Review: "The Politics of Bitcoin" Offers a Flawed and Misleading Partisan View

At a time when one of the world's most influential countries is run by an unpredictable billionaire who explores Twitter as an instrument for foreign politics and openly confronts individuals, political leaders and companies, it is a given that there is uncertainty about what will happen next. During the past few weeks, we have seen a great number of odd examples of what this kind of 'post-truth' world can bring, one where sentiment all too often overrules facts. Rationality is wiped off the map with a tweet, and any thorough investigation is ignored with irrational discussions. Populism....

It’s been referred to as a "revolutionary technology" by IBM, and a "once in a generation opportunity" by PricewaterhouseCoopers. But perhaps the most descriptive title came from The Economist when they dubbed blockchain "the trust machine". It is a breakthrough in computer science that holds the promise of reducing the cost of establishing and maintaining trust for both individuals and organizations. "Blockchain" is a relatively new term that refers to a specific type of computer database. The Oxford English Dictionary defines blockchain as "a....

If Ayn Rand were involved in the bitcoin or crypto world, she might well identify "consensus" as an "anti-concept". The anti-concept, she said, is a "rationally unusable term". It conveys an approximate sense of meaning, but lacks the precision needed to fully communicate an idea. "In the realm of cognition," Rand said, "nothing is as bad as the approximate." "Consensus" mischaracterizes the decision-making processes that exist around bitcoin. Adoption or non-adoption of network software says nothing about the broader....

2016 has been a year of full of surprises. Unexpected events like the rise of Donald Trump and the victory of the 'Brexit' supporters in the UK have left a trail of baffled "experts" and commentators in their wake. The scaffolding that has held the global order in place for the past 20 years has taken a string of unanticipated hits from unlikely sources, and the powers that be have looked clumsy as they have tried to adapt. It is difficult to pin down, but it feels like something big is changing in our world. Now, as blockchains stand poised to impact the world of protocols, this....

In physics, the definition of "energy" is "that which allows work to be done." This means that money is energy, since it can be used to do work via payments to people. The energy in money can be thought of as "economic energy". Economists call economic energy "price" and measure it in terms of "euros" or "Kenyan shillings" and so on. But, these units are abstract because their quantity changes over time. Physicists would prefer to use units such as joules or kilowatt-hours, which have a concrete basis in physical realities of mass....