An early trope about Bitcoin was that it was ‘non-political’ money. That’s a tantalizing notion, given the ugliness of politics. But a monetary system is a social system, technology is people , and open source software development requires intensive collaboration—particularly around a protocol with strong network effects. When the group is large enough and the subject matter important enough, human relations become politics. I think that is true even when it’s not governmental (read: coercive) power at stake.
Bitcoin’s politics burst into public consciousness last week with the “ whiny ragequit ” of developer Mike Hearn. In a Medium post published ahead of a New York Times article on his disillusionment and departure from the Bitcon scene, Mike said Bitcoin has “failed,” and he discussed some of the reasons he thinks that.
As do most people responding to the news, I like Mike and I think he’s right to be frustrated. But he’s not right on the merits of Bitcoin, and his exit says more about one smart, impatient man than it does about this fascinating protocol.
But there is much to discover about how governance of a project like Bitcoin will proceed so that politics (in the derogatory sense) can be minimized. Stable governance will help Bitcoin compete with governmental monetary and record-keeping systems. Chaotic governance will retard it. We just need to figure out what “stable governance” is.
If you’re just tuning in, usage of Bitcoin has been steadily rising , to over 150,000 transactions per day. That is arguably putting pressure on the capacity of the network to process transactions. (And it undercuts thin, opportunistic arguments that Bitcoin is dead .)
Anticipating that growth, last May developer Gavin Andresen began pushing for an expansion of the network’s capacity through an increase in the size of “blocks,” or pages on the Bitcoin […]
