Bitcoin in stealth

Editor’s Note:

This article was contributed by Alexis, a French digital currency enthusiast, who translated this recently well-known article in the French "cryptocurrency circle" into Chinese. Previously, the report on the GBL escape case being tried in Dongyang Court attracted his attention, so he contacted Babbitt to authorize him to translate the article into French and spread it to the French cryptocurrency circle. After that, he will continue to bring the latest developments in the French cryptocurrency circle to Chinese users.

The author of this article, Jacques Favier, is a well-known blogger in the French cryptocurrency circle. He used to be a philosophy teacher. In this article, he chose a special angle to explain Bitcoin. His interpretation may enhance your understanding of the inevitability of Bitcoin. The original blog is: la voie du bitcoin (The road to Bitcoin)

Bitcoin in stealth

The most ridiculous argument to deny the potential of Bitcoin is that there is no sovereign state behind Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin has a strong anarchist tendency, it cannot develop. I say it is ridiculous because the land where I live, the European Union, has no real sovereignty for a long time, and the leaders have disappeared.

In the classical period of European history, Athenian democracy, ancient Roman law, and Alexander’s alleged divinity all formed Augustus’s role as emperor. The power of “the Senate and the Roman people” merged into the Roman emperor himself. As the first emperor of Rome, Augustus made a gold coin with his own head on the front to show “Father of the Country”, and on the reverse side, you can see the Sphinx, a famous monster in ancient Greek mythology, sitting in front of the gate of Thebes and asking passers-by its riddle, the correct answer is “man”.

The style of currency patterns did not change much for about two thousand years, even to Napoleon I. Although Napoleon's empire was established after the First French Republic, and the reverse side of the gold coins he minted at that time also had "République" (Republic) written on it, the currency style that clearly symbolized power continued.

When the euro came into circulation, there were many articles mocking or lamenting the lack of European characteristics on the new euro banknotes, with only empty doors and windows or suspended bridges printed on them. When EU leaders defended the new currency in Brussels, they said that the bridge represented the unity of the European people and the doors and windows represented Europe's openness and cooperation.

This is complete nonsense! The same designer also designed a new banknote for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2010. The style and symbol are exactly the same as the euro, except this time it features a door in ruins. Whether this is an ironic prophecy or not, it's hard to say.

But if even dictators now prefer to have buildings printed on banknotes rather than their own portraits, there must be a reason.

One reason: In an article published last year by La Fabrique titled “To Friends”, a group of writers called the “ Comité invisible ” (隐身的委员会) discussed为什么权力已不在政府机构之中. Now only the quiet temples (religious power) and abandoned castles (secular power) remain as the backdrop. The author of the article uses the example of the euro banknote to explain his theory: “What is the real situation of power? In fact, every European has a printed example in his pocket: power in modern society exists on the “foundation”. The essence of modern power is architectural, it非个人化. Representational, personal power no longer exists.”

They say that this power is not necessarily hidden. Even if it is hidden, it is the kind of hidden in Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Purloined Letter". "人之所以看不见权力，正是因为到处都能看见: in high-voltage wires, highways, intersections, supermarkets, and software. If it is hidden, it is hidden in underground water pipes, submarine cables, and data centers in the forest. Power is the organization of this engineered, installed, and designed world." In 1965, when Mitterrand ran for the French presidency, his portrait and infrastructure were printed on the poster together, which already reflected this change.

Competition in modern society is usually related to "foundations". For example, the Notre-Dame-de-L'Auberge airport plan. Those who resist such a plan will sooner or later be regarded as "terrorists". The strategy adopted by these anarchists is to "block the system". In the large-scale demonstrations against the reform of the young workers' contract in France in 2006, some anarchist posters read "The world depends on economic mobility to survive, so we have to block everything!". And judging from recent news, it is not only anarchists who have the concept of "blockade", even taxi drivers and farmers use similar strategies. What is surprising is that the government is actually watching calmly.

But what does all this have to do with Bitcoin? In a previous post, I have discussed Bitcoin from the perspective of “foundation”. At that time, I mentioned that the post office is an institution that can establish the foundation of various powers, even financial power. From the first post office established by the Thurn and Taxis family, to the Western Union International Remittance Company that evolved from the Western Union Telegraph Company based on Morse code technology, to the instant messaging technology used by Facebook and Google today, “foundation” has been constantly evolving with the development of history. In the case of Bitcoin,它的“基础”是区块链.

However, blockchain is fundamentally different from previous technologies because it is a technical system that cannot be controlled by any individual or government agency, and it is a communication technology that cannot be blocked by anyone, even dictators or terrorists. This is unprecedented. This also means that Bitcoin and blockchain have opened up new political thinking. Here we quote the "Invisible Committee" again: "For the concept of revolution, we are always deeply trapped in the political category and often underestimate technological change. Today's revolution no longer means the reorganization of a specific social institution, but a change in the world pattern based on the technological structure. We should realize that our world can no longer continue to operate as it is now, and we must have the desire from the bottom of our hearts to build a better world."

This isn’t to say we should use Twitter to protest (or organize), or to use social networks to comment on current events (which is usually just sarcasm), but the world keeps going on.

In another book, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of Humanity, Nations, and Business (The New Digital Age) (Jared Cohen, Eric Schmidt), Digital Age analyzed that网络其实是有史以来最大规模的无政府主义实验. This argument makes us realize that Facebook has not only provided a new political management model, but it is already a new type of political institution. The authors of this book, Cohen and Schmidt, even predicted that those who do not have social accounts will be investigated, and Facebook accounts will replace current ID cards. Governments, banks and other power institutions will never tolerate a person who hides personal information or does not have a social account.

It’s strange that the authors of the “Invisible Committee” don’t discuss Bitcoin, even though they describe the technological revolution that will change the basis of power in the world. With this decentralized infrastructure, anyone who wants to participate in changing the world can find the invisible bricks needed to build a new public house.

Ethereum: A platform that truly supports the implementation of smart contracts, which can run accurately according to the programmed program without the risk of cancellation, censorship, fraud, or even the need to employ a "trusted third party". Ethereum officially returns to the original ideal of the Internet, and also makes it possible for everyone to independently create their own democratic organization (the organization of the masses).

Augur: Makes serverless Ethereum prediction markets possible, creating a revolution in the way decisions are made. Augur operates without the need for a trusted entity. Its goal is to enable honest, open, and public prediction markets.

Storj: Through blockchain and P2P technology, it provides users with the most secure encrypted database on private cloud libraries.

There are also many other services, such as Otonomos, which hopes to provide a platform that allows anyone to create a legal entity in Singapore for free, and the shares of the entity can be traded through a cryptographic address similar to a Bitcoin wallet.

There is also Twister, a serverless social network built on Bittorrent and Bitcoin technology, and therefore also an encrypted and uncensorable communication tool.

Yes, it is time to realize that the current world model is undergoing a huge change! Although journalists were organized to visit the center of the technological revolution similar to Silicon Valley, they did not build anything except some useless infrastructure. This reminds us of the French writer Jules Verne (an early science fiction writer, author of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", "Journey to the Center of the Earth", "From the Earth to the Moon", and many of his fantasies later became prophecies). He was very interested in the operation of the machines at that time, but he did not pay much attention to the basic theories hidden under these machines. At that time, there were two different theories of automatic machinery, namely automaton theory and modeling theory, but Verne did not realize what impact these different theories would have. He frequently contacted experts in ballistics, geography, chemistry, physiology, biology, and geology and mining, so it is no wonder that he predicted the substantial technological revolution that took place in the 20th century!

Even in our own Bitcoin world today, designers don’t seem to know how to draw Bitcoin, always using a simple golden coin, but without a head, like the Euro. Some of them seem to want to reflect the characteristics of the Bitcoin digital currency in their designs as much as possible; but most of them still quote the style of The Matrix.

Looking further, there are some designs that attempt to emphasize the network characteristics of Bitcoin. As shown in the figure below, a lock is used to represent the security of Bitcoin, but I think this understanding is not quite accurate.

It is indeed difficult for artists to express the intangible and intangible nature of Bitcoin. In fact, it is difficult for all of us!