The Resentment of the Experts

In this paper, we will expand on some of the reasons why many of the early developers in bitcoin loathe capitalism.







These individuals see themselves as special. They have more knowledge, and they believe they are more intelligent than the other people around them. They look back to stories and tales of caste and status based societies. In these, they do not think about the degradation and poverty of the many, but their own fate. In that caste or status based society, one can always ascribe the conditions of the world to fate and to scenarios beyond one’s own control.







If you are poor or you’re a slave, it is because it is your place in society. There is never any reason for you to be ashamed of your place or your rank. There is nothing that is your doing. Your family cannot take fault with you. You cannot ask “why are you not King?” for to do so would invite the rejoinder “if I were a king, you would not be my family. If I were born a son of a king, I would have married Princess”. In this society, one has no fault for we can never be clever enough to choose our own parents.







In a meritocracy, in the world created in free market capitalism, in the world envisioned in the creation of bitcoin, every person determines their own fate. Your life is not fated, it comes from your own luck, judgement, effort and sweat. Those born with gifts need to apply them. Those with aptitude need to compete. Those who desire to alter the fundamentals of bitcoin, to restrict it, to leave it small, they will know their own missed chances. They see that they have been found wanting by their fellow man.







In bitcoin, they see nothing special. They see that the cryptography has been available for many years and in some cases decades. They see code that they could have created. They see missed opportunities. They are asked, “if you were there from the beginning and saw the potential, why didn’t you start mining in 2009?”. They see nothing special and do not understand that bitcoin is not simply an aggregation of cryptographic techniques.







We all have missed chances and things that we have failed at. The only true failure is when you give up and stop trying. Those trying to hold bitcoin back understand that their ambitions have not been fully gratified. They see their missed chances. They see the system that they believe they could have developed and they like to say how much better they could have made it. It is easy to pick on something and say that it is flawed, that it is not perfect and that they could have done better. The fact is very simple - they did not. They did not create the system and they are doing nothing to ensure its survival.







Bitcoin needs to grow. The only way that it will ever be successful is for it to have rapid user adoption. This is not some half-cocked idea that every person on earth must control access by their own wallet that acts as a full mining node. The vast majority of nodes will always be SPV nodes if bitcoin is to be successful. Most people will access their money using third-party tools. This was the way it always was meant to be and it is the way that it will scale and will work.







Those who resent bitcoin the most present themselves as its core supporters and experts. They state how they know more than us. They tell us about bitcoin and its cryptographic controls and yet they overlook the most fundamental aspect of bitcoin, the one that they could not understand and the sole reason none of them created it. That reason is economic. It is the economic aspects of bitcoin that make it what it is. It is the ability to take away the control others have over our lives through the reintroduction of the ability to manage our own finances. This simple understanding is the core to what makes bitcoin all that it is. It is not cryptography, it is not the mathematics, it is the modelling of economic risk.







No cryptographic system is perfectly secure. They are all probabilistic. Many will try and tell you otherwise but they are either lying or seeking to subvert the truth to their own ends. It is the interaction of markets and the individuals that make them up that creates the freedom that bitcoin can provide. This is what they seek to subvert. Those developers, the ones that fear markets and shy away from them, the ones who failed to understand and grasp enough of economic theory to have created bitcoin and now try and change the model a conscious of their own inferiority and feel humiliated.







These people talk about the sternness and unfairness of capitalism. It is the system mirrored in bitcoin. It is a system that allows everyone to provide for themselves according to their own contribution. It is not equal and nor can any system ever be equal unless we are equally destitute.







The call of bitcoin and capitalism together is simple; to each according to his accomplishments.







Everybody understands that many like ourselves have succeeded where we have failed. We know of those self-made people who started with less than us. We know the reproach on why we could not have been smarter, worked harder, achieved more and for those who give up, those who say that they understand and control bitcoin, the ones who sit dictating a world that they want to control, they look upon those who succeed with contempt. They bundle the entirety of the Chinese market into one nebulous whole and insult them. They call them the Chinese horde and treat them as if they are second class citizens.







The truth is that these people are fearful of their own failures. They criticise the Chinese and others in the mining industry within bitcoin from their own fears. All of these people feel unhappy under capitalism, not because it has not helped them immensely, but because they don’t have the position that they believe they deserve. A position that is only granted ever to the few and capitalism is granted on merit. Bitcoin is capitalistic. It is a system based on merit and achievement. Some of us will work forever and fail and others will be lucky and succeed with ease but the truth of the matter is that life is never fair and it is not about being fair it is about building as much as we can and that is something that does not lead to equality.







Many in the bitcoin community called for Satoshi’s bitcoin to be destroyed. None of these people have moved to destroy a single one of their own coins. They talk about what they are owed. They talk about the need for people to give back to them and forget that capitalism is about what you can give to others. Capitalism requires the merchant to deliver the most profitable solutions to the most people.







To the people in core and those who think that they know best the bitcoin, I say you suffer an inferiority complex. You see an unknown person and think that you must be better, that you could have created something better, that this system has flaws and you could have a solution that is better. The truth of the matter is none of you made a system that was better. Now, you seek to restrict and restrain, to hold back and limit that system through a sense of your own inferiority.







The miners all know and understand that bitcoin can scale many times its current size. None of them fear an 8MB or even a 20Mb block size increase and yet you hold the entire market hostage. You put in arguments about compromise and ignore your customers. You lie to people and denigrate others and this is what you call a fair and equal society.







Well, I for one reject your idea of society.







I see a world where people fight not with their fists and guns but through commerce. A world of trade. A world of open communication with people know that they have to work harder if they want to succeed. Not the lazy world we are in now but one where people are happy and celebrate their success. Where they are not afraid to gain an education. Not a nebulous degree with no purpose but something that actually helps them build a career and where academics are not lauded for their intellectual pursuits that have no focus or purpose. A world where applied research is considered more valuable than nebulous studies that no one will ever read.







Those who radically reject the idea of enlightenment are those who try to limit bitcoin. That philosophy of rationalism, utilitarianism and laissez-faire that has driven progress to the heights it is now is the heart of bitcoin. It is not altruistic, it is a struggle and it is a tragic vision but it is the only vision that has taken the majority of humanity and raised them to the heights we now stand upon.







To those in core, we separate those who have helped build, not through a desire for altruism that is expressed to the public but as a secret lie from those who try and tell us of the nature of bitcoin and how it is a sharing community of altruism and care. Bitcoin is a system of self interest. This is what we need to embrace. Those who are part of bitcoin and have been for a long many years need to remember this. Those gains that they sit upon far exceed any investment they have made to the system. Those that have lost because they did not invest early enough all sold out too soon can remember what could have been.







Those who seek to limit bitcoin search for a scapegoat, another the blame for their own faults and failings. They can say it was not my fault things did not go the way I wanted, it was the actions of this other. Capitalism and the system that will come from bitcoin is a society and social order which treats everybody according to the contribution that each of us make to the well-being of our fellow man. We are all the founder of our own fortune. For each in this society there is no place for those who resent the fortune of another who has done better. The world and bitcoin is for those who try and those who succeed. For there is no failure unless we give up.







There is no perfection. There never will be, the never can be. This is a tragic world. It is a world of pain and it is world of suffering and the only thing we can do to make it better is to engage in trade and commerce and seek to deliver solutions that provide profit to our investors because profit is that capital that is used to create more.







This is the world of bitcoin. It begins.