I've lurked on Bitcoin drama because of Nostr. I'm on Nostr because of decentralized identity. In my studies on decentralized identity, before Bitcoin was really a thing (but roughly the same time), I ran into Henry Story and WebID (which does many of the same things as Nostr, but has WoT built in to the protocol, and can allow white/black listing at the transport layer with X.509 certs to minimize resource usage and attack surface).
In 2005 I asked on an email list of AMC Rambler enthusiasts why they didn't use their skills to convert the respected and abundant 195.6 engine (precursor to much more improved 232 which settled in to the awesome 4 L Jeep engine) into something that could burn biodiesel. I got laughed off the message board, since the physics realities make it unreasonable. Now, about the same time, some biobutanol folks brewed up some workable fuel, but it didn't scale. Refitting the 195.6 w/ sleeves and a new head that could handle the compression needed for diesel wouldn't scale either, let alone it would cost more than the car was worth. I often get in trouble going far out of my domain of expertise.
We actually need food [1]. We don't need gold [2]. We don't need government controlled fiat. Bitcoin, as I understand it, coins money through proof of work by using up energy to find 0s in the beginning of the result of hashing a block of transactions after adding nonces. What is there that is similar in food production? There are many unique things in food, just as there is in nature. For instance, if I was harvesting fingers (not proposing this, just using the fingerprint uniqueness as an example) we could call it proof of harvesting fingers for a certain pattern that was like a 0 at the beginning of the hash if we increment a finger harvester nonce until we find the pattern. Is there something like that for crops like wheat, millet, soybeans, corn? It would have to be transmitted to the nodes in a similar way.
Perhaps the simplest is just proof of corn. Here. I have a bushel of corn. Capture that in an electronic ledger. Proving *yet again* that I *also* used energy to increment the nonce until I found the 0s to capture the block doesn't make sense, so I don't see Bitcoin as useful here. ATProto (bluesky) has merkle tree support. This means there is a social aspect as well, so it is set up to accept proof of corn, wheat... whatever it is we *really* need directly could be plugged in. A PDS could federate independently, so it can be sovereign [3]. What if the seed itself had a genetic marker unique to the PDS? This seems as wacky as my biodiesel conversion, frankly. I'm thinking that Alice with her PDS says, yup, Bob delivered 10 bushels of corn to dock 3 today.
Sure, we don't need that fiat paper. It enslaves us, so decouple. But we *do* need food, etc.
I realize that there are two different things here: use of money and creation of money. But when I abstract corn to money, I need close to universal acceptance across categories of goods I need in exchange for the money for it to be useful, and it needs to be stable. I know commodities can fluctuate wildly, conversion into currency, at least. At the same time, I need 2,000 calories a day or so to survive. I have proof of need that could match proof of corn, right? That won't fluctuate. From what I can tell, particularly with the instability shown in the last week with BTC, if I'm proving my corn, the best way to prove it and count on using the money is with a type of currency that is demonstrably stable. Sure, I need to submit to certain rules/authority, but that also gives access to a market.
Then, I have the problem of complicated systems. I don't believe in any global always-on communication structure that will survive the outcome of breaching planetary boundaries [4]. Plus, what does fiat even mean in this situation? It undermines both. I suppose local economies could be closed-loop with government-issued fiat, but without backing it isn't sustainable. Hmmmm....
Plus, and finally, all of this problem comes from surplus. This traces to 10,000 years. Sure, a squirrel hordes nuts for the winter, but it is constrained. When the "whole shithouse goes up in flames", I'll bring my corn in as my proof of work and trade it for *whatever* exists at that time. Do I need to even worry about this? NO!!! I'm just creating tools to map nested system relationships of material and data. I *bet* it could be traded for corn directly, a handshake agreement, kind of like how I traded for the System/23 [5].
Well, back to work, then.
[1] We also need a wet bulb temp of <35C, and electricity helps, but if you find your nonce that works for the block with Bitcoin, you basically show you used up cooling for somebody that needs it in reality.
[2] We might need gold and/or other minerals with some technical solutions we arrive at to get corn (purchasing with a mobile phone, etc.)
[3]
GitHub
What does implementing ATProto Repos entail? (as part of a PDS) · bluesky-social/atproto · Discussion #2644
I read the docs around the Repository data structure, and while it gives me a vague idea of how the ATProto Repository concept works, it didn't rea...
[4]
[5]
O.R.N.G. Journal/Fiction/Documentation
Fiction and Journal entries from 1990 through 2024, including memories back to 1970, as well as web articles covering electronics, computers, codin...
A related journal entry of mine from 1987:
1987-03-09 ▪ Memory ▪ Highway Men
Yvette and I had lived at our apartment together for a little over a month. We were playing gin on the carpet and listening to Yvette’s Gigantes Del Jazz tape, when we heard a knock on the door. It was dark outside. I opened the door, and the wind blew some rain into the light coming from our apartment. A thin man that looked kind like my uncle Steve, with a full mustache and a two-week old beard pleaded, “My car broke down, and I need to call a tow. Can I use your phone?”
I said, “Sure, and pointed him to the phone in the opposite corner of the apartment next to the kitchen.” Yvette stood near the kitchen table, next to the phone. Along the wall opposite of the front door was a homemade book case with twenty or so books. On the floor, against the wall perpendicular to the door, was Yvette’s Sears Sound System: an integrated amp, turntable and tape deck, with a small speaker on either side. That was all we had. We didn’t even have a couch, yet. That would come later, courtesy of Sammy. Spread across the carpet was our gin rummy game.
Yvette handed the man the handle of our phone, which was mounted on the wall. The man took the phone and held it against his chest as another man entered the apartment and closed the door. They looked around our apartment, and with a look of disgust they both left. They didn’t even try to call anybody (or pretend). They just gave the phone back to Yvette and left.
