locality. It involves nothing less than the instantaneous sharing of data everywhere and nowhere at once. For the first time, Bitcoin as a monetary system creates an infinite, non-terrestrial realm for economic activity.
The building blocks of a non-state monetary economy are almost bound to come into existence on a large scale. As they do, the capacity for the state to confiscate wealth will shrivel. Control over money will migrate from the halls of power to the global marketplace. Bitcoin's market forces will lay the foundation for these building blocks, compelling societies (and corporations) to reconfigure themselves in ways that the public will neither comprehend nor welcome.
Why don't people get Bitcoin? To see outside an existing system is like being "a stagehand trying to force a dialogue with a character in a play." It breaches a convention that helps keep the system functioning, and breaching conventions are neither welcomed nor advertised by conventional thinkers. As a consequence, Bitcoin may end up illegal in many jurisdictions.
But so was sending a fax message.
Eventually, even powerful nation states, bound by current trends to work to prevent the emergence of a non-state money, will not wish to exclude the prosperity it brings to residents of the globe. The competition that Bitcoin brings will drive governments to engage not in a competition of a military kind, but one of providing assurances to wealth. At the very least, Bitcoin will discipline top-down monetary authority.
If not, the migration of wealth into Bitcoin will be of hydraulic-like pressure. Like all truly radical institutional change, while the full implications have yet to be understood, they remain incredibly profound.
Read this book (The Sovereign Individual) if you haven't already.
About the author
Yassine is a cryptocurrency analyst at ARK Invest, an asset management firm focused exclusively on disruptive innovation. You can follow him on Twitter @yassineARK for more commentary on Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency markets.
