The world order inaugurated after the Second World War, an order which has shaped political and economic life for generations, is over. Not only that, but the post-Cold War era characterized by unipolar US superpower is over.

 

We now live in a multipolar world. This world is characterized by the rise of multinational people and companies, new economic alliances across societies, and revitalized national projects and historical empires all enabled through the industrial capacities, commodity wealth, and technological advantages uniquely combining to carve out this new world. At the same time, the foundations of the nation-state--the historical form embodying the principle of “rule by the people”--have come increasingly into question as entire populations debate the basis of political community and practices of representation. The American debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, the social crucible which generated the US Constitution and the founding institutions of the fledgling Republic, appears to be gaining new relevance in this moment.

 

Into this shifting world order steps bitcoin, the world’s first digital asset to use its known regularity of issuance and credible scarcity to guarantee base money legitimacy. Suddenly, one of the core functions of the state appears to have been automated at the level of a global protocol. And this Layer-1 money is not only absolutely scarce, but easily divisible, portable, fungible, uniform, and acceptable. A vehicle for the preservation and growth of value has emerged and gained adoption bottom-up, without seeking the imprimatur of the state.

 

The Satoshi Papers invites contributions from historians, economists, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, political theorists, computer scientists, philosophers, and others seeking to clarify what uncensorable, sound money implies for the generative relating of individual, state, and society. We ask how the automation of certain state functions impacts our understanding of the social contract--that fundamental Enlightenment-era theory of just relations between state and society--and the relations between states themselves.

 

The Satoshi Papers are works of political theory, not policy. In times of crisis and upheaval, when the terms through which the world has been understood are actively shifting, the first imperative is to think. What is clear is that all the conceptual pieces are not already on the table. We invite you to think so that we may together clarify what is at stake and what distinctions will enable us to skillfully navigate this era of profound transition.

 

 

Questions Animating The Satoshi Papers

 

Some of the research questions to be taken up in contributions to The Satoshi Papers might include:

 

• What is an optimal form of government, for whom, at what scale, why, and what role does bitcoin play in that form of government?
   

• What role will bitcoin play in the 21st-century international financial system?
   

• How does bitcoin’s adoption limit and/or enable new expressions of state power?
   

• What effects will an absolutely scarce currency have on the practice of war?
   

• Can bitcoin help societies forge a path toward optimal forms of relating between elites and non-elites?
   

• How are natural rights, particularly rights to liberty and property, being re-conceptualized in light of bitcoin? What implications do these rights have for state-society relations?
   

• The principle of independence in central banking was intended to bring fiscal accountability to polities and base money legitimacy to their currencies. Bitcoin's primary purpose is to use its known regularity of issuance and credible scarcity to ensure that monetary policy's bedrock state is unhindered in preserving the value of money. With this foundational mission of independent central banking now automated, and public confidence in it growing every year, does there remain a social function for central banking? What public good(s) can now gain attention among bankers?
   

• Proof of Work is an independent money-creating institution comparable to independent central banking. How does the automation of the money issuance aspect of central banking change the mission and methods of commercial and retail banking when it comes to credit, market making, underwriting, bond issuance, and the like?
   

• What does the future hold for new forms of currency in a world of unforgeably scarce, programmable base money? For example, what are the types of polities and projects enabled by locally circulating Chaumian eCash that is verifiably rooted in a bitcoin vault? What kinds of political autonomy might result at different scales? At what point and in what ways would a network of vault participants become an opt-in political project?
   

• How will bitcoin mining and network maintenance impact global energy production, usage, availability, and the shift to more abundant and/or renewable sources? What effects will this have on global political economy?

 

In addition to taking up these more general topics, essays will also focus on bitcoin’s implications for American political economy specifically. Like the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, these questions may include significant normative or prescriptive components:

 

• What does “a more perfect union” look like, and why?
   

• How does bitcoin prompt us to rethink the structures of Enlightenment-era government that the United States has inherited? How should these structures evolve, and why?
   

• What role might bitcoin play in the evolution of relationships between US States and between States and the Federal Government?
   

• What projects and outcomes might bitcoin enable at the Federal, State, and local levels that are either not possible or difficult to achieve without it?
   

• What role, if any, does bitcoin play in furthering financial inclusion and wealth creation among historically marginalized populations?
   

• Should the United States continue to strive to be a global superpower? What does being a superpower mean in a multipolar world?
   

• Should the United States seek to preserve the US dollar’s status as the global reserve currency? What are the implications for domestic policy?
   

• How do non-state, programmable bearer instruments (BTC) and state sponsored fiat bills (USD) or bonds (UST) interact optimally for the American people?
   

• Is there a future for non-programmable reserve assets (gold), or are these collapsing into strategic reserves more generally (oil, helium, etc.)?