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it's true, it's not inherently money. it just works better as money than anything else

the only part that has me disagreeing with myself here is that first line and title of the white paper directly and clearly refers to it as peer to peer cash

Yup. It only becomes ‘money’ at the exact point in time of an economic transaction. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of numbers.

In the Softwar thesis, the author lays out Power Projection Theory and the distinction between physical reality, the world of mass and energy, and abstract reality, the imaginary world within the human mind. He makes the argument that computers and their bits of memory have a similar distinction. The physical state of the changing bits vs the abstract "programs" we see represented by them. Bitcoin is a physical system in that it uses real world physical power to change the state of abstract bits. It's a system that's the first of it's kind. But what stories we tell about what that system does is entirely abstract. The narratives about how we use it are entirely abstract. Which means, that the idea that Bitcoin is money is also purely abstract. There is nothing physical or inherent to Bitcoin that makes it money, but that doesn't mean that people can't use it as money in their economic lives. That also means that there's nothing preventing anyone else from coming up with a different story of how Bitcoin can be used.

And the concept of money is itself an abstraction that only exists at that exact point of time you mentioned, no matter the medium.

Satoshi was the first person to apply a narrative to the thing he built, but that's the point of the argument made in Softwar. That you have to have some narrative to understand it at all, but the narrative about Bitcoin isn't what Bitcoin is.

A cirlcle is no longer a circle once it is drawn. Once drawn it becomes an approximation of a circle. Same for triangle, etc

Indeed 👌

Yup. The immutable nature of utxos and the absolute scarcity of satoshis make money the most obvious use case, which is massive ofc, but it does not stop there....

This is a confused argument. Money is a telos. "Bitcoin is money" is a teleological assertion, not a conclusion. Arguing it this way is a category error. I could say "there's no such thing as a knife because I could use it to put my shoes on" but that's bongwater. So what. We can't have a meaningful conversation about how to design or maintain a good knife if we devolve into postmodern sophistry. Functionalism is retarded and dishonest. I bet you all use your cars to drive around and your front door to shut your house. Please. Bitcoin is money. Take it as a warcry. If I catch you with my chef's knife in your shoe, you are no longer invited to dinner. Ps, iirc, Major Lowery is making a much more interesting point about Bitcoin's deeper significance AS MONEY as a means of non-violent power projection, not engaging in reletavistic brainslop in defense of shitcoining.

I agree that the purpose of Bitcoin was and is to be money. But the point I'm making is that that framing is only useful to a point, and can't explain all of Bitcoin's use cases. There are transactions out there that serve a purpose only known to its sender and receiver, and that may not be monetary in nature to them. Should they be denied access to the chain in that case? That seems to be the argument made by anti-spammers right now. They're trying to use "Bitcoin is money" as a way to restrict any transaction they deem is not money. That's an abuse of the narrative in my opinion. If I can come up with a non-monetary use case for Bitcoin that follows the node's rules and is acceptable to miners, there's no one that can tell me it's not allowed. Instead, these folks are trying to make Bitcoin permissioned, where you need the permission from masters who define what "money" is to transact on-chain.

I disagree about permissioning. From my understanding bip110 limits the size of what is a valid transaction not making arbitrary choices if what is valid or not. I agree that softwar does argue strongly that bitcoin is not just a money. But, Softwar doesn't claim all software is infinitely malleable in its use cases just because we use arbitrary names for the purpose of software. So for bitcoin the software would still have real design goals and what would be considered a success or fail. I think one of the most primary being survival of the network. I think you could argue a smaller more limited bitcoin is a stronger more resilient network.

I'm not sure. The bitcoin paper is quite clear: peer-to-peer electronic cash system

And that is it's greatest mistake if people can use it's identity as money to fearmonger and push through changes in the ensuing panic.

what i mean is that debating the purpose of the network is odd