In the 1997 book The sovereign individualWilliam Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson convincingly argue that, time and time again throughout history, the dominant power of the age was disrupted. by new technologies. Advances in agriculture meant that people and their property were often geographically stationary, making them easy targets for “specialists of violence,” the predecessors of modern governments, who were then both plunderers and protectors against the looting The stirrup, contoured saddle, spur and curb had a similar disruptive effect combined, transferring the power of heavy cavalry to a single armed knight. The Gunpowder Revolution disrupted the feudal order of the time, reinforced in those days by the Catholic Church. Rees-Mogg and Davidson write: “the Church tended to make its own economic interests religious virtues, while militating against the development of independent manufacturing and commercial wealth which were destined to destabilize the feudal system.” The printing press disrupted the Church Even more: causing him to lose his monopoly on the biblical narrative. The result was a significant loss of influence and power, giving way to the modern nation state.
Rees-Mogg and Davidson argue that the microprocessor would inevitably disrupt the nation state in the same way that the printing press disrupted Christianity a few hundred years ago. The Internet itself (a globally interconnected community) and public key cryptography (which protects both communications and ownership of bitcoin) are made possible by microprocessors.
the present and the future
One of the main battle fronts for decentralization is fought on the monetary front. Since bitcoin's inception in 2009, we have been able to transact permissionless, borderless, and (often) anonymously. Nation states have long been jealous of any challenge to their monopoly over money, and will spend enormous sums of money to ensure that there are no serious monetary rivals. bitcoin serves as an alternative to that trap, which is why it is being attacked by people like politicians and bitcoin-mining-is-full-of-distortions-outright-falsehoods/”>crumbling legacy media.
But to transact with bitcoin, miners are needed. No doubt, regulators in the United States and Europe watched as China banned bitcoin mining in 2021, which only resulted in most of the hashing power. Moving from that country to the United States. So while they would probably want to ban it in the United States and Europe entirely, they know that doing so would only lose both regulatory control and tax revenue from bitcoin miners. Therefore, for now, not even Elizabeth Warren, the most bitcoin-hostile legislator in Washington, is proposing to completely ban bitcoin. Instead, she proposes expanding know-your-customer (KYC) rules to essentially all parties within the bitcoin ecosystem, as well as discouraging self-custody and privacy-enhancing technologies.
bitcoin has a major centralization weak point (for now): hardware. The University of Cambridge produces industry reports on bitcoin mining and communicate In terms of hardware, the vast majority of bitcoin miners report using an “ASIC” chip to mine bitcoin's SHA-256 hash produced by a Singapore-based company. Bitmain, followed by competitors MicroBT and Canaan. Regardless of where Bitmain produces its ASIC chips, the ideal scenario for bitcoin decentralization would be for ASIC miner production (and mining itself) to be dispersed around the world, so that no specific region could have a definitive advantage, taking the majority control of hash power. A reasonable compromise would be one in which ASIC miners were produced, at scale and with high quality, by at least more manufacturers than there are now, especially in countries that are not politically aligned with each other, so collusion between them It would be increasingly unlikely. .
A second major battle front for decentralization is being fought on the artificial intelligence (ai) front. I once attended a conference where Peter Thiel was a speaker. He said something very similar to the following (quoted from memory): “bitcoin is a technology that, on the Internet, favors the individual. “ai is a technology that, on the Internet, favors the State.” It is this latest technology and its favoring of the State that emphasizes the importance of putting it in the hands of as many participants as possible if we want to build a truly decentralized world.
A risk to ai decentralization is one that bitcoin has in common: a possible future scenario in which hardware is monitored and must be registered by law. In the case of bitcoin, that would mean miners must register their ASIC chips. In the case of ai, it could mean that even you or I would need to register graphics processing units (GPUs) above a certain capacity (or, in the case of software, that arrays need to be registered). Guillaume Verdon, the name behind the now false alias @BasedBeffJesos, highlighted this risk in a podcast with Lex Fridman, arguing that this could “(prevent) the open source ecosystem from thriving… by executive order, stating that open source LLMs are dual-use technologies and should be controlled by the government “.
Although executive orders could not kill bitcoin (but could deter some people from using it), similar reporting requirements for miners would likely affect bitcoin's open source ecosystem to some extent.
A third major battleground worth highlighting is 3D printers, assemblers, and other tools in the “makers’ arsenal.” This “creative” movement hints at a future solution to the problem of bitcoin and ai centralization trends.
Imagine a world with 3D printers and the tools that come with them in most people's homes. If you could print your own high-quality bitcoin ASIC miners and GPUs to run large language models (LLM), decentralization is light years away.
We can ignore for a moment the futuristic scenario in which 3D printers and other “maker” tools are used to produce hardware for bitcoin and ai applications. Even today, at least one government views the 3D printer with the same skeptical eye that the Catholic Church had on the printing press in the 15th and 16th centuries. from New York State Assembly Bill A8132, if signed into law, would require criminal background checks, with fingerprints submitted to the FBI, in order to purchase 3D printers “capable of creating firearms.” It is reasonable to expect that various governments, fearing the loss of their own centralized power, will continue to push registration and “KYC” requirements to maintain control of real-space tools that facilitate decentralization in cyberspace.
Note: The Soviet Union had similar controls on seemingly harmless products such as books, photocopiers, fax machines – all of which facilitated the spread of information and therefore threatened the regime. There were similar efforts to control the sale of fabric that could be used to build hot air balloons in East Germany, to prevent people from escaping to West Germany. (See the 1982 American film Night Crossing and the 2018 German film Balloon which both document a real leak).
Localized manufacturing, whether at home or in a so-called community manufacturing laboratory or “fab lab,” is likely to come under increased hostility from various governments, as 3D printers and other “maker” tools are capable of producing even more sophisticated electronic products. But, at least for now, the number of fab labs is growing exponentially, with more than 2,000 of them have spread throughout the world so far, and even receive varying levels of support from governments. These fabulous labs, by the way, don't have the many more personalized labs found in people's homes.
Neil Gershenfeld of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms is trying to understand what the world is like when almost anyone can make almost anything, and when machines can make other machines, even machines more sophisticated than themselves, and often with locally sourced materials. .
Gershenfeld holds in a podcast appearance that localized manufacturing does not scale and that production is generally for personal use, not for commercial sale. But when thousands of people around the world learn to locally produce their own 3D printed and home-assembled bitcoin miner and then combine their individual hash power with others in a mining pool and coordinate with each other over the network Tor… then the world starts to look much more decentralized.
Conclusion
bitcoin, ai, and 3D printers share a common theme of decentralization and disruptive potential for the nation state. Since both bitcoin ASIC mining chips and the GPUs used to run LLM exist in real space where nation states are most dominant, governments may become increasingly hostile toward such hardware: requiring criminal background checks, KYC, etc Interestingly, 3D printers, assemblers and other “maker” tools could be used now or in the future for localized manufacturing (either at home or in so-called “fab labs”), allowing for a much more decentralized world.
Meanwhile, on the political front, criminal background checks and registration requirements for 3D printers and other “maker” tools like those proposed in New York Assembly Bill A8132 deserve a skeptical eye and strong pushback. political.
This is a guest post by Emile Phaneuf. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of btc Inc or bitcoin Magazine.
