October 21, 2024 | Read Online

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"To reject a world with bitcoin is to remove a possible lifeline for billions of people, any one of which might be you."

— Resistance Money

Book review: Why the world is better with bitcoin

The current crypto bull market has felt distinctly joyless and I think that's because it's lacked purpose.

Unlike previous cycles inspired by the hope and novelty of internet-native money, ICOs, DeFi or NFTs, the 2024 cycle was kickstarted by the distinctly uninspiring spot bitcoin ETF.

The simple purpose of an ETF is that it goes up, and if you listen to this cycle's loudest evangelist, Michael Saylor, you'll think that's the purpose of bitcoin, too — Satoshi Nakamoto's invention, by his telling, is simply something that goes up.

And it has, which is nice, but the narrative around bitcoin — increasingly removed from its cypherpunk roots — has become a bit soulless in the process.

Fortunately, I'm here to report that I've found an anecdote for that: "Resistance Money" — a book-length explainer on what bitcoin is and why it matters.

In a brisk 322 pages, the price of bitcoin gets nary a mention.

Instead, the book's mission is to make the reader think hard about whether bitcoin is a net positive for the world, irrespective of its fluctuating purchasing power.

It makes a compelling case that it is.

I'm not usually enough of a bitcoin guy to want to read a whole book on it — how much can there be to say about digital gold? — but I'm glad I did and I'd have happily read more.

Without looking at the cover, you'd never know that "Resistance Money" was written by academics — let alone a committee of them.

Co-authored by three professors of philosophy, "Resistance Money" is, among other things, a highly-readable reference book for responding to bitcoin's many critics.

The book methodically (but engagingly!) dismantles each and every critique of bitcoin — usually with the simple force of logic.

On bitcoin being used to evade sanctions, for example, the authors argue: "If you wouldn't accept payment from sanctioned entities on a bank's private ledger for fear of reprisal, you also wouldn't take this hot potato on a fully public ledger."

They do the same for bitcoin's carbon emissions ("Environmentalists can embrace bitcoin without betraying their values"), bitcoin as the criminal money-of-choice ("bitcoin's existence does not substantially increase things like money laundering"), bitcoin as ransomware currency ("effective countermeasures already exist for the ransomware that it enables"), and bitcoin as censorship-resistant money ("the world would be better off with perfectly uncensorable money") — as well as roughly 20 other common critiques of bitcoin.

All of the authors' rejoinders are offered thoughtfully and respectfully — "Resistance Money" is completely devoid of the counterproductive dismissiveness that's so pervasive among bitcoin's usual defenders.

The book also offers the best and most easily comprehensible explanation I've found on how bitcoin is created, recorded and sent around.

I usually skim over technical crypto explainers and I didn't make much more of an effort here, but the authors explain bitcoin's inner workings so cleanly that — with only minimal re-reading of the most technical parts — I learned how bitcoin works almost in spite of myself.

"Resistance Money" is just technical enough to make me feel like I (finally, for the first time) understand how bitcoin works and just not technical enough that I had a chance to get there.

I did not know, for example, that miners win blocks by finding a low-enough number, rather than an exact one ("This aptly named hash function spits out a number, and if it's 'low enough,' the miner wins") — and I now have an intuitive sense of how bitcoin's unspent transactions works ("UTXOs are like checks that pile up and never get cashed but do get bundled into larger checks when part of a larger transaction").

I also enjoyed learning the fun fact that "all possible private keys [for bitcoin] already exist…There are close to 10 ^77 private keys — within striking distance of atoms in the visible universe."

This is all incredibly useful and well worth the $25 cost of admission.

But the even better value in "Resistance Money" is the positive case the authors make for bitcoin — and the memorable way in which they choose to make it.

Behind the veil

My measure of a great book is how long I retain even a single idea or mental image from it.

"Resistance Money" already qualifies because its image of reasoning about bitcoin from "behind the veil" is an unforgettable one.

The authors make the positive case for bitcoin by asking you to forget who you are and imagine that, before your identity is revealed to you, you're invited to choose whether bitcoin should exist.

Would you rather re-enter a world with or without bitcoin?

Recalling that you might be revealed as a citizen of a country suffering chronic hyperinflation, or a persecuted Russian dissident, or a woman in Afghanistan, (or, in my money-centric imagination, someone who bought bitcoin at $1!) the authors will likely convince you that, without knowing who you are, you would undoubtedly prefer to live in a world with bitcoin.

Yes, you also risk finding out you were someone caught in a bitcoin scam — or the now-jailed purveyor of such a scam, such as SBF.

But the odds of those unfortunate outcomes are vanishingly small, relative to the one-in-four odds of being born into a country with a less-than-reliable monetary regime.

"Behind the veil, you know eight billion lives from the inside out. You don't know which is yours, but you do know that you might be one of the two billion people whose central banks have failed them. In that case, would you want access to an alternative? Might you want the option of using a rule-based monetary system without the risks imposed by trusted makers? We would. Perhaps you would too."

The case for choosing a world with bitcoin is even starker considering the one-in-two odds of being born into a country with an authoritarian government.

"By eliminating intermediaries, bitcoin empowers individuals to resist increasingly powerful institutions who would spy on, control, or block their money. Given the global prevalence of institutions who do all three, resistance money is choice-worthy behind the veil. If you didn't know who you'd be, you'd want bitcoin around just in case you might need to resist those institutions."

I find it impossible to argue with that — even as someone who's won life's lottery by being born into a prosperous country with limited government — because the authors also make a convincing case that we are all less removed from the risk of financial censorship than we probably think and should therefore welcome bitcoin's existence: "Resistance money is a vital check against the rising threat of authoritarian rule, a condition under which billions already suffer today."

If that sounds ideological to you, you will especially appreciate "Resistance Money" — it persuasively makes the case for why non-ideologues should care about bitcoin.

And not just because the price seems likely to go up.

— Byron Gilliam

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Matt Hougan @Matt_Hougan

Stablecoin AUM will top $1 trillion in 2026 imo, and that might be conservative.

tw profile: Radar🚨 Radar🚨 @RadarHits

BREAKING:

Payments company Stripe has bought stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion.

This is the biggest acquisition in crypto so far.

4:59 PM • Oct 21, 2024

93 Likes 9 Retweets

6 Replies

Sreeram Kannan @sreeramkannan

Forking cloud to crypto
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Open source platforms let you fork code.
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Open "state" platforms let you fork state.
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Blockchains are the exemplary open-state platforms.
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Web2 systems are NOT open state.

However, with zkTLS systems like… x.com/i/web/status/1…

tw profile: EulerLagrange.eth (on Farcaster) EulerLagrange.eth (on Farcaster) @Euler__Lagrange

Was thinking about social consensus and forking, and realized it's not really a property of blockchains.

All you need is data availability and verifiability to fork. With zkTLS, this means web2 networks can be forked.

For example, for Twitter, everyone just needs to export… x.com/i/web/status/1…

7:13 PM • Oct 21, 2024

38 Likes 3 Retweets

6 Replies

Noelle Acheson @NoelleInMadrid

What problem is bitcoin "solving for"? There are several:
1) The accelerating weaponization of financial access, even in developed economies
2) The accelerating debasement of fiat currencies
3) The growing need for a digital alternative to gold as a hard-cap store of value… x.com/i/web/status/1…

tw profile: Mike Still Mike Still @MikeStillBTC