[Recommend my two-volume book for more reading]:
BIT & COIN: Merging Digitality and Physicality
Elon Musk is concerned about the centralization of Bitcoin. But he fails to realize that Bitcoin’s biggest problem is NOT that it is centralized at mining, but it is secretly centralized at a human Core, which is controlled by a handful of human agents who ideologically and economically represent certain powers behind the scenes.
This is why Satoshi wanted Bitcoin’s base protocol to be locked. Satoshi understood Bitcoin as a system comprehensively, including computing, economics, and law. But BTC chose to do the opposite, which was both a reason and a consequence of Satoshi’s exit from BTC (a critical part of history you should investigate more).
The way Musk talks about centralization or decentralization shows that, like most others, he fundamentally misunderstands the concept of “decentralization” for a network system to prevent the weakness of a single point of failure or concentrated points of failure. For this, please read Baran’s foundational work (Baran P. “On Distributed the Communications“).
For example, the kind of incidents Musk points out, in itself, really is not a problem at all, as long as the system is open for other mining nodes that are competitively independent of the hypothetical fallen node to pick up the load and rise from the fall.
Baran’s work has shown that the existence of just two such nodes would make a significantly more reliable system than a single full-node system. The network reliability increases exponentially with the total number of independent full nodes.
More importantly, after the total number of nodes has reached 4, it quickly becomes unnecessary to increase the number of nodes because the marginal return quickly diminishes.
Bitcoin is both a computational and an economic system. Please don’t imagine things based on empty and abstract propaganda of “everyone a full node” or “network of everyone-node”, a fallacy promoted by BTC.
When you talk about “network”, be very certain of what network you’re talking about. While it is economically foolish to require an unlimited number of full nodes (see Baran), it is desirable to have an unlimited number in the network of applications and the network of users. These are entirely different networks. The BTC community confuses them altogether. But they took advantage of the confusion to promote a useless “digital gold”.
I’m glad to see that people like Musk are waking up from the deception of BTC. But I’m afraid that they are not seeing the whole picture yet. For this, I humbly recommend my book: BIT & COIN: Merging Digitality and Physicality (http://bitandcoin.net).
Volume I
Digital Humanity’s Truth Layer Blockchain
The New Internet, its Authenticity Layer, and Applications
Volume II
Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Beyond
Essays of Science, Economics, Law, Ethics, and Controversies
Consequence of Musk’s misunderstanding
Elon Musk has always had a fairly healthy dose of suspicion of BTC’s incapability. It gives him a basis to criticize BTC now openly. That part is good.
But he doesn’t really understand what Satoshi’s blockchain is meant to do and what it is capable of doing. His approach to this matter has been superficial. Despite his brilliance, he clearly has not put a serious effort into understanding this matter, which is far deeper and more complex than most people are aware of.
Musk’s misunderstanding of Bitcoin and blockchain is more consequential than almost any other person’s. His isn’t mere passive knowledge.
One consequence is that, if he chooses to act on his misunderstanding, he will try to steer the US government from passively watching crypto cancer developing to actively accelerating its metastasis.
Combining Musk’s misunderstanding with President-elect Trump’s misunderstanding of the nature of crypto, the danger is high. It is sad because this is happening when the US is given a historic opportunity to take advantage of blockchain innovation with true leadership.
For example, he
We know Musk likes memes, especially ones that have high irony. He once even said something to the effect, “The most likely solution is the funniest solution.”
That’s funny (seriously), but he is wrong.
Humanity is facing some serious problems and needs serious solutions. Without a true blockchain of unbounded scalability and extremely low cost integrated at the base TCP/IP layer of the Internet with IPv6 to form a truth layer, digital humanity’s basic sense of reality will disintegrate and quickly enter into digital insanity.
Facing the accusation of being a “speciesist,” Musk bravely declared to be on the human side. We appreciate it.
Now, Elon needs to be on the truth side.
The stake is beyond the blockchain and its applications.
Without the truth layer, AI accelerates the insanity, leading to a high-entropy but low-meaning inhuman system.
With the truth layer, however, AI augments human intelligence and allows us to reach our universal destiny intended by our Creator.
It is not the ultimate salvation, but it is a vital providential protection and preparation.
The opportunity of the New Internet
The world has been given a historic opportunity to create the New Internet. But the crypto is in the way. The misunderstanding of blockchain by leaders, influencers, and the masses is in the way. And Elon Musk is not helping.
The New Internet needs to be built on a blockchain with unbounded scalability at its core, integrated with the existing Internet based on IPv6, achieving the convergence of the Internet of Information and the Internet of Value. Building numerous blockchains on top of the Internet at the application level is not going to give us the New Internet.
Currently, aside from the blockchain originally designed by Satoshi Nakamoto (it is not BTC, see “The difference between BTC and the genuine Bitcoin“), no other blockchain even remotely approaches this goal. Others haven’t even thought about it, let alone acted on it.
Over the past eight years, with over 200 researchers, an investment of 500 million dollars, and more than 3,000 patents, Satoshi has laid a near-complete foundation for the New Internet.
But the chances are, you don’t know what the above refers to. Musk himself might have an inkling of this, but he most likely has not investigated this beyond the superficial mask created by the mainstream crypto media.
The biggest problem now is that political, business, technological, and public opinion circles are all kept in the dark, unaware of the truth. It’s not that they hear and don’t accept; rather, they don’t even want to listen, and besides, there are no proper channels through which they can hear.
Forty years ago, the United States government made some right choices, paved the correct path for the Internet, and took the leadership in the Internet revolution. But this time, I feel there’s a high probability that the U.S. will miss out on the New Internet due to both a lack of leadership and an increasingly centralized and corrupt tech sector.
[Recommend my two-volume book for more reading]: