Oddbean

BITCOIN IS NOT MONEY BITCOIN IS NOT PROPERTY BITCOIN IS NOT A COMMODITY, CURRENCY, SAVINGS, OR AN ASSET BITCOIN CONFERS NO RIGHTS Bitcoin is a software messaging protocol. MESSAGES. Bitcoin enables free speech and association without interdiction. Interfering with speech or association is not just unconstitutional, it is the foundation of tyranny anywhere, and enacted only by criminal, violent assault. It must also be understood of course that all taxation interferes with the natural rights of persons to freely associate. There are no "bitcoins", bitcoin cannot be "owned", and the notion of "title" to bitcoin is an abstraction under the reality that bitcoin will recognize and not reverse valid transactions signed under duress or downstream of criminal trespass. There is no such thing as "title" to "bitcoins" because it is fungible cash, you cannot correctly say "these coins" vs "those coins". This is not something to convince any authority of for there is no valid authority that may govern speech or association. Of course, people may be fooled into acting dead and impotent, like a trapped animal oblivious to the fact his cage was never locked. Every time someone talks about regulation and government, they are supporting the government, supporting its frame as a valid owner of all humans. This is the peak of high time preference behavior, a total moral capitulation and submission. And it is only possible first by promoting LIES about what bitcoin is, for if you state the truth, it is too obvious that all the regulatory ideas are invalid and unlawful. Bitcoin is software, it exists, it does not grant rights. If you burn a piece of wood and survive the night from the heat, it does not make warmth a right being given to you. You are USING the wood and it has certain behavior. It is anthropomorphization where the person being fictitiously constructed is none other than daddy government. But you are alone with the laws of physics, and other people trying to lie to you about the nature of the world. Bitcoin is first and foremost Freedom of Association tech. If you tell someone it's XYZ money thing, you guarantee someone else has set the mimetic framework / terrain. If you start with association, it may spur a person to consider association mechanisms and attack vectors.