I was initially surprised to see so much of the tech-oriented crowd at HackerNews with not just a negative view of crypto, but a very often flippant, uninformed view. After sufficient reading and contention, the disconnect seems clear: Bitcoin is not a technological invention - it is an economic innovation.
You may have heard an infamous 'critique' of Bitcoin: "It's nothing but hashes, Merkle Trees, and Public Key Cryptography which we've had all of for decades at this point!"
That 'critique,' is not inaccurate, but it is misplaced. It investigates Bitcoin for it’s secret sauce, but only finds standard ingredients. Worse still: how this compisition achieves its goals goes against a popular ethos surrounding technology.
Bitcoin’s innovation is economic - not to be not confused with Bitcoin’s descriptor of currency. No, it’s core economic component is its ability to impose cost, Proof of Work; in it’s most abstract form it is the simplest anti-spam scheme possible. It works by encouraging spam and pidgenholing it’s externalities. On a deeper level, it wrangles power.
Where Bitcoin descends the ivory tower of ‘technology’ is where it encourages a distributed, open system to settle disputes through brawn, rather than complexity. The technology ethos is one which strives to compromise not on predictability, performance or organization. In a way, ‘good’ technologies are micro-Utopias or at least must always strive to be. Bitcoin invites what the ethos of technology clamors away from. It digitizes the most archaic principle: strongest wins, but then wraps it in the organized, precise and beautiful technological innovations it had at it’s disposal. The sheer competition for power is directed into one small niche: the right to publish the next block, thus limiting power to only what is necessary and cordoning off where it may otherwise corrupt a more porous system.
With all the power directed to one component of the system, Bitcoin performs its trick: it incentivizes that power to compete against itself for the privelage of progressing the state of the network. Where the technology of Star Trek more perfectly, precisely and perfomatively processes some notion of objective truth, Bitcoin mediates the most basic and corruptible enterprise in human history by welcoming greed and power to directly participate rather than admonishing it - for greed and power will enter at some point any system.
It’s no wonder so many people in tech 'missed out' on Bitcoin; its components are lacking of innovation not seen before, and their composition results in a system which sucks large amounts real energy to maintain a small database. It takes more than a technical background to appreciate and have a qualified opinion on the economic innovation in Bitcoin, and rather than solidifying ever more enlightened principles into the perfectly objective runes of software, Bitcoin protects itself from corruption by acknowledging that great power will always be used to influence what is valuable and accepting that power with open arms rather than avoiding it; the power is whipped into a dance against itself, its potency diminished. The genius of Bitcoin is not a hash-linked database, it’s the fact that this modest database is resistant to modification and censorship by the most powerful forces in the world; it is resistant to violence, because it invites true power but gives that power the narrowest conceivable zone of influence.
To believe Bitcoin is a purely technical innovation is a rationalization for ignorance of the above economic, even sociological, or political innovation. Any person who may be categorized as some technical professional should be forgiven for missing out on Bitcoin, but when they themselves view Bitcoin as a purely technological invention, they are implored explain to themselves and others why they aren’t filthy rich. It is from this misguided perception that much misinformation on Bitcoin is sourced and its genius is ignored.
Should a programmer be a de facto authority on the health concerns of social media, the legal ramifications of selling used goods, or supply chain logistics? So too with Bitcoin - past the validation that it’s simple components work correctly, it’s emergent structure transcends the judgement of those who can only see it as the sum of its parts; those whose understanding of technology is narrow and uncompromising enough to hold the naive belief that apparent complexity is a defense against the ever crafty claws of power. Nay, sit back and watch the wolves fight for your scraps.