introduction
Bitcoin will not replace politics, it will revolutionize politics.
Even if Bitcoin becomes the centerpiece of a monetary system that emerges from the ashes of the current fiat currency system and HyperBitcoinization becomes a reality, nation states will remain the masters of international relations. They will rise from the ruins of their predecessors like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
As Max Weber wrote more than 100 years ago in his famous essay “Economy and Society,” states will continue to use legal coercion and violence as their specific and distinctive means of action, due to their very nature aspiring to the monopoly of power both at home and abroad. Unrecognizable Superior Rex Externally.
Thanks to Bitcoin, the state will undergo new and diverse transformations that are difficult to imagine at this point. The state will undoubtedly face significant challenges and shrinkage compared to its current state, including changes in geographic scope, resources, capabilities, and ambitions. However, the state will not disappear completely as a social organizational structure, even in the aspirations of the anarcho-capitalists and the most staunch libertarians.
In a hyper-Bitcoinized world, the voluntary, transactional and collaborative aspects of human interaction may become dominant, but they will not be the only elements.
There will always be individuals who choose to resort to force to assert their beliefs, simply because it is a viable and convenient option. Moreover, some degree of violence is inherent to our nature as beings with animal instincts, and as long as humans live on this planet, violence will exist. Thus, as long as violence continues, there will be efforts to organize, justify, and regulate it. This leads to the inevitable “historical necessity” of the state as a regulator and centralizer of power between individuals. Whether they began as social agreements between equals, were imposed from above by annexation or invasion, or arose from anarchic “man is wolf to man” scenarios where the strongest ruled and seized control, states have evolved over time through various forms (from tribal societies to nation-states to empires) and have been supported by a variety of political systems, including dictatorships, oligarchy, and democracy.
The “new state” in a global Bitcoin system would be stripped of broad monetary powers and would be severely limited in its ability to accumulate debt or manipulate currency. As a result, it would need to shrink in both size and scope and return to its core functions of lawmaking, adjudication, ensuring security, and providing defense. In an ideal scenario, it would resemble a minimalist state, voluntarily accepted by its citizens and established by mutual consent. This envisioned state could be a small entity similar to many other city-states, or a compact nation-state centered around a religious, linguistic, ethnic, or moral identity that certainly will not disappear with the advent of the Bitcoin world.
This future trajectory suggests a world state reminiscent of past political examples such as the city-states of medieval Italy, the pre-imperial states of ancient China, the Greek city-states of the 6th century BCE, and even the 19th century American West. Hopefully, we will see much lower levels of political violence than in previous examples, due in part to significantly increased average material well-being (as a result of enormous technological advances, providing an abundance of goods and curbing predatory human impulses due to resource scarcity) and a level of commercial and informational interconnectivity unparalleled compared to historical precedents.
Technological advances have facilitated, and will continue to facilitate, communication as a solution to the prisoner’s dilemma and widespread trade as a beneficial alternative to war.
That said, we should not expect the kind of enduring peace that Kant envisioned. War between states would probably be rare and a last resort in such an environment, but it would not be entirely excluded from the realm of possibility. Some communities would be willing to use coercive means to achieve their ends, even at the expense of their neighbors. But given the diminished capacity and economic power of new states, the prevailing interest in peaceful trade, and fresh historical memories of the horrors of war and warring states in the modern era, such rare events would likely involve less blood and resources than they do today.
Diplomacy and Blockchain
In this hypothetical situation, with many small sovereign nations, vibrant trade, and relative international anarchy, diplomatic activity is on the rise, and bilateral and multilateral alliances flourish, and this is where the Bitcoin network once again comes into play. What better place for nations to ratify and store agreements and treaties than Bitcoin’s Layer 1?
Diplomatic negotiations certainly have many similarities with commercial negotiations. On the one hand, they revolve around negotiations between states and treaties, and on the other hand, they revolve around contracts. Just as contracts cannot be concluded without trust between merchants, treaties cannot be ratified without trust between states. Thus, a certain degree of trust is essential not only in private economic transactions, but also in political and diplomatic relations.
In a world that is more politically decentralized and fragmented than our current one, where every monetary transaction will be based on “trust” in the Bitcoin blockchain or its higher abstractions, and where the security and inviolability of the code will be guaranteed by vast amounts of energy and the largest computer network in history, it would make perfect sense for newly formed nation states to choose Bitcoin as the place to store their legally binding relationships. But how?
Relying on Bitcoin’s order theory, we can develop a standard specifically for digital signatures originating from wallets/public keys belonging to sovereign nations, and from there build an “official” protocol for the ratification, registration and amendment of international treaties on Bitcoin’s Layer 1, universally recognized through consensus standards by network nodes and as common law between sovereign nations.
Why Bitcoin Layer 1 in particular?
In addition to its symbolic value as the cornerstone of a future international monetary system, Bitcoin’s native blockchain offers many practical advantages as a platform for recording international treaties, including inherent properties such as openness and traceability (monitoring), immutability, orderability (timestamp mechanism to obtain a specific date for each transaction), and finally, neutrality (a public good that can be used by anyone, owned by no one and therefore unaffected by anyone).
In the future, an added benefit could be the increased costs of higher transaction fees, which would give more weight and value to things agreed upon between parties and recorded there (as with location goods) than they do today.
If we consider the possibility of building a tree structure of “smart treaties” on top of Bitcoin, depending on events (transactions) occurring on the main blockchain or on other layers, we can see how the flexibility of this tool could expand the options and capabilities of current diplomatic treaties, making them highly detailed and interactive, effective and adaptable to a highly fragmented and complex international political system.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using the Bitcoin blockchain as a distributed ledger for recording and archiving international treaties and agreements offers many advantages in terms of openness, traceability, immutability, neutrality, cost and programmability. This technology can revolutionize the way international agreements are created, managed, updated and monitored, increasing security, transparency and trust between the parties involved. These improvements should encourage cooperative behavior (as game theory teaches), reduce the risk of conflict between states and maximize the interests of all members of the future system of international relations.
