Crypto Anarchy 101: Statists Failing & Anarchists Thriving
The black-market, the free-market, is what kept people alive throughout the worst of oppressions. The black market has been the art of surviving amidst all types of tyrannies and slaveries. The black market, aka System D, is something that everyone in the world will need to start getting comfortable with. CryptoAnarchy is the ultimate manifestation of complete market freedom, and it is here to stay.
Libertarians are beginning to finally realize their incredible advantage within this new market environment. The unfortunate statist masses have been programmed to feel uncomfortable with the mere idea of complete market freedom. Keep in mind that as of 2009, half of the world’s workers- around 1.8 billion – were employed by System D. The black market is only expected to grow even more so with the incentive structures being built out in order to advance the technological advancements of cryptography.
Humanity has never experienced a true free-market until now. For the first time in history one is beginning to take shape. The traditional business sector is beginning to realize that they are not even mentally equipped for the implications of having applied cryptography that is powered by market incentives. This is evident in their trite attempts at integrating these new technologies with traditional banking and financial systems. Their lack of creativity, and dependence on government, is a clear testament to how much they will be hurt in the coming future.
Statists Double Down after Failure: Tether and Stablecoins
Many within the crypto space have attempted to bridge the gap between legacy banking and cryptocurrencies. Amongst the various attempts at capitalizing with these new technologies, the idea of a stablecoin entered the space via Tether (USDT).
A stable coin is a cryptocurrency that is pegged on a 1 to 1 ratio to the US dollar, or any other asset- like gold- or fiat. Tether operated as a stable coin pegged to the US dollar on a 1 to 1 ratio. The biggest attribute behind stablecoins resided in their ability to provide stability in an otherwise volatile market.
For a long time many within the crypto space were curious about Tether’s means of operating with USD. Earlier this year TDV was the first entity to exclusively reported to its subscribers the origin of Tether’s “secret sauce;” fractional reserve banking.
The laws of fractional reserve banking allowed the Noble Bank of Puerto Rico to provide Tether with the legal means of operating as a stable coin pegged to the US dollar. The Noble Bank recently went bankrupt due to being insolvent. Noble Bank was the bank of Bitfinex and Tether. As a result, Tether and Bitfinex ended their relationship with Noble Bank.
It is important that you as a subscriber move your crypto out of Bitfinex. You should never keep your cryptoin exchanges. When you do this you don’t actually control the private keys of your coins.
(If you are an active trader, please consider using Bisq. Bisq is an open source decentralized exchange that does not control your private keys while trading. It is the most Anarchist exchange in the market right now.)
After losing its partnership with Noble Bank, Bitfinex began banking with HSBC. On October 15th, Bitfinex tweeted that their fiat deposit system was re-enabled. Overall, Bitfinex is still in the midst of reorganizing itself as an exchange with proper banking liquidity. For this reason we are of the opinion that it is best to stay away from Bitfinex until they are more solvent in their banking partnerships.
Tether (USDT) on the other hand is suffering from a lack of proper banking structures. Binance paused all USDT withdrawals and KuCoin, the exchange, also paused USDT deposits and withdrawals.
Tether is currently at around 2.1bn dollar market cap. Tether holders are having a difficult time cashing out of their Tether for USD. It is expected that unless Tether gets its banking situation sorted out, we will see movement out of Tether. This situation has caused the price of Tether to hit a low of $0.90 to the USD. As of writing this, Tether is trading at around $0.97 to the dollar.
The situation for Tether is dire at the present moment. We expect to see many Tether holders drop their Tether for Bitcoin, or other more cryptographically secure cryptocurrencies. This will more than likely be one of the main strategies that will be implemented in order to cash out of Tether.
This overall situation is once again showing us how unstable things are when dealing with fiat. We hope for the market to realize that there is more security in cryptocurrencies than there is in fiat backed stablecoins. Stablecoins will always have the instability of the fiat currencies that they are pegged to. The time will eventually come when people will realize that cryptocurrencies are a better store of value than stablecoins.
In spite of all of the issues circulating Tether, statist entrepreneurs are doubling down on their desire for stablecoins. We are seeing the beginning of what we believe will be a trend in the upcoming future; that is, stable coins pegged to various countries’ fiat and assets like precious metals. The new USD stablecoins recently announced to the market are GeminiUSD, TrueUSD, and Paxos Standard.
Volatility as a Sign of Life in the Market
Contrary to the statist perception on volatility, one can also view volatility in crypto as proper to a market that is fully alive. Crypto, for the first time in history, freed the market from bankster manipulation. Arguably, volatility is to be expected in an unregulated free-market where everyone in the world is for the first time welcomed to participate.
In comparison to the legacy financial system, crypto is fully alive while the former is handicapped by regulations, coercion, and disconnected from true free-market signals. That is, volatility signals of a free-market that breathes freely for the first time. Volatility is indicative of a market that is fully alive.
The desire for individuals to attach crypto to the legacy financial system, under the pretense of “less volatility,” is indicative of individuals that will have a hard time operating outside the bounds of regulation and government coercion. As long as we have statists uncomfortable with Anarchy, we will have stablecoins pegged to fiat.
Various Libertarian entrepreneurs are also beginning to dabble with the idea of a stablecoin that is pegged to precious metals. The challenge of these projects will be the same regulation that oversees fiat. Remember that the difference offered to the world by cryptocurrencies resides in crypto’s ability to operate freely within System D, without regulation. It is this new market, the true free-market, that for the first time is unstoppable.
Bitfinex’s Effect on EOS
Bitfinex is one of the entities that holds the greatest amount of votes for EOS Block Producers (BPs). For this and other reasons, we are currently expecting a shakeup of votes for selected top BPs. It is important that you remain attentive to the happenings within EOS and move your votes accordingly.
We will soon be coming out with more details on our perceptions regarding various BPs.
There are various discussions regarding BPs pending arbitration. This is a good thing. All shakeups lead us closer to more transparency and accountability. This should not directly affect the price of EOS, aside from what will result from the expected FUD of future BP shake-ups.
The Resilience of CryptoAnarchy after Blockstream’s Fake Sidechain
Amongst the various innovations within Bitcoin, sidechains have- for the past 5 years- existed as one of the holy grails of innovation. Blockstream, as a company, was put together to manifest sidechains. They sold us the concept of a sidechain as they were sourcing capital during their first rounds of investment; this was in October of 2014.
Sidechains were supposed to be delivered by Blockstream as a way to make Bitcoin innovation competitive to that of altcoin innovation. Sidechains were supposed to be “the Altcoin killer.”
After all of this time, Blockstream only delivered Liquid - which is not a sidechain- and called it a “sidechain.” That is, Liquid is not a sidechain when properly defined. Liquid is a multi-signature layer that allows for multiple exchanges to pool their money together to transfer funds amongst themselves. Liquid is not a true sidechain, it is more precisely a multi-signature wallet.
Calling Liquid a “sidechain” was just a marketing scheme by Blockstream in order to impress the illusion that they had delivered what they had promised. They didn’t. Blockstream gave up in attempting to create a true sidechain and created a multi-signature wallet instead. Keep in mind that Liquid is a “private sidechain.” Note that a proper sidechain ought to be made with open-source innovation in mind. Many of us see the actions of Blockstream as a bait and switch marketing scheme.
(For the rest of this article I will use the words “Drivechains” and “sidechains” interchangeably as synonyms. Drivechains are what sidechains originally were supposed to be- according to the original Blockstream Sidechain white paper. Blockstream’s bait and switch marketing scheme led to them calling “sidechain” a multisignature wallet that is not at all what they promoted on their white paper. Paul Sztorc, in an attempt to differentiate himself from the Blockstream perversion of the word “sidechains,” called his development of true sidechains “Drivechains.”)
Paul Sztorc, the creator of decentralized prediction markets, was very much looking forward to Blockstream’s creation of sidechains. It was his hope that his decentralized prediction market would run as a Bitcoin sidechain. At about the end of 2015 Sztorc was done with BitcoinHiveMind, his decentralized predictions market (previously known as TruthCoin).
After realizing that Blockstream was not going to deliver on sidechains, as promised, Sztorc felt he needed to build it himself. The creation of his Drivechains started off as a means to an end for Sztorc; he needed true Sidechains for his decentralized predictions market- so he build it himself.
On September 24, 2018 Paul Sztorc announced the launch of the first Drivechain release. This release was accompanied with fervent followingof old-school Bitcoiners that immediately jumped into experimenting with Drivechains on the testnet known as “Testdrive.”
The Drivechain protocol is an alternative to the sidechain project originally proposed by Blockstream. It is a simpler design that enables blockchain compatibility in which the system still utilizes the same 21 million bitcoin ruleset- the Nakamoto consensus.
Drivechains are intended to allow for permissionless innovation without diluting or challenging the value of the main cryptocurrency. Contrary to other means of innovation within crypto, any innovation that comes from a Drivechain sidechain actually adds value to the Bitcoin protocol- for it does not dilute the main cryptocurrency. Satoshi vaguely discussed the importance of the ideas of sidechains and multi-blockchain connectivity on June 17, 2010.
This creation, of providing varied market options, make infighting and political discourses regarding consensus upgrades now seem infantile. Drivechains will provide the market with ongoing competitive solutions for blockchain development. Investors will now be exposed to options that would otherwise have been shunned in a less free environment.
The strategic advantage of Drivechain sidechains is that they will offer investors various options in the form of alternative chains. It is important to keep in mind that Drivechains are available for blockchains with the same UTXO set. That is, Drivechains are available for both BitcoinCore (BTC) and BitcoinCash (BCH).
How Drivechains work
Namecoin was the vision of early Bitcoin adopters of creating a DNS and identity infrastructure based on Bitcoin; that is, .bit DNS. This technology piggy backed on top of Bitcoin mining. That is, if you so chose you could merged-mined Namecoin alongside BTC or BCH. Namecoin can absorb hashrate from BTC or BCH without needing its own miners.
Merge-mining with BTC or BCH is also the process of validating and safeguarding Drivechain sidechains. Unlike Namecoin, Drivechain sidechains don’t require miners to run special software. For Drivechain sidechains miners implement what is known as blind-merge-mining. In blind-merge-mining the nodes of the sidechain run the software, not the miners. This operates under the assumption that the nodes running the software also hold BTC or BCH.
A payment fee is paid to miners to blind-merge-mine the sidechain, in a similar way that Namecoin merge-mining pays a fee. In this process, miners don’t have to run any software- they just passively make money for blind-merge-mining blocks with sidechains.
The main difference with sidechains is that you are not mining another coin like Namecoin, but rather you are mining the same BTC or BCH in another sidechain when you do the blind-merge-mining. Miners don’t get paid with the sidechain, they receive payment from the mainchain that they already trust when they blind-merge-mine. Miners are also economically benefited by always getting paid in the superior coin that they are already intentionally mining; BTC or BCH.
As BTC or BCH moves in and out from the mainchain to a sidechain, there might be claims of ownership that may cause disputes. Drivechain prevents this by emphasizing the superiority of the mainchain over sidechains. Sidechains have to report on exactly what it is doing- at all times- to the main chain. Whenever a sidechain wants to transfer money back to the mainchain it has to do it very slowly. This safeguards the network from theft. The slow movement of funds from the sidechain to the mainchain can be arbitrage by individuals who will be willing to purchase sidechain receipts for BTC or BCH coming from sidechains at a discount. People will also be able to do atomic swaps between chains in the near future. (Atomic swaps, or atomic cross chain trading, is the exchange of one cryptocurrency to another cryptocurrency, without the need of trusting a third-party).
It is the intent of Drivechains to create the interaction of miners with sidechains as seamless as possible. However, it is still important to have guarantee that money ends up in the right place. This is the reason for the slow movement of funds from sidechains to the mainchain.
The movement of a certain amount of transactions coming from a sidechain to the mainchain is batched up into one transaction with its own transaction ID. This transaction is frozen in place where miners and developers can examine it for at least a month (there are talks of even making this process longer between 3 to 6 months). During this time miners vote on whether to allow the payment to go through or not. Upon receiving enough upvotes, the batched up transactions are released unto the mainchain. The slowing down of movement of BTC or BCH from sidechains to mainchain decreases the threat of miners stealing BTC or BCH from a sidechain.
The sidechains are always watching the mainchain, so they know to credit people immediately when the mainchain sends money to it. Sidechains also know when the miners have accepted the release of batched up locked funds that are released unto the mainchain. Once the sidechain receives notification of the miners acceptance of funds in the mainchain, the sidechain destroys the funds that were frozen awaiting miner upvotes.
It is overall acknowledged that sidechains increase the value of BTC and BCH, which eventually make mining more profitable. It would be counterproductive for miners to attack and steal funds from sidechains. That is, miners acting maliciously decreases the value of their own equipment. In spite of this fact, it is good that Drivechains make it increasingly more difficult for theft to occur.
Miners, through their voting process, also get to punish bad sidechain actors. Any malicious sidechain will be cleaned out by miners. This is the opposite of the Ethereum model where anyone can code anything into the Ethereum blockchain, to the point that it could become a detriment to the Ethereum mainchain itself. That is, anyone can create a new ERC20 or ERC721 token without any vetting from the network.
Coins are moved from the mainchain to the sidechain by means of sending coins to an address that represents the sending of funds from the mainchain to the sidechain. Anyone running the given sidechain software will recognize that funds were sent to the sidechain- this will automatically credit the person with the same amount of BTC or BCH on the sidechain. Also, the sidechain is programmed to recognize the reception of funds unto the mainchain address from where it will automatically credit the user the same amount of BTC or BCH unto a sidechain wallet. People on the mainchain don’t have to know anything about this particular address. As far as they know, it is just another address.
Embrace the Spontaneous Order of Market Anarchy It is important that people within BTC and BCH take on a more Hayekian approach to entrepreneurship. Many within crypto are uncomfortable with the mere notion of spontaneous order. It is important that we as Ancaps lead the way in motivating people to experiment with their entrepreneurship.
In the past few years, the desire of individuals to covet the development of crypto has become more apparent. These people need to be ignored. No one is the leader of Bitcoin or crypto development. The best innovators within crypto are those that create tools that empower other entrepreneurs to create more options.
It is this spontaneous order that we should welcome and promote at all times. Many within BTC and BCH will not accept or feel comfortable with the radical spontaneous order enabled by Drivechains. This is good reasonto brush up on your Austrian Economics in order to properly confront minds that are fearful of human freedom.
The Ancap entrepreneurs who are most comfortable with spontaneous order will be the same ones who will produce the greatest amount of value. The development of CryptoAnarchy is guided by the science of praxeology and Austrian Economics. Drivechains are testament to the augmentation of our libertarian order are necessary for CryptoAnarchy to thrive.
Drivechains and Investment Strategy
The philosophical and economic advantage of sidechain innovation is that it enables the development of BTC and BCH with an investor-centric intention. It is the market’s investment that now decides the best means for scaling and development. Politics and propaganda take an almost insignificant backseat to that of market forces. The technology is now readily available for investors to test drive with their BTC or BCH on any given proposed sidechain. That is, you actually get to experience the value, or lack of value of a new innovation without jeopardizing your position as an investor.
All investment decisions are about strategy. Sidechains empower the investor’s strategy by allowing the investor to survey all of the possible value propositions of his/her original investment without having to incur any actual costs. In a similar way, sidechains also provide developers with quick market feedback on the aspects of development that are most favored by the market.
Drivechains are a pivotal step in maturing the crypto space into becoming more conscientious in considering the investment strategy of those buying the coins. It is important for innovators to start taking the investor’s strategy into account. Drivechains force developers to consider what is best for the investor, not just what is desired by a given team of developers.
Here we have not only a better proposition for investors, but also an incentive for developers to use Drivechains in future crypto experimentation. When experimenting with an altcoin, the measure of success is contingent on this new altcoin gathering a new pool of investors to literally buy into the project. With a sidechain you are already dealing with a more seasoned group of investors that will provide you with more accurate market feedback, being that their investment is now fortified by all other sidechain experimentations that they have already tested at no cost.
Altcoins will soon no longer be the locus of innovation within crypto. All future innovation will be offered the option to experiment within BTC or BCH via sidechains. Keep in mind that all previous innovations, already tested in the market by successful altcoins, are now easily adopted by BTC or BCH. It is also important to note that creative experimentation on sidechains do not at all jeopardize the mainnets of BTC or BCH. On the contrary, sidechains will make BTC and BCH much more valuable. When the Drivechain craze begins we will see a BTC and BCH bull run. Don’t be surprised if sidechains are the main reason for the next all time highs.
Statists Failing & Anarchists Thriving
It is important that we understand that the legacy banking system is completely dead. They are barely adopting simulations of cryptocurrencies unto their banking structures to stay alive. Stablecoins are a manifestation of this bankster angst to remain current.
True market innovation is found in the embrace of Market Anarchy. CryptoAnarchy is growing exponentially with tools that are beyond the reach of state megalomaniacs. Drivechains are an example of the CryptoAnarchist tools that will result in further anti-fragility of this new crypto free-market.
Proper Austrian Economic incentive structures coupled with applied cryptography is our lethal weapon against nation states and central banks. Arguably, our Ancap philosophy is what guides applied cryptography in the market towards success. For this reason it is important that we keep revisiting the texts of Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, and Konkin throughout our crypto endeavors. Peace!
by Rafael LaVerde
TL;DR: How familiar are you with thermodynamics and silent weapons for secret wars? How familiar are you with the Brave New World Order?
No comments:
Post a Comment