George, Ben, Tom and the Gang knew the importance of a currency based on work.

Colonial script, the currency of the thirteen colonies was the great success story of the time. It was said that a pig living in the thirteen colonies had a better standard of living than an aristocrat in France or Britian.  Their currency, much like Bitcoin wasn’t backed by gold or silver, just the hard work of the pioneers of the colonies.

Word of this got back to King George and he forced the colonies to dump their currency and use the British Pound. The thirteen colonies unemployment rate went from 1% to 50% in less than a year. The price of tea be damned, they revolted.

Benjamin Franklin - Money is work.

Bitcoin is backed up by work

Franklin would have been impressed by just how stoutly bitcoin is backed. Bitcoin is backed by work not debt.

  • The Bitcoin network is backed by the most powerful computing network the world has ever known. Every super computer in the world combined could not out compute the Bitcoin network.
  • The electricity that powers the Bitcoin network represents mega watts of power, enough to run an average sized city. That represents a significant amount of work. Solar plants, coal extraction, oil drilling, refining and transporting.
  • The community that took Bitcoin from fractions of a cent to hundreds of dollars represents a total of five years of code software development, education and grass roots propagation.

Benjamin Franklin in particular would really respect the immense work that backs up Bitcoin. The question is which segment of this work would he respect most. Computing, energy or community. From his notes on currency and it’s application within a nation state it is pretty clear that he would value the immense community behind Bitcoin above all else but this is open to debate.

 

George Washington - It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

Bitcoin as a decentralized system

The founding fathers biggest HR problems were cowards, turncoats and sellouts.

They got a lot of excuses and were pretty sick of hearing them. No one wanted to battle against the worlds biggest army, certainly not go head to head against it. Bitcoin’s ability to diffuse the labour and deflect any direct confrontation would have been a blessing to the founding fathers.

  • Bitcoin cannot be stopped unless the entire internet is taken down. For the British this would have been equivalent to killing all the colonists and simply destroying everything, what would be left to rule? The British would be shooting themselves in the foot.
  • They can stop a single man but not an army of mosquitos. The founding fathers would have appreciated this as it would be the ultimate manifestation of the guerrilla tactics the colonists pioneered, but on a digital level.
  • Satoshi Nakomoto is a ghost. The British tried to take down the leaders of the revolution and they could not get a moments peace with the constant attempts at their lives. A leader that is, essentially, invisible is a masterstroke that George Washington in particular would have appreciated.

 

Thomas Jefferson - I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

Bitcoin as an Ethos

Idea’s are more powerful than any one personality.

Even a personality that cannot be identified is still not as strong as an idea. The founding fathers knew that to survive, win and thrive they needed to be fueled by an idea far greater than any one person. They moved forward on the concept of liberty and sovereignty eventually getting it all down on paper as the Articles of Confederation and Constitution.

The ethos that has developed around Bitcoin would have given them a serious jumpstart.

  • Be your own bank. Jefferson especially knew how dangerous banks could be if they lost sight of their duty as civil servants. The ability of Bitcoin to remove them as a central power would have instantly eliminated their greatest concern
  • The wealthy or poor operate by the same rules. The Bitcoin block chain does not discriminate. If you send a billion dollars or a dollars worth of bitcoin you still pay the same few cents in mining fees.
  • Bitcoin’s community is the very epitome of resilience. Even with a barrage of negative press, immense resistance from the banks and a plummeting price the Bitcoin community believes that there is no such thing as bad news and continues to march along. That is the kind of vigor that changes the world.

The founding fathers would have learned a lot from Bitcoin. Namely that we are on the right path and that all truly worthwhile struggles, begin as just that, struggles.

Abraham Lincoln knew the power of the issuance of currency was central to the wealth and prosperity of Humanity. Bitcoin was the "medium" he spoke of. He paid with his life for issuing his own currency. He would have not had to die if Bitcoin was around back then.
Abraham Lincoln knew the power of the issuance of currency was central to the wealth and prosperity of Humanity. Bitcoin was the “medium” he spoke of. He paid with his life for issuing his own currency. He would have not had to die if Bitcoin was around back then.

Fight on Bitcoin, you’ve already won.