A dark knight is better than no knight at all: Why we need Bitcoin despite its flaws
This essay of mine was originally published in Kings Review and is republished here under Creative Commons licence A Knight on a chessboard can be looked at from two different perspectives. Firstly, we can zoom in and analyse it in absolute terms as a closed system. What is the shape of the Knight? What capabilities does it have? What kind of language does it use to describe itself? Secondly, we can zoom out and analyse it in relative terms, like looking at a Knight in relation to the arrangement of Bishops, Pawns and Rooks on a chessboard, seeing it as but one element of a broader interactive system. Likewise, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, can be seen from two broad perspectives. We can immerse ourselves in the code, in the Bitcoin community and in its rhetoric, and analyse whether these internal dynamics are positive or not. Or we can ignore the particularities of the code, the self-proclaimed goals of the proponents, and instead analyse Bitcoin and its conne...