It’s The People, Not The Protocol, Stupid!

“It’s not about the currency” has become the de facto mantra of Andreas M. Antonopolous and the rest of the Church of Satoshi. Magical dreams of decentralized multi-sig, smart escrow, and trustless cupcakes abound. Hell, even autonomous quadcopters that pick up your morning coffeei seem like reasonable prospects to these sheepish consumers of technologyii. Said “Bitcoiners” are all about the platform/protocol and the social revolutioniii they’ll facilitate, not about the dallah dallah bills, yo!

Exhibit A: (Edit: Original image was a screenshot of Alvin’s presentation from the Amsterdam Bitcoin Conference 2014 that said something along the lines of “bitcoin’s about the protocol, stupid. Sadly, this gem of an image was lost in a hosting move on October 12, 2014.)

Alvin Lee - Amsterdam Bitcoin Conference

As much as I’d love to get a good laugh from Alvin Lee’s presentation, I won’t be heading to Amsterdam any time soon.iv I could read his presentation on /r/bitcoin or CoinDesk just as easily, it’s nothing new. “Technology will save us! Just as soon as someone else invents it! We’ll let you know as soon as they do!”

In global manufacturing, just as it always has, technology eliminates and relocates jobs. In finance, jobs on Wall Street and in The City will be eaten up by Bitcoin, but the invention of the distributed blockchain can’t replace creativity and trust. Kurzweil’s singularity be damned.

In the words of ben Popescu:

mircea_popescu: inasmuch as bitbetv can resolve bets, it can run off with all btc whether you multisig or not.
mircea_popescu: the reason bitbet is trusted is for proper reasons, ie, being run by trustworth people.
mircea_popescu: not because of improper nonsense, such as “it couldn’t gyp us”.
mircea_popescu: i understand that there’s a very strong desire in the socially-challenged for replacing girlfriends with porn, but that’s not how finance works.
mircea_popescu: or copulation, for that matter.
mircea_popescu: you’ll always need people. and that’s a good thing, because if you didn’t the planet’d be pretty darn barren by now.

 Fucking and Finance: they’re about the people, not the protocol.

And we wouldn’t want them any other way.

___ ___ ___

  1. From Remedy Café, perhaps?
  2. Such consumers fall neatly into the “Citizens of Fiat” camp.
  3. Viva la Bitcoin 2.0 Revolución! Except there’s still no Bitcoin 1.0, and there may never be. 2.0 is a bit of a leap, if not a bit of a scam.
  4. I won’t be in Amsterdam, but I will be in Toronto next month for the equally pointless but hometurffed Bitcoin Expo, which will surely provide more lulz than my typing can possibly reconnoitre.
  5. BitBet has been in the news of late after MP bet 1,000 BTC that bitcoin would outperform Berkshire-Hathaway A shares. You can bet against him at some seriously impressive odds.

5 thoughts on “It’s The People, Not The Protocol, Stupid!

  1. […] M. Antonopolous might be the most famous voice of “the community”, but I’ve already ragged on him more than he deserves and he’s far from the only one. To whit, this /r/bitcoin post by […]

  2. […] Anthony left the stage, /r/Bitcoin idol Andreas M. Antonopolous took the mic to pre-scold the “creepy assholes” in the crowd who might heckle anyone […]

  3. […] know that Bitcoin isn’t about the technology anymore, it’s about the people, so now we’re comparing Mircea Popescu with a full cast of shady characters. It’s […]

  4. Mitchell says:

    This is so relevant, especially in bitcoin. Well said pimp Pete! Cheers to the great ones.

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