ASICs and machine guns have a lot of similarities, and each of them has been responsible for destroying a beautiful dream. Just as the original intention of the 2nd amendment was the decentralization of power, the dream of Bitcoin was to decentralize monetary control.
And for the Founding Fathers, the crappy guns of the late 1700s seemed like an ideal way to decentralize. These crappy guns were widely distributed among the people. They were terrible at mowing down groups of people. And very few gun owners had more than one or two.
But as pathetic as those guns seem to us now, they were, back then, the most powerful weapons on Earth. There was no dynamite, no drones, no F-16s, no tanks etc. Only ridiculous cannons. Thus, those who possessed guns would invariably conquer any group that did not have them.
Consequently, to insure the safety of the republic, the Founding Fathers sought to decentralize power and allow each and every individual in the country to own the most powerful weapon available at the time – a really crappy gun.
To be sure, a gun from the 1700s was only marginally better than a knife, especially when it came to mass murder. One person could handle only one at a time. They took forever to load. They were inaccurate etc.
So only a fool would waltz into a church with a gun attempting to kill everyone. Not only would they likely miss everyone with their first shot, but they would also be pummeled to death by the congregation before they could get another shot off.
And odds were fairly good that a handful of folks in the church also had their own guns with them. This is what the Founding Fathers loved about guns. They were a perfect decentralization of power. And so these crappy 1700s guns were even more decentralized then the right to vote
But, moving forward a couple hundred years, we see that Satoshi (the inventor of Bitcoin) fell under this same spell. He wanted to design a system where the power to control money and information, was as widely distributed as possible – a very big deal.
And just as the Founders turned to the gun, Satoshi turned to the CPU. And the similarities between the two are endless. Just like the guns of the 1790s, CPUs are enormously powerful, yet widely distributed among the public, and few individuals have more that one or two.
This means that this awesome power (the CPU), as Satoshi imagined, was reasonably distributed among the masses and controlled by no central entity. And for the first couple years, Bitcoin was a virtual paradise of decentralization – indeed, each year it was more decentralized.
But it is dangerous to decentralize based on technology, because technology changes. And so today, we might still call an AR-16 a gun, but from the perspective of the Founding Fathers, that would be like calling an armor plated cheetah a house cat.
Indeed, there wasn't a single person alive in the late 1700s, who, when they embraced the striking beauty of the second amendment, considered something as deadly as modern weaponry. Conversely, gun ownership today, says nothing about the decentralization of power.
This is because, if we are to correctly interpret the 2nd amendment today, we need to recall that it says nothing about "gun" rights, instead, it talks about "Arms." Which means it includes things like nuclear submarines, missile launchers, hydrogen bombs, chemical weapons etc.
Yet if we do include all these modern "Arms" then the 2nd amendment appears insane. It suggests that the only way to decentralize power would be for everyone to have their own version of the most powerful modern weapon – a nuclear bomb. Modern guns are foolish in comparison.
Yet I doubt any 2nd amendment advocates would support this idea, as every domestic squabble or fender bender could result in the destruction of entire cities as tempers flare and folks launch their nukes.
Indeed, even if we limit our discussion to automatic rifles (recall rifling technology – developed in the 1800s – vastly improved gun accuracy), which give one person the ability to mow down masses of people, we find that we are still perverting the Founders intents. Not good.
Returning to today, we see that Bitcoin has its own automatic rifle problem. It is called an ASIC. And an ASIC is unlike a CPU in that it is entirely useless to most folks (just as an AR-16 is). As such, because few folks own them, ASICs are the opposite of decentralization.
Indeed, just as few folks bought CPUs to mine, every purchase of an ASIC has been with the intention of rigging the system for the individual. The first folks who turned on their fist ASICs were probably laughing their heads off, and they are likely today, phenomenally rich.
And so instead of being a game of decentralization, the development and use of ASICs is akin to the centralized control of the military power of government. Except this game takes place in China etc.
Therefore the parallels are precise. Just as the development of F-16s and nuclear bombs destroy the dreams of the Founding Fathers (and make the 2nd amendment meaningless), so too does the development of ASICs punch a hole in the dream of Bitcoin.
While both dreams are based on precisely the same ideas, with the same goals and the same means of achieving them, they are both flawed. The Founders and Satoshi both imagined a world where tech would create decentralization. But because they used tech, the opposite has happened.
So, just as we would laugh if even 20,000 massively armed citizens picked a fight with the the US Military, we chuckle when BTC folks mine with CPU miners. They are no match for those who control the ASICs.
And so while I cross my fingers that one day, everyone will have an equal power to mine a cryptocurrency, I don't see this as likely. And for those folks who claim they love the second amendment, I have pretty much the same response...
Protecting gun ownership says absolutely nothing about the second amendment. In fact, I couldn't imagine a more clueless interpretation of the law. The Founders were philosophers not gun toters.
And like Satoshi, they were chasing a dream of decentralization – they just both made the same mistake. They relied on technology. Decentralization, however, will always rely on people.
