Bitcoin. Tiger Pixel/Flickr. Some rights reserved.In its 8th year of existence, Bitcoin has made lots of news headlines. From wild volatility in the markets, hacks in exchanges, to the identity of the supposed self-proclaimed mysterious anonymous creator, events surrounding this disruptive technology have had no shortage of drama. Now, the latest is a civil war happening in the Bitcoin community. The solutions for this technology’s scaling problem have created a challenge of consensus. With disagreements on technical changes turning into a contentious debate on social media, the ecosystem growing around this technology has started to resemble the craziness of party politics.
We have seen repeated fiascos in national politics. From the 2008 financial meltdown and bank bailouts to cycles of austerity, unprecedented levels of corruption have spawned a global crisis of legitimacy of institutions and governments. This only seems to have gotten worse. The 2016 US presidential election – magnified by WikiLeaks DNC leaks – has presented the world with an escalation of the 'lesser of two evils' political model, and electoral politics as a charade sponsored by oligarchs.
As the system of representation is increasingly failing, Bitcoin presented an alternative. The core of this innovation is its apolitical nature. This is what makes Bitcoin censorship resistant, unseizable and permissionless. As politics in the community seems to be creating setbacks or posing what some perceive as an existential crisis, questions once again arise: what is Bitcoin? How is this apolitical money different from existing national currency?
