The design of Bitcoin as seen from the doubts about Li Ka-shing

Chapter 0 Introduction

Because Li Ka-shing has withdrawn a large amount of capital from the mainland and Hong Kong in the past few years and transferred it overseas, it has caused a huge disturbance. In the mainland, everyone from the grassroots to the National Development and Reform Commission has expressed their opinions. The most widely spread voices are generally in two directions. One is to accuse Li of political and business means, and then conclude that he is treacherous, and even call for "don't let Li Ka-shing run away"; the other is the contract theory, expressing fear of moral kidnapping. Anyway, some people applaud and some hate it. But the latter is more.

In fact, everyone is struggling between legitimacy and legality. In this debate, I can see the following differences among the participants:

1. In business philosophy, is profit above all else the highest standard?

2. Legality is the only bottom line for business.

3. In business, which is more important, integrity or loyalty?

4. Which should capital be responsible for: family interests or national interests?

I personally hold the contract theory, and I hate those who deprive wealth in the name of morality. But I dare not criticize the pan-moralization (they always try to expand the power of moral consciousness) because I really can't scold them, and "they" include most of my relatives and friends. I only dare to make a little voice in the Bitcoin community.

No matter what view you hold on the Li Ka-shing incident, it is difficult to ignore or be hostile to the other side's views, because they exist objectively and will exist for a long time, and because they can indeed make a lot of sense.

I read KK's "Technical Elements", which contains this passage:

“When faced with a stupid technology, the reasonable response is to create a better technology yourself; when faced with a stupid idea, the reasonable response is not to ban it, but to replace it with a better idea. ”

Yes, KK is right. The most reasonable approach is to ban backward things and invent better things to replace them.

This article attempts to analyze Bitcoin's design to see whether Bitcoin can inject some progressive power into social concepts.

Chapter 1 Bitcoin ensures that capital has no borders

Capital is a form of existence without national consciousness, or in other words, capital is controlled by consortiums without national consciousness.

Capital is naturally profit-seeking. Although national borders cannot stop it, governments always find ways to obstruct it, and of course more often to tempt it.

Before the founding of Israel, the Jews only had a nation but no country, but they have been engaged in transnational trade in the world for hundreds of years. With capital in their hands, they have been fighting desperately against various governments. In history, the British government, the French government, and most notoriously the Nazi government, have all robbed Jewish property and even directly massacred Jews.

Li Ka-shing is a Hong Kong Chinese, and was even born in mainland China. However, his capital gene comes from British capital, and the profit-seeking nature of capital will not change just because he is Chinese. Li Ka-shing transferred domestic assets to overseas, which is the nature of capital. However, it is this nature that Chinese people make groundless accusations.

In modern civilization, open robbery is no longer acceptable, and killing is wrong. Governments have invented "credit currency" and central banks to restrict the flow of capital, and to make some money by taking advantage of others.

Modern credit currencies and central banks are complacent and have imposed a lot of obstacles on large-scale capital circulation. The efficiency of capital circulation has had to be compromised, and at the same time, extremely small payments have been basically restricted.

Bitcoin is a decentralized currency. With Bitcoin, no central bank or government can block the circulation of currency. Bitcoin itself has no national attributes, unlike the RMB, which has Chinese attributes, and the US dollar, which has American attributes. Bitcoin is Bitcoin, and has nothing to do with nationality.

When it comes to large payments, especially huge payments, Bitcoin's payment efficiency is unparalleled. At the same time, even extremely small payments can be confirmed in 10 minutes.

Bitcoin also provides a higher level of security for wealth than credit currencies. The central bank cannot freeze your Bitcoin.

If the power and public opinion of the mainland can make Li Ka-shing's real estate, securities, and legal currency "stay put", but if Li Ka-shing holds Bitcoin, no one can stop him from transferring it, of course, the premise is that Li Ka-shing has it. In this regard, Li Ka-shing's Horizons Ventures is one of the investors who participated in the $30 million Series A financing of Bitcoin company BitPay.

Chapter 2 Bitcoin protects capital privacy

I once deposited 50,000 yuan in the Bank of Communications. On that day, I received three calls for financial management recommendations and one for credit cards. Well, the credit card I use now from the Bank of Communications was issued that time.

Banks and their friends (who knows who they are) know how much money we have deposited in the bank, and the government, as the manager of the bank, knows where your money comes from and goes.

If you go abroad, if you want to use cash instead of using a government-managed bank, then the amount of cash you can carry is limited. For example, if you go to the United States, you cannot carry more than $10,000.

How much money does Li Ka-shing have? Yes, Big Brother is watching you.

Would you be afraid? We all think, hey, I have this little money, it’s okay, the country won’t care about it and do bad things. Yes, for the vast majority of ordinary law-abiding people, as long as they don’t violate the law, using legal currency is very superior and convenient. But it is still the consensus of most people to let others not know how much money we have, otherwise why would there be so many people crying poor in society. (Of course, there are also people who show off their wealth, who knows what they want to do, generally they want to be famous, then make more money, and then hide it.)

It is an urgent need for the rich to hide their wealth from the state, relatives, and the poor, especially in our country where moralism prevails and the legal system has not yet been fully established.

Bitcoin, if you use Bitcoin, you can freely hide your wealth. What's more surprising is that you can also freely show off your wealth, and then immediately become invisible after showing off your wealth.

Bitcoin uses a public-private key pair to confirm wealth. The public key can be made public to the entire network, allowing you to show off your wealth freely. If you have the private key, it means that you own the bitcoins corresponding to the public key. Your personal information has nothing to do with the public key or the private key. And you can apply for countless pairs of public-private keys to disperse your wealth as much as possible.

With Bitcoin, you can do it, and no one can know how much money you have. For businessmen like Li Ka-shing, when they want to show their wealth to the outside world, they only need to make their public key public and sign with their private key. After that, they can immediately hide their wealth in other public keys.

Chapter 3 Bitcoin builds automated transaction arbitration

Cases of breach of contract in business are endless, and lawsuits are even more numerous.

In order to avoid transaction defaults, humans have created a large number of moral constraints and designed complicated laws. If an automatic arbitration method can be established to avoid both parties from investing huge amounts of money in lawsuits after a default, it would be a great benefit.

The so-called automatic arbitration transaction is to write the transaction rules in the form of code on the blockchain. As long as the triggering conditions are met, the transaction will be completed automatically.

Because Bitcoin is programmable, we can write settlement rules into payments.

For example, A purchases a batch of goods from B, and B ships the goods. A then initiates a conditional payment to B. The condition can be a certain period of time before settlement, or settlement can be made after a third party evaluates the goods. This lowers the moral requirements for both parties to the transaction.

Li Ka-shing is a big businessman. You may think that his transactions must be based on moral consensus, and if there is a breach of contract, he will go to court. If he wants to do automatic arbitration transactions, he must want to do something illegal. Wrong, Li Ka-shing needs automatic arbitration transactions more than ordinary people. Li Ka-shing has 500 lawyers. How much money has he invested? In the future, for Li Ka-shing, perhaps he should hire a few programmers to replace a large number of lawyers.

Automatic transaction arbitration can also be used to pay wages. Too many jobs are settled by the hour. If the conditions for paying wages are written into the conditional transactions between bosses and employees, many accountants will be laid off.

Every year, there are always some migrant workers who die because they cannot get their wages. Even though the government has forced contractors to deposit a fixed amount of funds in advance before starting work, it has not been eradicated. Bitcoin's automatic transaction arbitration may be a solution.

Chapter 4 Bitcoin Establishes a Fair Capital Power Structure

In today's business world, the top of the power structure of capital is the government and banks. They are in charge of the right to issue currency, they can control your funds and supervise your capital flow. Government banks also make a fortune from this. No matter which city you go to, the bank buildings are particularly beautiful and luxurious.

However, banks and governments do not exercise their power in an honest and efficient manner, but are corrupt and inefficient, especially abusing the power of over-issuing currency. This has caused great suffering to ordinary people, and the currency in our hands has been depreciated again and again.

A tycoon like Li Ka-shing is rich enough to rival a country, but he is only rich in terms of wealth. He cannot rival power, and he is even afraid of it to death.

In the world of Bitcoin, the issuance of currency and the accounting of transactions are returned to the people. Computing power has become power, which requires the consumption of real wealth to build, and cannot be obtained by nonsense such as "divine right of kings". It is fair to obtain power through proof of work (POW).

By consuming electricity and using the proof-of-work method, power is acquired. At the same time, blockchain rewards are obtained, that is, currency is issued. This is the fairest power structure I have ever seen.

This kind of electricity consumption gives everyone the same opportunity. Perhaps proof of work is the "undifferentiated social labor" that Marx and others have been pursuing.

Li Ka-shing may have already sensed the power contained in Bitcoin, otherwise why would he invest in BitPay?