Nakamoto Institute Daniel Krawisz: "I Don't Like Altcoins, but I Like Forks"

This week the founder of the Nakamoto Institute, and the developer of a bitcoin mixing tool called Shufflepuff, Daniel Krawisz, released a Youtube video giving an interesting perspective on the recent Bitcoin network fork. Krawisz is pleased with watching the forks unfold and believes the two competing currencies may discourage the technocracy of ruling developers.

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Forks Are Good Because They Give Investors Control

Daniel Krawisz is known in the bitcoin ‘community’ for his many efforts, including authoring many historical bitcoin essays and opinion pieces at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Further, Krawisz is also well-known for his stance towards altcoins, as he believes they are a scam and altcoin developers are basically ‘snake oil salesmen.’ Now you would think that Krawisz would be vehemently against the recent fork, which spawned the birth of another cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash. However Krawisz “is very excited to see everything happening — ‘For Real.’”

“In general I like forks — I don’t like altcoins, but I like forks, and the reason is; I think of a fork as being an evolutionary algorithm,” Krawisz states in his latest video. “You got regular bitcoin running along, and suddenly you got two bitcoins, they split, and there’s a mutation. There’s a little bit of difference between them, so now you say — ‘Which one do I like better?’”

Well you can put a little bit of money on either side to influence which one wins.

Krawisz says because everyone is invested in both chains there’s a very even playing field for the two competitors. “This is not like bitcoin versus an altcoin,” Krawisz explains. “The reason money is valuable is because of the network effect, and it connects you to other people. So you can have money that is not directly good for anything, but if it is the form of money that society has settled upon, as the one they use by default, it’s valuable because they are all connected with that money.”

Developers Should Be Below Investors

The network effect Krawisz details, is what makes money valuable and with a fork, the same investors own the same amount. To Krawisz this kind of removes the network effect’s power over investors and they can focus more on technical differences. With this technical competition, an investor can now decide which currency they believe is superior.

“So if you are good at designing bitcoin then you will make money by choosing the correct fork,” Krawisz says. “This is a process that rewards good designers, if you are good at designing you get more money, and if you’re bad at it, you get less money, and if you don’t want to get involved, you don’t have to do anything.”

To me forks are good because they put the investors in control. Investors are given a choice and they choose which one they like better. One thing that I don’t like in bitcoin is when developers have a higher social status than investors. It should be the other way around, developers should be below investors.

Bitcoin Investors Are Gods

Krawisz believes investors should think of themselves as a “god,” and the two chains represent two groups of people vying for the god’s favoritism. He says it’s better not to be loyal to one side because that’s how people lose money. But if one side is technically better, than as a god, you can give one side a little nudge in the right direction. The bitcoin god (investor) decides which bitcoin they will elevate to the heavens, and the other can be dumped into the pit of fire, says Krawisz.

The video further details what he thinks about the Ethereum situation and the power he believes Vitalik Buterin holds over the community. In this case, Krawisz thinks investors are worshipping their god Vitalik, and looking for him to shepherd them through the darkness. Overall Krawisz seems very pleased with the bitcoin fork, because in his opinion it will lessen the godliness of developers, and remove the technocracy by putting the power back into the hands of investors. Additionally, he explains he’s written about the subject before in an essay called “Who Controls Bitcoin?”

What do you think about the statements and opinions Daniel Krawisz holds towards the fork? Do you agree forks may lessen the problem of technocracy? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, Pixabay, and Twitter.

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