KOL337 | You Don’t Own Bitcoin—Property Rights, Praxeology and the Foundations of Private Law
Channel: N. Stephan Kinsella
Date: 2021-05-27

https://www.stephankinsella.com/paf-podcast/kol337-wasabikas-15-you-dont-own-bitcoin/
KOL337 | Join the Wasabikas Ep. 15.0: You Don’t Own Bitcoin—Property Rights, Praxeology and the Foundations of Private Law, with Max Hillebrand

This is my appearance on Join the Wasabikas: A Bitcoin Privacy Podcast, Ep. 15.0, with Max Hillebrand.

We discussed a variety of topics related to bitcoin, property rights, Austrian economics, and so on. Shownotes for the full episode:

"Stephan Kinsella is an incredible scholar of the Austrian school of praxeology, his major contribution is the advancement of the arguments in favor of property of scarce goods, and against intellectual property of non-scarce goods. He applies his in depth wisdom to how Bitcoin can be explained in this view."

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Website: https://WasabiWallet.io Blog: https://blog.WasabiWallet.io
Documentation: https://docs.WasabiWallet.io
GitHub: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi
Podcast: https://anchor.fm/Wasabikas
YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/WasabiWallet

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction. / Scarce vs non-scarce goods.
02:38 Stephan’s background. / What property rights should be. / Intellectual property.
06:50 Why do we need property rights for scarce resources? / Praxeology: the logic of human action (Mises). / Assignment of an owner to anything that could be contested. / You own your body. / Homesteading. / Patents and copyright.
13:43 The purpose of law.
14:46 The definition of scarcity. / How much is the abundance of a good tied to its actual scarcity? / Superabundance. / Rivalrous or conflictable resources. / Production. / Dispute.
19:48 How to behave towards the aggressor. / Rules that promote peace. / Appeal to norms.
22:57 Retribution of the victim. / Empathy and evolution. / Being part of a community. / Crime is impossible to eradicate.
26:24 Entropy. / Creation is more difficult than destruction. / Defence is easier than offence.
27:48 What is the qualitative difference between retribution and pre-emptive defence? / Non-aggression principle. / Punishing people is expensive. / Restitution.
31:36 Juristic/legal ownership vs economic ownership. / Right to use vs ability to use. / Self-enforcing systems. / Ownership vs control.
33:48 Why don’t you own the private key? / You can’t own information. / Information is always the impatterning of a substrate. / Information is a feature of the owned thing. / Ownership can only be applied on physical things.
39:26 Craig Wright wants a property right over other people’s computers.
40:41 Non-scarcity in cyberspace.
42:21 Using cryptography to enforce access rights. / Money is rivalrous. / Money has a network effect. / Bitcoin mimics real-world scarcity. / The purpose of money. / Non-coincidence of wants. / Economic calculation. / Any amount of money will do.
47:38 Absolute scarcity in the monetary medium. / Sacrifice. / Low supply. Low stock-to-flow ratio. / Gold vs Bitcoin.
50:11 Permissionless write-access to a central ledger.
53:43 What defines the absolute scarcity of gold? / Why did gold become money?
56:31 You verify that a transaction is valid based on the rules to which you opt in. / Verify the sacrifice of someone else. / Everyone is verifying according to the same rules.
58:54 Divisibility of bitcoin and sidechains. / Consensus.
01:02:22 The way users will act in the context of hard-fork.
01:03:03 Is the “digital gold” metaphor misleading.
01:04:47 A system bordering on chaos but thriving.
01:05:31 Being one of the founding fathers’ of America.
01:06:24 Theft is a correlative of ownership. / Bitcoin has no terms of service.
01:08:02 Fear of losing keys. / Personal responsibility.
01:09:51 An extra-terrestrial/solar civilisation.
01:11:07 Intergalactic mining. / Energy. / Latency.
01:13:36 Correlation between civilisation and efficient energy usage.
01:14:46 Alignment between the morals of society and the rules of Bitcoin.
01:15:54 What if a better Bitcoin comes along? / Productive assets.
01:17:24 Is Bitcoin the best money that humans will ever experience?
01:19:43 How will Liberty/Libertarianism work?
01:21:01 Will the society of Bitcoin change in a way that becomes evil/leeching?
01:22:36 Conclusion.