Bitcoin's True Essence: A Political Revolution by Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan

Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase, unveils a compelling vision of Bitcoin not just as a financial innovation but a potent force for political revolution.

By challenging centralized power and fostering a global, consensus-based governance model, Bitcoin stands at the forefront of a major societal transformation.

Dive into Srinivasan's insights to explore how Bitcoin could redefine the essence of politics and governance, merging diverse ideologies into a unified vision for the future.

Exploring the Purpose and Social Significance of BTC

On March 2, 2024, Balaji Srinivasan, the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the major American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, expressed that while Bitcoin can be seen as an innovation for storing and transferring large sums of money, its true essence lies in being a political revolution.

Reviving Politics Based on Consensus

In his extensive post, Srinivasan delves into "the purpose and social significance of Bitcoin," explaining that BTC has the potential to halt "meaningless wars" and "excessive currency issuance."

He further elaborated that Bitcoin revives "politics based on consensus," envisioning a world where Bitcoin holders function as "the ultimate international union, the ultimate government."

The New World Created by BTC

Srinivasan states that "Bitcoin reverses centuries of power centralization," blending "the egalitarian global government of the internationalist left" with "the limited local government of the capitalist right."

He argues that traditional "rules-based order" is no match for the "participatory order through the internet" that has already seen millions in America and China using Bitcoin to cast a vote against both the Democratic and Communist parties.

A Harsh Blow to Foolish States

Highlighting Bitcoin's adoption in countries like El Salvador and Bhutan, Srinivasan describes early adoption as a "political IQ test," where small and smart governments can succeed while large and foolish states will face significant setbacks.

He suggests that some nations may start attacking BTC, potentially leading to confiscation attempts.

Balaji Srinivasan's Full Post on The Purpose of Bitcoin

THE PURPOSE OF BITCOIN

The purpose of Bitcoin is to shatter the welfare/warfare state and return power to the people.

Yes, you can understand it as technological innovation — as a better way to hold and send large amounts of money — but at its core it is political revolution.

It stops both Putin's war machine and Powell's money printer. It defunds the secret police and the NGOs calling for defunding the police. It rewards places that attract skilled immigrants and punishes those that cannot protect property rights.

It does all this by breaking the 20th century centralized state's business model, by breaking both the wealth seizure of Communism and the money printer of Keynesianism. Because Bitcoin is money that can't be seized and monetary policy that can't be manipulated.

So, think of Bitcoin as the ultimate zero-based budgeting. It zeros out everything that centralized states spend money on. It ends the wars and starves the beast. And then, it allows free people to decide from scratch what collectives they want to form, what public goods they want to crowdfund, and what they want to voluntarily do together as a society.

In a word, it restores consensual government. You just don't do what you have not consented to do.

Because Bitcoin reverses several centuries of power centralization in a few decades of decentralization. It fuses the egalitarian global government of the internationalist left with the limited local government of the capitalist right. It does this by transferring sovereignty from each centralized local state to a decentralized global network, where the collective of Bitcoin holders act as the ultimate bond vigilantes, the ultimate international union, the ultimate government of governments.

And DC's declining "rules-based order" cannot match the legitimacy of this ascending Internet opt-in order. We already see tens of millions of Americans and Chinese alike voting against both Democrats and Communists by voting with their wallet for Bitcoin. Their states may be gearing for pointless war, but on the network these two great nations are at peace. Bitcoin Americans may not trust the Chinese state, and Bitcoin Chinese may not trust the American state, but neither of them trust their own states as much as they trust Bitcoin's network.

Trustworthy states, of course, have nothing to fear. If you have popular legitimacy you need not fear capital flight. And already we see early adopter states for Bitcoin, from Bukele to Bhutan. Early adoption serves as a political IQ test — small and smart governments can pull it off, while big and dumb states simply will not.

So big, dumb states will be hardest hit. And they will hit back. Just like they went from calling social media unimportant to assailing it as too important, so too will they go from questioning whether Bitcoin has any utility to calling it too powerful to leave in the hands of the citizenry. And then the attempts at seizure will begin. The explicit use of state force will unify left- and right-libertarians against neocons and neolibs, shattering and remaking the political compass. That's likely to begin after this cycle. And it'll be a fight that will make 2016-2024 look like the good old days.

But at least we'll all know that Bitcoin has a purpose.