Deep Bitcoin Scholarship

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

The way the holders have the balls to hold is that they understand what is happening. The world is switching over to the World Wide Ledger (Bitcoin Cash). If you want be able to hold on to your coins, deeper research and thought about the system in the grand sweep of things is essential. Here are some links for deep Bitcoin scholarship covering the right side of this diagram by @Peter R.

Natural Order (relevant to many aspects of Bitcoin; Bitcoin is itself an example of a natural order)

• I, Pencil, essay version exploring the video content in more detail
• The Obviousness of Anarchy, how society is already mostly anarchic [MUST READ]
• The Depoliticization of Law, deeper exploration of the above, relevant to OpenBazaar, etc.
• Why Anarchy Fails, how statelessness becomes more possible as society advances
• http://archive.freecapitalists.org/forums/t/18619.aspx
• Google "FA Hayek, The Fatal Conceit" (full book)

Money as Memory (why money is just a ledger)

• Very quick explanation
  
• Better very quick explanation
• http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1fw3m5/bitcoin_is_memory/
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232137.0
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg9247581#msg9247581
  
• http://libertyhq.freeforums.org/fed-economist-predicts-bitcoin-will-end-the-fed-t938.html
• http://archive.freecapitalists.org/forums/t/31743.aspx
• Money as Memory [technical], the original 1997 academic paper in which the current Minneapolis Fed head predicted something like Bitcoin could jeopardize central bank control

Investment

• Sane and Simple Bitcoin Savings Plan (with calculator) (aka, "How to Hodl Properly"; read Risto Pietila's comments throughout the whole thread - the more holders know this, the faster Bitcoin rises)
• Optimal Coin Distribution and the Social Role of Investors, why the network effect is in the ledger not the protocol
• Why speculators are good thing
• Why we are still firmly in the investment phase of Bitcoin's ascension, and why the merchant adoption push is (mostly) premature

Investor Control over Bitcoin

• Who Controls Bitcoin? I'll give you one hint
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fork (reddit thread), how fork arbitrage works
• Forkology 101 - 301, investigation of how Bitcoin is governed and how investors exert control
• Spinoffs, how to copy the Bitcoin ledger to unbundle it from the protocol (without dilution!)
• Forkology 401 (draft), radical uses of spinoffs
• Forkology 501 (draft), even more radical conception of the Bitcoin ledger as totally unbundled

Panarchy (governance without territorial monopoly)

• http://athousandnations.com/2009/10/20/towards-youtopia-are-all-public-good-providers-earthbound/
• http://www.panarchy.org/knott/bitcoin.html

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Economics

• How an Economy Grows and Why it Doesn't, don't knock the 1960s feel, this is still be best crash course in economics I've ever found [MUST READ for econ newbs]
• Google "Economics in One Lesson" (book, available in PDF) [longer, but still MUST READ]
• Human Action, Ludwig von Mises's magnum opus; if you have a few weeks
• See also most of the resources listed under Natural Order, as there is much crossover (the economy is one of the quintessential examples of a natural order)

Summaries

• http://archive.freecapitalists.org/forums/p/32931/512864.aspx
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=230416.msg2450191#msg2450191
• Konrad Graf's site, all around very clear scholarship from an Austrian economics perspective

 

[cypherdoc]

nice compendium

 

[Windowly]

wow nice! I'm going to go through them today!

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

How would science get funded in a Bitcoin-powered world?

 

[Pecuniology]

Working Paper on SSRN: "Bitcoin Is Memory"

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

http://thinkingmachines.mit.edu/blog/priors-and-prejudice-thinking-machines

Once you understand natural orders, it becomes more clear why Bitcoin's ledger encodes incredibly valuable economic information that would be lost when zeroing it out. It's the same reason AI research has hit a roadblock: you cannot simply set up a neural net and feed it examples to work on. To be useful to humans it needs to go through the same kinds of trials and tribulations that individual humans (and human societies) go through in developing their patterns of behavior in such a way as to carefully optimize their life for greatest satisfaction (or their society for greatest prosperity) in the environment we face. Not only that, it likely needs to come with somewhat the same instinctive utility function and other presets and biases human babies have, which were developed through the evolutionary process within this environment.

Both altcoiners and many AI researchers fall prey to this blank slate fallacy, neglecting the immense information encoded in those presets in the human brain and in the ledger of a mature economy. (See this post linked in OP: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=678866.5)

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

On the basic futility of altcoins, file under Investment section.

"For what reason can't Ethereum take over Bitcoin, besides just tradition?"

↓ ↓ ↓

 

[Zarathustra]

I love your optimism, but most of these arguments could have been used pro Myspace and contra Facebook.

 

[Mengerian]

I'm currently reading Thomas Schelling's Strategy of Conflict.

Interesting analysis game theory with focus on situations where parties benefit from coordinating their actions. Elaborates the concepts of focal points (now often referred to as Schelling points), and commitment strategies.

It offers a useful lens through which to view the dynamic process of consensus formation around mining, proof of work, and validation of blocks by nodes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling

http://elcenia.com/iamapirate/schelling.pdf

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Here's a Japanese primer on fork arbitrage if you have any Japanese friends (or if there are any Japanese-speaking lurkers here - よっ！ ).

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/日本語.108/#post-26697