The promise of Bitcoin is about much more than financial freedom

Imagine a game of chess where the pieces are mixed up. A player can get four queens while the opponent has none or a score of bishops and rooks to match. This is the premise behind “Really Bad Chess”, released in 2016 by the developer Zach Gage. Although many have analogized chess to the whole world (seeing the game as a microcosm of society with its hierarchy, roles and interactions between the pieces), what makes “Really Bad Chess” more appropriate is that life (as in the game) does not offer an equal starting point for everyone.

Some players have to work harder to “win”, leaving it up to their skills to compete with even the most privileged opponents. Also, people in the upper echelons of society (like those who start with a number of powerful pieces) are often reluctant to give up their positions. They may even try to control the choices of other players.

Essentially, it has become increasingly difficult to promote a modest peasant to a formidable queen. And no more pronounced is this in our digital age. Despite the widespread connectivity of the web and social media, technological and political moguls continually seek to manipulate societal systems to limit, monitor and control the freedoms inherent to all human beings.

That said, tools are emerging that promise users that they will help level the playing field and preserve these fundamental rights. One such tool is Bitcoin. When it was originally launched, Bitcoin was intended to help people regain financial freedom. Today, it has transformed into an ecosystem of tools and products that promise to safeguard not only the freedom to act, but also the freedom of expression and the right to a free and uncensored culture.

Transactions and how Bitcoin works

Before Bitcoin, there were attempts to create an open, peer-to-peer financial system, such as eCash, B-money, Bit Gold and Hashcash. In 1984, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek proposed a type of money that governments could not control. And in 1997, the NSA published a paper on the cryptography of anonymous electronic cash. However, Bitcoin succeeded, while others failed, in effectively solving the Byzantine generals’ problem related to the issue of “double spending.”

The Double Spend problem refers to stopping digital money from being spent twice. Intermediaries such as banks prevent double spending in traditional financial systems by verifying each transaction privately. But with this centralized oversight comes the overt influence on monetary policy and regulation. Before Bitcoin, all attempts to solve the problem of double spending had the appearance of a central administrator who handled the books and therefore ran the risk of manipulating the system in some way.

The Bitcoin network differs by allowing all involved members to verify and agree on the validity of transactions. It achieves this through its proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Within this system, participants (called nodes) on a public network use computing power (energy) to verify transactions and add the data to the blockchain. Here, “blockchain” is really a buzzword to describe something similar to an immutable accounting system. Contributors (miners) are rewarded for maintaining and securing the network by earning Bitcoin, hence the analogy and term “mining” due to bitcoin’s parallels with gold.

Opponents claim that Bitcoin is primarily a “decentralized Ponzi scheme” or worse, “rat poison squared.” But proponents argue that it offers a more resilient and open monetary system — one that counteracts the inflationary consequences of currency depreciation, a technique used by governments to meet financial obligations, stimulate domestic spending on infrastructure, finance wars and the like.

How Bitcoin Protects the Freedom to Trade

Take, for example, the obstacles to opening a simple savings account or getting a loan — the banks often require extensive documentation and prerequisites. Conversely, Bitcoin offers an alternative to traditional remittances, providing a crucial economic lifeline for many developing countries and low-income people with free-to-use digital wallets.

Furthermore, peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin networks have lower fees than some conventional platforms such as Western Union, making them more attractive in emerging nations. For example, one Reuters Report published in 2020 demonstrated how an African small business owner increased profits and protected his business from currency devaluation by compensating suppliers in Bitcoin. BTC had no additional fees and transactions were faster, safer and cheaper than traditional money transfer firms.

Even in developed countries, Bitcoin is not without value. Aside from the recent mismanagement of Silicon Valley Bank, alternative financial systems have become increasingly necessary in light of the increasing censorship and penalties imposed by payment platforms such as PayPal. In 2022, the company reversed a controversial policy that may have led to users being charged $2,500 for spreading “misinformation,” as the payment platform claimed the policy update had been released “in error.” Conversely, Bitcoin’s decentralized nature provides a way to transact openly without relying on highly centralized, authoritarian platforms.

Prominent investors and entrepreneurs such as Naval Ravikant and Paul Krugman have also highlighted Bitcoin’s potential as a hedge against financial collapse and a means of diversifying portfolios amid possible financial instability, not to mention the promise of a store of value. Bitcoin’s importance as a geopolitical force has also been evident in real-life crises such as the Ukraine conflict. As told by Twitter user usleepwalker, who experienced the crisis firsthand, traditional banks were unavailable during the turmoil, preventing people from accessing their money. In contrast, those with cryptocurrency can rely on their assets for payment and alternative stores of value.

Bitcoin and freedom of speech

Companies like Meta and Twitter initially flourished in the open and ever-expanding landscape of the internet – a space that championed unfettered communication and expression. But they are now at the center of a worrying trend. These web2 companies are increasingly exerting influence over online discourse. In doing so, they inadvertently—or perhaps intentionally—stifle free speech and contribute to censorship in overtly and subtly harmful ways.

Decentralized technologies such as Bitcoin support freedom of expression by enabling users to embed and enter messages on the blockchain through resources such as Ordinals, Bitcoin Stamps and Nostr – all of which provide the ability to cryptographically preserve messages (regardless of their content) without gatekeepers or intermediaries . in a decentralized public way.

The idea of ​​filling Bitcoin blocks with JPEGs and videos — or even video games — doesn’t sit well with some in the Bitcoin community who have voiced concerns that putting NFTs directly on the Bitcoin network will increase transaction costs .

But despite this division, such methods are another way and way or open door for anyone to preserve and share information for posterity in a censorship-resistant way, free from the constraints of any central authority.

Free culture

For digital culture to flourish across diverse sub-groups and niches, creators must be encouraged to experiment, allowing markets to organically respond to their work. But as the boundaries between tech oligarchs and the platforms creators rely on to innovate and monetize their work become increasingly restrictive (e.g. YouTube demonetizing videos or engaging in open censorship), viable options within the web2 landscape are shrinking.

Fortunately, Bitcoin offers a number of alternatives (even before Ordinals) to counter the polished curated media and permissible limits of creative expression. Created in 2014, Counterparty is one example of a platform that allows people to create assets on Bitcoin such as grassroots cryptographic artwork and memes (otherwise known as CryptoArt), notable among these were assets that Rare Pepes — tokenized variants of the Pepe the Frog meme by Matt Furie that still command significant sums on the secondary markets.

In fact, within just two years of launching the Rare Pepe Project, 1,774 unique Rare Pepe cards were approved for admission to the grassroots project. The cards included many pop culture references and political satire such as Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Putin themed cards, with some rarer one-of-a-kind cards selling for as high as $3.6 million seen at a Sotheby’s auction in October 2021.

Other memetic ecosystems were also inspired by Counterparty and Bitcoin’s technology, such as Doge and a related platform for minting assets on Dogecoin such as DogeParty (a fork of Counterparty and Bitcoin). Both demonstrate how the innovative technologies behind Bitcoin and Counterparty have spurred the development of various platforms that cater to niche communities and interests.

But ultimately, whether it’s Doge or Pepe, they serve as an illustration of a culturally significant movement that has arisen and flourished in the digital realm from the original currency of memes, cultivated and preserved through the decentralized power of Bitcoin instead to be shaped and curated by traditional media.

While initially focused on financial sovereignty, the Bitcoin ecosystem has evolved to protect a wide range of freedoms, including freedom of transaction, freedom of expression through Ordinals, and an uncensored cultural platform via Counterparty and Nostr.

As the network expands with new nodes and more users join to explore and engage with different concepts across all layers, the ecosystem becomes increasingly secure and decentralized. And it is through such innovative tools that we approach a balanced and fair digital landscape where all players can thrive, regardless of their starting position. Or – in embracing the spirit of Really Bad Chess – disrupt conventional hierarchies and rigid systems to foster an environment where more individuals can turn pawns into queens, ultimately advancing the cause of freedom in the digital age.