The intersection between blockchains and democracy. “Democracy” is a loaded word where people project a lot of things. Democracy without restraints (human rights, civil rights, constitutional protections) is a brutal system. I don’t think Bitcoin is a democracy – rather it is a flat, network-based, collaborative system of super-majority consensus among five constituencies (users, developers, exchanges, merchants, miners), which makes change very difficult. It is a radical decentralization of power. Some people call the politics of this system “cypherpunk,” “crypto-anarchy,” and other words we don’t yet have. Bitcoin and open public blockchains are redefining political systems, organisational systems, freedom of speech, and freedom of association on a transnational basis. Democracies today are systems of hierarchical institutions born out of the era of industrialisation. It doesn’t scale any more. We have the ability to produce enough food and energy for everyone, but we just can’t distribute it.
What is the structure of consensus? The different constituencies of the ecosystem. Coalitions, influencers, and pundits. Noise doesn’t change the consensus rules. Talk is cheap but real changes play out between live participating nodes on a network protocol with game theory economic incentives overriding everything else. You can be right or you can be wrong, but if you break consensus you’ll be poor either way. People may signal they want one thing, but execute something else, holding on until they start losing money.
This is part of a talk which took place on June 6th 2017 at a joint meet-up with Blockchain Professionals, BitcoinSYD and SydEthereum in Sydney, Australia: https://antonopoulos.com/event/blockchain-professionals-sydney/
Watch the full talk here: https://youtu.be/rpeceXY1QBM
RELATED:
Hard Promises, Soft Promises: Promoting Autonomy instead of Authority – https://youtu.be/UJSdMFPjW8c
Forkology: A Study of Forks for Newbies – https://youtu.be/rpeceXY1QBM
The Consensus Balance of Power – https://youtu.be/q6NbTB1af88
Ethereum, ICOs, and Rocket Science – https://youtu.be/OWI5-AVndgk
Governance trade-offs in decentralised systems – https://youtu.be/dtwaW79Fj7c
What is the role of nodes? – https://youtu.be/fNk7nYxTOyQ
Politics and counter-economics – https://youtu.be/t0NyxRftGBo
Fee markets, SegWit, and scaling – https://youtu.be/zxt-FLzZPhg
Unstoppable code – https://youtu.be/AQx3E3F8Kz4
Hardware, Software, Trustware – https://youtu.be/Etyjc1JdmFU
Decentralised immunity from state-sponsored attacks – https://youtu.be/ZBuHOGufW14
A voluntary alternative to mandatory currencies – https://youtu.be/5ogv3Eya9nQ
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin.
Follow on Twitter: @aantonop https://twitter.com/aantonop
Website: https://antonopoulos.com/
He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters.
THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internet-Money-collection-Andreas-Antonopoulos/dp/1537000454/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
MASTERING BITCOIN: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042
[NEW] MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388
Subscribe to the channel to learn more about Bitcoin & open blockchains!
If you want early-access to talks and a chance to participate in a monthly LIVE Q&A with Andreas, become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/aantonop
Music: “Unbounded” by Orfan (https://www.facebook.com/Orfan/)
Outro Graphics: Phneep (http://www.phneep.com/)
Outro Art: Rock Barcellos (http://www.rockincomics.com.br/)
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Proof of stake.. is as good as democracy..
This guy is Satoshi
His politics is repulsive, boring and wrong. Strict materialism, nothingness ("openess"), abolition of value and beauty ("radical egalitarianism".
People just don't understand few basic but most important things about BTC and why they are set up like that.
The only thing that can keep it in its current decentralized form is to have people all around the world mine bitcoin, and by doing so creating un-penetrable network of computing power… ie hashing power.
The only way to have this vast amount of hashing power, is for those people to have an incentive to do so, as no one will be putting in their own money into setting up mining rigs and farms, using lot of power, and then spending more money on maintenance and network costs… at a loss.
Nodes do not protect the network, neither do users that just buy/hold/trade. Sure, the users give it VALUE, but they do not protect the network in any shape or form.
Now, there are only 2 incentives for miner to keep mining: the rewards from mining blocks and transaction fees
As time passes by, the number of mined blocks is reduced every 4 years (that part of incentive is always in decline and eventually will be gone completely) so with time other incentive must keep increasing. With more adoption, the number of users increases, and therefore number of transactions increases, and this is how it should be.. by design.
Now IF, the miners follow what the Core devs are insisting on, not allowing larger blocks and instead creating side chains, this will not allow ANY more increase of transaction capacity on main blockchain, and ALL EXCESS transactions will be directed to these new layers, which is what Lightning network is as well… and those fees (which should be miner's incentives), go to corporations that own the code of these new layer protocols.
This is why the Core devs are talking lies about miners, using quite a few of their advocates to make people side against miners and with Core devs (as people clearly don't know any better).
Core devs are bought and working for corporations. They broke the fundamental rule of miner consensus… and thy are also trying to FORCE their agenda… and it is the miners are that under attack, not other way around.
Climate Change haha. I think you did not look at this hoax very closely.
Crypto-anarcho-capitalism
All though bitcoin is amazing, it falls because there is a limited amount of bitcoin in the world, their won't be enough bitcoin for everyone.
It would be interesting if the government would make someone similar.
what the founding fathers (the evil white slave owners you speak of) created was a constitutional republic, they hated democracy as much as they hated monarchy. In those days slavery was not thought of like it is now, now we pay our slaves minimum wage and let them fend for their own food, clothing and shelter. what these men created, is still the highest form of governance man has yet achieved and I have great admiration for all the time, thought, prayer, debate, and blood they gave up to do so and allow me and my children the life we have. they deserve far more respect than to be called racist slave owners.
was that Tom Scott asking questions?
my main concern about what has been happening lately to promote development in bitcoin is that
1.- our machines have better consensus system than us
2.- it doesn´t matter how you name your fork or how soft you make it look, you are imposing it because you can if you can
3.- there is no agenda for pressing issues, no decission made and in the meantime a bunch of geek blokes insult each other while making real people lose money
"We have enough meat" but we DONT distribute it.. we definitely can, we just choose to not.
Great stuff 🙂
I love this kind of video. I am helping my friends to setup btc wallets and send them some coins to start up. By the way we are overtaking one Zeroprotocol coin as community and hope we will succeed. It is planned to be for everyday use. Bitcoin is for peoples freedom.. That is why I started with crypto because it is interesting playground.
Great video. You should get on steemit!
What he does not want to say is : Bit coin is Socialism
Agreed with the point of view!
?FIRST!?