Originally anarchist anti-government folks needed some medium of exchange for their future plans and bitcoins could theoretically fill that niche, being trustless. We could argue that anarchy ideology is not good, but at least it was some ideology and tool fit the purpose. Now crypto is 99.99% occupied by get-rich-quick folks with zero principles.

Not anarchists, ancaps and right libertarians.

Crypto-currency has inbuilt hierarchy, as people with more hashrate have proportional power over the monetary system. This is more hierarchy than an elected chairman of the fed, for example.

Serious questions... I genuinely don't know... but I assume a country could block access to the "blockchain" of any crypto currency, just like some of them do with access to Twitter, Google, Facebook, Github, etc.

Is there way to continue using your Bitcoin in this case? Or is it effectively the same as having a bank account frozen (i.e. you can't conduct any transactions if you don't have broad connectivity).

Or am I misunderstanding something fundamental? (I realize it's probably not a single domain/endpoint like other sites I referenced, but the traffic probably has other characteristics that would make it easy for a state to disable).

You can receive the blockchain via satellite and send transactions over email, Signal, or whatever. https://blockstream.com/satellite/

Or you could just use Tor.

Block live access? Maybe.

Block access entirely? Only if they were willing to stop all communications and travel in/out of the country. You could carry keys on paper and instructions in your head and apply them on the "free side" of the border. I don't think it's practically possible to entirely prevent such transactions. You can make them illegal; you can make them difficult; you probably can't stop them as an individual country.

You can’t block access to a peer to peer network unless you block internet access (in which case you can access it via satellite). Blocking Twitter/Github etc access is pretty easy since they are centralized legal entities to which you can issue subpoenas, force the ISPs to block their DNS, raid their servers etc.

Blocking based on traffic analysis is easily bypassed by using a VPN/tor

The only way to completely block access to the block chain thats remotely feasible are repeated 51% attacks and an impediment to general access.

That means raiding mining farms while limiting their number by limiting the size of Bitcoin.

Its only something the US or China could do.

Otherwise no, there is no way of completely blocking it. There are ways of making it impractical for the vast majority, though.

> Crypto-currency has inbuilt hierarchy, as people with more hashrate have proportional power over the monetary system.

If this is the case, please illuminate us why they don't use their influence to increase block size or block rewards.

It's very simple. The price of Bitcoin converges towards the price of mining it. Making mining bitcoin easier will only lower its price in the long run. So increasing block size will only increase the amount of hashrate in the system and thus the profit per dollar invested will not change that much.

Given this information, is it worth rocking the boat while mining is still very profitable? No.

> The price of Bitcoin converges towards the price of mining it.

Isn't it the opposite. The cost of mining converges towards the current price of Bitcoin. Because when miners get Bitcoin as a reward they immediately sell it for profit.

Well, yes, you could see it that way.

That's a shortsighted approach, in my opinion. The same pattern is observed in inflation: long-term, money printing has zero benefits. Why central banks do it anyway? Because there's a first mover advantage. Also, history has already showed us that, when given the opportunity, miners are in favor of larger rewards.

No, money printing has a serious advantage. It incentivize investment while taxing people who hold their money unproductively.

Yes, it incentivizes investing in better store of value like bitcoin (or gold, or Apple stocks).

Apple is only protected from inflation insofar as it makes real investments. Bitcoin is not a very good and significant store of value.

The idea that anarchists reject all hierarchies is baseless.

They don't reject all hierarchies. They seek to minimize them and eliminate unjustified hierarchy.

Trading democratic control for oligarchical control is increasing hierarchy and there's no obvious benefit.

The core of anarchy is reticence towards hierarchy.

Just hierarchies that don’t contain themselves at the top.

FWIW I think some "left-wing market anarchists" like it as well. Further left probably not but they also just don't like markets.

Which ones? I know a lot of them and they really don't like it. IME left wing market anarchists that are moderate enough to allow an exploitative hierarchy like bitcoin are also moderate enough to allow fiat currencies that are more democratic, and those that are radical enough also won't like bitcoin's hierarchy.

Check out what they say on https://c4ss.org. Maybe opinions have changed over the years though.

Looks like mixed feelings from William Gillis (who is part of c4ss):

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Arechelon%20bitcoin&src=t...

Ah yes, I know about c4ss. They are a major force in left market anarchists in the anglophone world, but looking through their website a lot of of Bitcoin content is written by agorists.

C4SS style anarchists and agorists are definitely on the economic right of even free market anarchists (mainly mutualists, decentral planners that admit a free market, etc, anarcho-syndicalists, mixed-economy libsocs, Bakuninists, etc...) in that they consider the state a far greater issue than capitalism. Most anarchists that like markets (which is most of them in some way) see capitalism as an equal or greater threat than the State as at least the State may share some power with the people in some cases.

And possibly those ideological people were also get-rich-quick people as well.

I can't find it right now, but I saw this infographic the other day showing how the ideology/goals of cryptocurrency have shifted over time. Something along going from a literal currency to replace the dollar to going toward its present definition as some mix of speculative asset and inflation hedge.

the funny thing is that cryptocurrency was fairly useful as a currency in 2014. There were a number of bitcoin ATMs in my city, and a number of businesses where you could spend it. It seems to me that the whole block-size debate proved the failure of the system, since the interests of a few ultimately triumphed over the best interests of the system as a whole.

> since the interests of a few ultimately triumphed over the best interests of the system as a whole

Is it in the best interests of "the system" (interesting choice of words... instead of "the many") to require enterprise infrastructure in order to run a node?

Bitcoin used to be a currency, now it's nothing more than a speculative asset. Are "the many" being served by that?

Are “the many” being served by USD inflation rn?

And can you name a cryptocurrency which is anything other than a speculative store of value, and not something whose market cap is based on drum beating over social media?

> Are “the many” being served by USD inflation rn?

That's a nice false equivalency, but I can go to the store and buy bread with USD. Where can I do that with cryptocurrency?

> And can you name a cryptocurrency which is anything other than a speculative store of value, and not something whose market cap is based on drum beating over social media?

Yes! Bitcoin circa 2014

If those are the sacrifices you have to make then it failed completely.

The original Bitcoin paper was published late 2008 and much of its original momentum was a direct response to the clear failures of the financial institutions at the time.

Make it easier to pay ransom demands when you have malware attack you. Used to have to have a pile of cash dumped in a given area, high risk for the collector. Far easier now.

Honest question: does it matter? As with all things, the purpose of the system is what it does. And right now, for the vast majority of people, the purpose of crypto is to make numbers go up; the original principles only matter to a handful of OGs. Come crypto winter, the purpose of the system will likely shift back towards its original principles, since only the OGs will hodl on.

The goals can be technological, cultural and macroeconomic ones. I had a presentation recently on this topic:

https://capitalgram.com/posts/history-of-cryptocurrencies/

Originally? Freedom.

magic internet money

btw, it is a success.

If not for crypto two companies would have a global monopoly on online transactions and able to banish you from global economy on a whim