What Bitcoin Did
DEBATE: CAN BITCOIN RESIST THE STATE? w/ Alex Gladstein & Fictitious Capital
- Bitcoin's role as a neutral, scarce monetary technology versus its capacity to drive systemic socioeconomic transformation; disagreement on causality of change (technology-driven vs. society-driven).
- "Big bad adoption thesis": whether Wall Street and state adoption undermines or facilitates Bitcoin's liberatory potential; comparison to the Trojan horse theory.
- Micro versus macro scaling challenges: evidence of Bitcoin mining improving energy access in African microgrids does not necessarily translate to solving global energy poverty or labor exploitation at systemic levels.
- War finance, labor arbitrage, and energy poverty as potential second-order effects of Bitcoin adoption under a fixed monetary standard.
- Difference between Bitcoin as a feature-rich technology and as a solution to root causes of exploitation; whether monetary reform addresses underlying power structures or merely redistributes access to capital.