TD₿: Catallaxy: the Origins of Bitcoin, Innovation and Spontaneous Order by Francis Pouliot
TL;DR Bitcoin is an unpredictable disruptive innovation that spontaneously emerged out of chaos to provide order.
Hey Bitcoiners,
It is common knowledge by now how Bitcoin came to be. Satoshi Nakamoto sent an email to the Cypherpunk mailing list and then released the original Bitcoin v0.1 code a few months later.
But how did Bitcoin really grow to what it is today?
The Bitcoin ecosystem began to emerge as many individuals began to interact and coordinate around it through their own curiosity and free will.
It was a grassroots, bottom-up process where individuals spontaneously formed a decentralized monetary system and collectively adopted Bitcoin as their preferred money.
Bitcoin is a truly innovative technology that seemingly came out of nowhere, but in reality, it was individuals who continuously built on the work of others that allowed for a new form of order to materialize in a world full of chaos.
That order can be thought of as the consensus rules of the Bitcoin protocol that allow individuals to align themselves with one another and converge on one form of truth, the longest valid blockchain with the most proof of work.
Francis Pouliot wrote this blog post that used the economic concept of Catallaxy to describe how exactly Bitcoin grew to become what it is today (09/19/2017).
Satoshi may have written the Whitepaper and the initial code, but what he really accomplished was creating a system where individuals could coordinate and collaborate in a manner that benefitted the system as a whole.
By creating a system that aligned the incentives of all participants, he created feedback loops that allowed for the emerging disruptive innovation that we recognize today.
Tick tock next block,
Cory Klippsten
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Quote of the Day
“BTC’s decentralized network allows all forces of nature to enter freely. Whereas the centralized fiat system reserves the value of individuality for those at the top of the hierarchy, managing and controlling ordinary people’s acts of self-interests, BTC removes this restriction” - Nozomi Hayase, Bitcoiner and Writer
Meme of the Day
Thank you for this share today guys. Wow. As someone who enjoys the principles of foundational physics, entropy, and order in our universe as much as Bitcoin, this article really gripped me. Loved it. Thank you.