and at the low level, their systems are still running on COBOL. They are only taking Bitcoin seriously now because newspapers are not ridiculing it, and there is a glimmer of realization that this might be, “The Big One” the earthquake that destroys them forever. The reality is that they have absolutely no understanding about anything to do with Bitcoin. We know this is true, because immediately after the announcement Hearn made in the New York Times, the Bitcoin price fell dramatically. Anyone who understands Bitcoin would have known that Mike Hearn saying, “Bitcoin has Failed”, is meaningless drivel, and would not have run to their trading terminals to sell their Bitcoin. The fact that they did, shows they do not understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a machine that Mike Hearn has to manually crank to keep it going. Just how stupid can people be?

NO MIKE NO! DON’T GIVE UP NOW!!!

All the breathless chatter about R3CEABCDEFG is nothing more than hot air. They have no software, no plans for any software, and even if they did have a running platform right now, it will be at least a decade before it is completely rolled out. In software, a decade is three lifetimes. There is no way that banks can survive Bitcoin intact. Even without Bitcoin, the banking industry is rapidly transforming, closing its street branches, and then excluding people from entering branches if they do not have the correct level of account. They are restricting cash customers, routinely abusing them and behaving in hostile ways to entrepreneurs and in many areas, acting like an empire in its last days. R3 or no R3 Banks will not be able to adapt to Bitcoin quickly enough. They are held back by the computer illiterate crony capitalists who run them and by the State that regulates them.

Ideally, Bitcoin should not be about the wishes of the owners of any single company. It should be like the Internet, where you can build any service you want on it, set your own rules in software that uses its protocol, and then invite the public to use your service so you profit. In absentia of that, if Bitcoin must have a benevolent dictator, it should be a man of the correct character, philosophy and type.

A man of the incorrect type, is one that thinks it is ethical to block people’s accounts from the entire network because their lifestyle and market choices are unpopular. I’m talking about blocking the accounts of people who want to buy goods like plants or metalwork. Bitcoin is a purely technical challenge, and has nothing to do with the uses to which it is put. Its as insane as blaming the telephone company for crimes or adultery or obscenity spoken over telephone calls. The separation of the basic function of the Bitcoin network and the uses its users put Bitcoin to is crucial to understand, and has precedent in other areas (the Common Carrier exemption) and whoever becomes the Bitcoin Dictator should have a clear appreciation of this, and shun the idiotic wishes of people who want to cripple Bitcoin services.

As I have said before, the occupation of the man addressing Bitcoin is the lens through which he assesses it. Lawyers see a Regulatory Problem, Policy Wonks, policy wonkery, Economists see a money supply problem, the police see a crime problem and so on.

Just because your background is the law, this does not mean that your assumptions have anything to do with Bitcoin, the nature of software, or people’s right to write software and send messages to each other via a network. Your opinion has no validity, and no ability to influence how software works. Services will always route around you and your ideas. You will never catch it, cannot grasp it, and are doomed to fail. The unregulated internet changed “the environment” without you uttering a single word, holding a single conference, or anyone asking for your opinion or permission, and the changes have been entirely beneficial. The same is true for Bitcoin, and will be true for it going forward. You can either choose to fight it and lose, or go along with it and prosper. These are your only choices. There are no other choices for you.

Some are ridiculing the idea of “be your own bank”. Using Bitcoin actually does do away with the need for traditional financial services that banks routinely provide. That is one of the reasons why it was written and why people are building bank destroying services on top of it. There is nothing you cannot do with an iPhone and a Blockchain account that you could not do with a bank, and its completely unregulated and does not require your consent or approval. This is the true underlying objection that some types are making about he disruption of banks; a whole swathe of industries and opportunities to charge fees through management and ancillary services are being swept away by Bitcoin in the hands of millions, and the very thought of this makes them sick to their stomach.

What you think are appropriate services and their shapes and rules is binding only on you and your business; what someone halfway across the world does on their own server on the net is none of your business. You need to unlearn the thinking of a lifetime and accept the reality of Liberty; what people do with their own property is not your concern or the in the remit of the State to control. Again, there is nothing you can do about it, and you will never be able to change it.

Bitcoin companies that do it right and banks are not in a similar business. Banks and properly run Bitcoin companies like Blockchain are highly differentiated. Blockchain allows users to instantly sign up and receive and send and receive an unlimited amount of money to anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. Their users do not have to identify themselves, do not have to attend anywhere in person, do not have to sign a contract. The difference could not be more stark.

It is also a huge mistake to believe that the current crop of Bitcoin businesses in their present incarnations are going to be the default going forward. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of the internet knows this.

HotBot Search Engine

HotBot and Lycos seemed like forces of nature when they were online, and now they are gone. AOL for millions was the internet. After a stage of being the butt of jokes, its now not even that. The Bitcoin companies in the market today are by no means safe from complete disruption and elimination, and the ones that are most likely to be disrupted are those whose processes and thinking mimic the banks. The exchange that recently banned all Russian users, in absentia of any new law is a perfect new example. It is that banking, regulation obsessed model that is dead, and anyone imitating it is doomed to fail.

Blockchain on the other hand, is radically different. They actually post instructions on how to revoke your Bitcoin from them and leave the service; they make it easy. They do not claim to be the custodians of your Bitcoin, unlike other bankish services that do exactly that. How anyone can miss the differences between banks and these new companies is beyond me. Some companies may be modelling themselves on banks, but the ones who will ultimately disrupt on a global basis are actively shunning the bank model.

In conclusion, Bitcoin cannot “calm down” it is not a living person, and the people who use it and what they think has no bearing on anything other than the time at which they make a signature on it. The engineering problems that Bitcoin is facing are going to be resolved, probably by a mixture of warfare and software and gentle persuasion. That is how things are done on the internets. People who are not used to this, who think computers are Microsoft Windows, will have a hard time understanding what is going on. This is regrettable, however in order to protect Bitcoin its evident that these things need to be done.