‘It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible.’ — David Brin

At present, we, as citizens, have to put our trust in existing data management systems; trust that our information is correct, up to date and secure. In today’s digital threat landscape, it’s fair to say our levels of trust have been challenged given the numerous high profile hacks of last year which saw thousands of customers’ personal details leaked onto the Internet. With blockchain, however, it can be an enabler to putting the citizen in control of their identity for the very first time. We can do this by removing the central arbiter and with a decentralised alternative, we have the possibility to build a ‘trust-less’ eco-system where no one person or company can manipulate citizens identities either by accident or maliciously.
— “How can Blockchain redefine the relationship between the UK government and citizens?”

Bitcoin allows for market-based centralization rather than coercive centralization. This makes it possible to build centralized services that are not themselves the only means of interaction with the Bitcoin blockchain: banking services, wallet services, exchange services, wire transfer services, notary services — these can all be implemented independently of the “Peep2Peer Finite State Machine Triple-Entry Account Engine” that underpins the Bitcoin network.

NoHands Economy

The decoupling of its “material requirement” as a “means of exchange” is arguably the greatest achievement of the largest distributed computing experiment on the planet (Bitcoin). In a way, Bitcoin is an exercise in Negative Materials Science or Negative Materials Design because it decouples the material requirement from a context that typically always seemed dependent on a certain “reality” of “exchange”. Another service is instantaneous global transactions with minimal fees (to miners who are market centralized since they leverage processing power of CPUs to hunt through the proof of work ecosystem, and vote on future implementations of the protocol toward minted coin).

So Bitcoin is “decentralized” primarily in that it decouples the currency as a means of exchange from the “brick and mortar” reality that fiat currencies are shaped within. Bitcoin is shaped and scaled to the distributed systems of electricity to service the core capabilities of the network. At its most basic architectural level, the availability of the currency can be uninhibited by control mechanisms that afford security in terms of classical problems of physical theft and robbery, etc.

Blocks versus Chains

In some way[s], Openchain could also be seen as more decentralized than Bitcoin, as Bitcoin has one unique chain everyone has to use (which causes centralization around the developers, miners, etc.), whereas with Openchain, every individual, organization or company can run their own instance, and keep them completely independent from any third party.
— Flavion Charlon’s response to “Is Openchain a centralized ledger?”

At the same time, as localized financial services become digitally and technologically realized through more readily available and reliable protocols like HTTP/2 and Modern REST, small businesses will be able to integrate and implement smart contracts at the POS and Web POS. Merchants could integrate analytics benchmarks, etc., for instance, to implement their own loyalty systems or their own credit/debit systems (higher order financial instruments or services) using their own cryptographic ledgers or more localized ledger services that are strategically pegged or anchored to the Bitcoin network, or any adjacent networks. This could give localized services opportunity to incentivize and compete “smart economy” features with a greater level of focus and precision.

What it comes down to is: Is the meta-notational engine of the architecture of power best served by block headers or links in a chain? What metaphor or philosophical strategy makes most sense to the market? And is security all the better for it, where functional institutions can exist as scaled digital communities who implement their *-chains appropriate to their teleological sums?

I broke the surface so I can breathe
I close my eyes so I can see
I tie my arms to be free
Have you ever been free?
— Fugazi