@ Micael

Abstract. A purely digital version of a constitutional republic allows individuals worldwide to protect and exchange their private property without the need for state intervention or banks. Cryptography, proof of work, and difficulty adjustment provide part of the solution, but the main benefits come from the division of power and a worldwide network of nodes. Bitcoin solves the problem of trusting legislators and judges that can corrupt the law by letting anyone in the world be a judge and make sure the rules of the constitution are being followed. As long as there are honest nodes somewhere, the integrity of the network will be maintained; there’s no chance of buying or shutting down the judges. The requirements to be part of this republic are minimal: an internet connection, the capacity to keep a secret, and a device to make transactions. 

Republic vs democracy

Numerous books elucidate the history and evolution of money, enabling a broader understanding of this ancient technology than ever before, including why Bitcoin is the ideal money. Bitcoin is revolutionary because it provides a new way of protecting and exchanging private property without the need of governments or banks, and I will make the case for why it is also the perfect constitutional republic. 

A constitutional republic is a system of government in which the people hold sovereign power over the government and elect representatives who exercise that power. The sovereignty is held by the people, and the laws are written in the constitution to limit the actions of the elected officials running the government.

In contrast to a pure democracy, where a ‘collective’ community wields the sovereign power of the government to rule, and with a 51% agreement they can modify the constitution and slave the other 49%. 

Some people still have the view that the Bitcoin protocol is like a democracy and miners are some kind of voters and if they have 51% of the hashing power they can change the rules of the network. But if the blocksize wars (2015-2017) taught us something is that this is not the case. Bitcoin is like a republic that needs total consensus from the nodes to change its constitution. 

The only article I found making this case for Bitcoin was: The Republic of Bitcoin by Adam Ierymenko published on July 18, 2014. https://medium.com/@adamierymenko/the-republic-of-bitcoin-624f7639b2a5

Here’s my highlight from it: 

I would argue that Bitcoin is a de-facto and unofficial republic, not a pure democracy* and not completely decentralized. The largest miners, most active members of the various Bitcoin forums, and the maintainers of the main Bitcoin code tree constitute a set of representative governors that can wield tremendous power over the network. Yet this power is checked by Bitcoin’s overall user base. *

Why do democracies fail?

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the results that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a Dictatorship. (Written by Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler, nearly two centuries ago while our thirteen original states were still colonies of Great Britain. At the time he was writing of the decline and fall of the Athenian Republic over two thousands years before).

Did I say “republic”? By God, yes, I said “republic”! Long live the glorious Republic of the United States of America. Damn democracy. It is a fraudulent term used, often by ignorant persons but no less often by intellectual fakers, to describe an infamous mixture of socialism, miscegenation, graft, confiscation of property and denial of personal rights to individuals whose virtuous principles make them offensive. (Westbrook Pegler: New York Journal American, January 25th and 26th, 1951, under the titles- Upholds Republic of U.S Against Phony Democracy, Democracy in the U.S. Branded Meaningless)

The fall of great Republics follows a pattern, and the root cause is the abandoning of the original rules upon which the republic was founded to adopt a democracy. Once democracy is adopted, it gradually adopts socialism, dictatorships, and communism until it collapses under its own weight. This cycle takes many generations.

Unfortunately, we have abandoned our Republican forms of government by gradually modifying our constitution and by adopting unconstitutional central banks and fiat currencies: a legal fiction of money, a.k.a fake money designed to lose value over time. 

It’s our responsibility to understand how our government’s have failed us, why and what we can do about it. This is an ancient problem but we have before our eyes a window of opportunity to be part of history, thanks to Bitcoin. Because **where our republics failed Bitcoin is winning! **

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." said Plato in The Republic more than two and a half millennia ago and this is exactly where we are now. We can complain on the internet and point our fingers outside or we can take personal responsibility and do something about it. 

From a young age we we are taught to be proud of our democratic systems and the equality it brings, but even the most enlightened and genius men of the past warned us of how dangerous this system of government is: "Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy*, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and oppression comes from that source." Plato, The Republic. “Democracy is when the indigent and not the men of property are the rulers” Aristotele . *

In the last century our constitutions were modified and our republican governments were replaced by mob rule democracies. This system was used to turn the government into tax farm corporations for and by their creditors: the international banks. This parasitic group extracts economic value without providing equal compensation for our labor the same way it did before the colonies won their independence. Our republics were returned to their colonial status thanks to democratic governments. While the system works for a few, it is failing for the majority. 

Before Bitcoin, we had to play within this system to improve our economic situation; a complete opt-out was not possible. The minimum interaction with the public infrastructure and banks comes with contractual liabilities, obligations, and hidden costs. These hidden costs range from artificial inflation to fees, colonial taxes, time delays, banking holidays, increasing bureaucracy, and the need to obtain permissions, approvals, and licenses. 

In republics like the United States of America (1788) and Argentina (1853), our constitutions were explicitly written to avoid all of these evils. With some differences in their foundational laws and distribution of central and regional authorities but with the same goals; escape the colonial tax farm and unfair rules, protecting the individual rights such as: freedom over commerce, private property and equality under the law. 

The American Revolution

The revolutionary war was fought to free the American colonies from the rule of the British monarchy, their oppressive and restrictive laws, colonial taxes and corrupt monetary system. The Constitutional Republic form of government was chosen to self govern the new Nation. 

Other’s colonies like Argentina, ruled by the Spanish monarchy in this case, followed this same path and chose the same form of government to reclaim the power to be self-governed and protect economic freedom, because they understood there’s no human rights if you cannot freely enjoy the fruits of your labour and protect individual property.

The American colonies declared their independence from the tyrannical British monarchy in 1776 because they were done with the abuses of power, the intervention in commerce, the taxation without representation, their unfair monetary system of the Bank Of England, and the deprivation of trial by jury. 

They wrote the document and declared their autonomy as independent states: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed—that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776

The founding fathers were brave and smart; they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, believing that Providence wanted men to be free. Many of them lost their lives to give us the best form of government known by men: a constitutional republic. 

Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its superiority cannot be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered. Democracy is the “direct” rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success. Our constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically they had funded a republic. 

Training manual War Department Washington D.C,1928.

Under this form of government the constitution is the supreme law of the land. This document established the principles upon which the nation is funded and provides a structure of government to ensure and protect these principles. It defines its roles and responsibilities in order to protect individual’s rights and justice, dividing the power into: executive, legislative and judiciary bodies to prevent the centralization and abuses of power. 

Under a constitutional Republic no men rule over other men, we are all equal under the law. The main goals of these constitutional republics is to ensure that no single person or group can hold absolute power over the rest of the population. Our ancestors inherit this form of government, but it takes vigilance and responsibility to maintain it. 

2. The problem: Democracy, central banks and fiat currencies

Unfortunately, all of these protections given by our constitutions were lost or heavily degraded, especially private property because of popular democracy, central banks and fiat currencies, all of them contrary to the original principles of our republican governments.

Our constitutional republics were replaced by mob rule democracies during the first third of the XX century, inverting the role of the government from being a ‘protector of rights’ to a ‘violator of rights’ pushing for socialist, communist, and tyrannical laws. The government transitioned from safeguarding individual liberties to imposing the "will of the majority" and **substituting rights with privileges and licenses. **

*Central banks and income taxes are parasitic communist devices specifically designed to extract wealth from the majority and to prevent economic freedom. *

What was needed was alternative rails to commerce freely adapted to the times we are living in: completely digital and protected with military-grade cryptography, to trade without the need to go through archaic and corrupt financial institutions or governments. Bitcoin is a system of government that prioritizes minimal governance. The system is secure as long as participants are using the original protocol or participating in the original constitution and not weak and insecure copies.

From being a government controlled by people that do not ask for permission to a government that controls the people who have to ask for permission. This was, of course, thanks to the many wars, panics, and artificial chaos generated by those willing to expand their already enormous power: international bankers. This group is actively working to push tyranny on a global scale through mass surveillance, digital IDs, and a cashless society. Democracies are facilitating this agenda. Plato said in The Republic that "Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy”. 

The strength of the Republic comes from its constitution, this document is worthless if legislators and citizens do not enforce and follow the original principles, letting new laws invalidate the original ones. 

In less than two generations since the Argentine Republic adopted the libertarian constitution of 1853 it became one of the wealthiest nations in the world surpassing many Western European countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-1884) was a lawyer, politician, economist and the intellectual author of the Argentine Constitution of 1853. The main goals of this constitution were: 

• Abolish slavery

• Protect private property rights

• Provide equality under the law (no licences or nobility titles) 

• Get rid of colonial taxes

• Free the markets from state intervention

“Simple taxpayers or colonists, for three centuries, we are to this day the work of this antecedent, which has more power than our written constitutions. After being machines of the Spanish taxman, we have become machines of the national taxman: that is the difference. After being colonists of Spain, we have become colonists of our national governments: always fiscal states, always servile revenue machines, which never arrive, because misery and backwardness can never yield anything” (...)

But in economics, more than in any other field, it is nothing to enshrine the principle; what matters most, what is most difficult, is to put it into practice. A regime is not annihilated by a decree, even if it is constitutional, but by the slow action of a new one, whose creation costs the same time it took to form the bad one, and many times more, because to destroy and forget is another previous work.

The modern regime is in our hearts, but the colonial one is in our habits, which are usually more powerful than the abstract desire for the best.

That is precisely why the Argentine Constitution has made its economic system the faction that distinguishes it and places it above all the republican constitutions of South America.

Indeed, all the economic liberties of the Constitution may be annulled and reduced to gilded disappointments, by merely leaving standing a large part of our old economic laws, and enacting new ones which, instead of being in conformity with the new principles, are in conformity with our old rent-seeking and fiscal habits, ordinarily stronger than our principles.

Outside the Constitution there does not exist, nor can there be, nor should there be, any law that in any way is not regulatory of the private and public principles, rights and guarantees that the Constitution establishes as the fundamental basis of all law in the Republic. 

There is, therefore, a stumbling block to which the beautiful system of the Argentine Constitution may succumb, if it is not taken into account by the legislator who must regulate the execution of the new system in its relations with the production of national wealth.

Up to this point, the worst enemy of the country's wealth has been the wealth of the tax collector. We owe to the old colonial regime the legacy of this fundamental error of its Spanish economy. ***We are countries of fiscal complexion, peoples organized to produce real incomes. ***

I repeat that I speak of economic liberty; and as much as of my country of all South America on this point, - It matters, above all, to keep always in view the danger of annulling each and every economic liberty in the Constitution by laws regulating its exercise.

In republics like the United States of America and Argentina, the constitutional systems were designed to promote fairness, accountability, and the protection of individual rights by dividing power among multiple branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial) and levels of governance (federal, state, and municipal). 

This division of powers establishes a balance between centralization and decentralization to ensure that no single entity can hold absolute power over the rest of the population.

Benjamin Franklin told us, "We have given you a republic—if you can keep it." History is proof that we haven’t kept it; in fact, we have replaced it with democracy, the worst form of government. Such blame primarily falls on the shoulders of the "elected officials," who are typically lawyers acting as legislators and judges. However, 'We The People' also bear responsibility for our lack of vigilance. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” said Thomas Jefferson, the principal  author of the Declaration of Independence  and the third president of the United States of America from 1801 to 1809.

“If you do not take interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools,” said Socrates more than two thousands years ago.  And "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." said Plato in The Republic.  

**The time lawyers start manipulating the laws, ignoring the constitutional principles, the spirit of the constitution is abandoned, and all the evils reappear: infiltration, inflation, and corruption. **

Unfortunately, we have abandoned our republican forms of government by gradually modifying our constitution and by adopting parasitic central banks. Money was replaced by worthless currency, and common law was replaced by codified law, increasing bureaucracy, state intervention, costs, and the opposite of justice. 

In the U.S., these events happened between 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created, and 1933, when the gold standard, common law, and the republican form of government were totally abandoned. 

By 1913 Argentina was the 4th wealthiest nation on earth, and it owed its success to its libertarian constitution that guaranteed economic freedom. Unfortunately Argentina stopped using gold in 1929, the central bank was installed in 1935, and the constitution was heavily modified in 1949, introducing universal suffrage and adopting socialism. This was the beginning of the end of the “Argentine Republic”. 

We have freedom written down in our constitutions but we are again living under a colonial system in economic terms because of **central banks, fiat currencies and taxes. **

Routine and hereditary ignorance in economic matters are the cause of this transmigration of the colonial system into the republican system. Inherited customs, beliefs and concerns are more powerful than written laws and accepted opinions. Juan Bautista Alberdi.

The sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), warned: "The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution." And also “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."

**3. The reaction: debt slavery **

Since our liberators won their freedoms with the sword, we lost them by contracting fraudulent debt publicly and privately. The tool used to enslave our nations: central banks and fiat currencies.

This institution have the monopoly over the national fiat currency that they print to buy government debt. This system was possible thanks to codified law and the widespread ignorance of the public on monetary and banking issues. The problem with traditional currencies is that they are subject to inflation, regulations and we have to trust those in control of them. Since fiat currencies are a creation of the state they are subject to their authority and arbitrary changes. It’s a contract and when we use them we fall under the government’s jurisdiction: this comes with ‘privileges’ and tax liabilities.

Private companies that manage these currencies and process payments such as banks can arbitrarily freeze, confiscate and steal our money at every moment without any real evidence of a crime. They can do this to bail out banks who give risky loans that cannot be repaid. This creates a cycle of currency debasement, increasing cost of living, economic stagnation, demoralization of the markets, market distortions and many other evils. This has us in a loop of: more inflation, more taxes, less savings, more crisis. And there’s no remedy ‘inside’ the system. 

This currency that central banks print is not based on substance (gold, silver, or other commodities) but on faith over the government credit. A faith that is crumbling. This currency is not real money; in fact, it is the opposite: debt.

Every unit of currency represents a government debt obligation, which must be repaid to the central bank that holds the corresponding asset: government bonds. If the government has the ability to create bonds, it could also create currency without the need to borrow from the central bank. But the reality is that international bankers control the government, and they want the government to be in debt. 

Those with control of the currency printer can buy any legislator, any university, any business, or any influential media channel to manipulate the mechanism of democracy and to use the government as a mask to advance their agenda of expanding their monopolistic and parasitic power. They can get legal immunity, modify the laws to their advantage, and control the education and the information we get.

We are led to believe the system is “broken” and it needs to be fixed, when the reality is that this monetary system that took over our governments is designed to enslave us and our future generations with hopeless debts. This parasitic system sucks the wealth of nations with inflation, deflation, and taxation while they don't give us equal value. The mechanism is literally engineered to transfer wealth from the citizens to the banks: THIS IS BY DESIGN.

Thomas Jefferson also warned us when he said, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

By inflating the currency and credit supply, they create an artificial boom in the economy, incentivizing the public to collateralize real wealth and borrow worthless bank promissory notes that these institutions can create out of thin air because of "licenses’ and legal privileges. When the banks consider it time to turn the wheel, they raise interest rates and start deflating the currency and credit supply, triggering liquidations of collateral, business bankruptcies, and economic depression. We are told this process is a natural phenomenon from the “economic cycle,” but the truth is that this process is artificially designed to transfer the wealth from the citizens and businesses to the banks and their corporations.

We have become enslaved to the banks, who control our economic success or downfall due to our adoption of their worthless promissory notes as the primary means of exchange for commerce. They introduced this fake money in our legislation as ‘legal tender’ for all debts, public and private. This currency is not money; it is fake money based on a debt designed to enslave us. 

In order to have more currency, we have to pledge real wealth as collateral, risking losing it in a game of chance where the bank controls the odds. This is the real reason why the Great Depression of 1929-1933 happened; this is how the banks stole all the gold and infiltrated every big business board of directors by turning themselves into majority stockholders using a network of private trusts and corporations. 

Nations of the world and citizens are being enslaved by the international bankers and their debt-based currencies, lending air and stealing the resources of the nations. **This creates artificial scarcity, misery, and economic stagnation. **

This system creates two types of citizens: those who have to exchange time, energy, and work to obtain currency and are heavily taxed on the process and those who can print it out of thin air or loan against their assets tax-free. This is the root of inequality under the law and the equivalent of reestablishing nobility titles in the form of “banking licenses.”

These contracted debts are mathematically impossible to repay since there’s more debt than currency due to the interest that compound every year. This creates the need to pay the old debts with new emission of debts creating more inflation of the currency while devaluing its purchasing power and increasing the cost of living. 

Government deficits only grow while the public services decline and its cost to the public increase in the form of higher taxes and inflation. As the situation gets worse, direct confiscation of wealth happens.. Authority abuses, surveillance and  violation of rights from governments are common things, especially during the big debt crisis. 

This system created a big debt spiral. When the government “prints currency” it is getting itself deeper in debt issuing bonds that generate interest that grows the size of the debt every year. This death spiral debases the currency faster and faster accelerating all the evils from the economic crisis that cannot be fixed. 

This monetary system is what killed our constitutional republics and the root of most of the evils our modern society faces. But not everything is lost; we have reason to be positive, we have hope! We have Bitcoin!

**4. The solution: going back to our roots **

On February 8, 1996, John Perry Barlow published The Declaration of Independence in Cyberspace in response to the increasing government control and surveillance over the internet, which raised concerns about privacy, free speech, and other human rights. He called cyberspace the “new home of the mind,” where the sovereignty of the governments has no jurisdiction. 

Now more than ever, mental privacy and freedom of thought are key elements for self-determination.

I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. (...) Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. *You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. (...) *

The declaration continues saying that many of the problems that governments affirm they need to solve are nonexistent, and if there are problems to solve, the people will fix them by their own means without the government. It says that they were creating a world where everyone is equal in terms of having the same possibility to express their minds and beliefs without the fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Adding that the only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. Inviting freedom lovers and self-determination supporters to bring back the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, De Tocqueville, and Brandeis. 

*We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts. *

We will create a civilization of the mind in cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Satoshi Nakamoto published his white paper on the cyberpunk mailing list on October 31, 2008, twelve years after the publication of this new declaration of independence. He did so during the great financial crisis created by the banks as a revolutionary yet silent act. This list was a place where computer scientists, hackers, and developers from all around the world shared ideas, debated technical issues, and pushed for digital security and anonymity.

The idea was solid but still needed some collaboration and help to make it a reality: the mailing list was the key. As prophesied in the new declaration, a new idea started flowing freely on the internet with the intention of fixing a problem (created by banks) by people’s means without asking for ‘authorities’ permission. A group of individuals started voluntarily working on this new idea because they knew the importance of it and the impact of its promise. 

**During these seventeen years, this idea has transformed into a more viable alternative system for those who uphold the principles of human freedom, self-determination, and self-government. **

Bitcoin was designed for individuals who have opted to assume personal responsibility, rather than relying on external powers to enhance their lives. This is a choice for individuals who are courageous, inquisitive, and truth-seekers, fed up with the constant bombardment of falsehoods and manipulation. This is a choice for individuals who have reached the point of no longer accepting lies and manipulation.

We have to recognize the libertarian and Austrian economic spirit of Bitcoin because this was THE SAME SPIRIT UPON WHICH OUR CONSTITUTIONS WERE WRITTEN CENTURIES AGO. I refer mainly to the constitutions of the United States of America (1788) and the Argentine Republic (1853). These are our roots, and we should never forget them if we want to be free and protect our individual freedoms. 

First of all, libertarians defend individual freedoms and small governments with limited intervention in people’s lives. The golden rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or, reversed, “Do not do unto others what you would not want done to yourself,” is **the moral code of the libertarians, as it was the moral code of the Lord Jesus Christ. **

The libertarian philosophy embraces autonomy, entrepreneurship, and voluntary cooperation while it opposes coercion, authoritarianism, and bureaucracy. It encourages a society where individuals are responsible for their actions and decisions while fostering cooperation and mutual respect among them. 

The Austrian school of economics shares the same values, opposing central planning, government intervention in the economy, socialism, and communism and advocating for free market systems based on voluntary exchanges and private property. 

It also points to the central bank's fiat currency manipulation as the root cause of great financial crises such as the 2008 one, when Satoshi published his white-paper as a way of saying: WE NEED AN ALTERNATIVE TO THIS MADNESS, AND WE NEED TO DO IT BY OUR OWN MEANS BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT WAS PART OF THE PROBLEM, NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION. HE LEFT THIS CLEAR IN THE GENESIS BLOCK.

“The Federal Reserve is an organized cartel of bankers, who are creating inflation, ripping off the public, destroying the savings of the average American”

Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. 

The Austrian school of economics points to central banks and their fiat currencies as the responsible parties for every type of distortion in the markets leading to recessions and financial crises, opposing both of them and advocating for hard money that governments cannot manipulate, especially gold. 

Following the golden rule and the Austrian teachings, Satoshi gave humanity the ideal monetary system ever engineered and with the cyberpunks they made it real. 

And Bitcoin is not just money, but also a new form of protecting private property, monetizing energy, distributing governance, connecting individuals worldwide and expanding commerce rails. 

Bitcoin is a social network, a perfect republic, by bitcoiners and for bitcoiners. Bitcoin is so far the best REAL option we have to opt out of this rigged game and reclaim our sovereignty and self-respect. Bitcoin is the remedy that cannot be found under the law, and if we did, we have no guarantees it will not be taken away. 

The adoption of Bitcoin is voluntary; no one is going to force it upon you with ‘legal tender’ laws or arbitrary regulations. Bitcoin is de facto lawful money that does not require permission or licenses, following the spirit of our original constitutions. 

It provides a new way of doing commerce, with a global network of individuals organized around a consensus of rules. Today, commerce operates on a global scale, unencumbered by state intervention, and the boundaries exist only in our imaginations due to the limitless possibilities. Free enterprise is again possible even under the cashless society that banks are actively pushing on us. 

Bitcoin is not just honest and hard money; Bitcoin is a set of rules without rulers. Bitcoin is money backed by math and energy that cannot be manipulated. Our property rights are protected by code, computing power, and energy. 

Bitcoin is the perfect republic. The division of power of the Bitcoin network replicates those of the Republic, guaranteeing a balance between centralization and decentralization that is capable of providing equality under the code. 

Bitcoin is the re-evolution of money, governance, and banking, and it has the potential to replace them all at once or at least force them to adapt and improve their services if they don't want to become obsolete in the next decades.

5. The perfect Republic

The organized power of a Republic is divided in Legislative, executive and judicial systems, in the case of Bitcoin is the protocol, the miners and the nodes. Bitcoin is not only money, but the perfect Republic: a distributed power with no kings, no central banks and no ballot boxes full of lies. It is a network where power is divided, distributed, audited and encrypted.

No bank and no government control Bitcoin. Just math, incentives, cryptography and a worldwide web of individuals who want bitcoin to succeed. 

The code is the legislative power

The rules of the protocol are its constitutions:  21 million, halving every 210,000 blocks, difficulty adjustment, blocksize. Instead of being a set of traditional laws it’s a set of modern computer codes. Similar to the written constitutions the Bitcoin protocol established a set of rules that ensure the integrity, fairness and stability of the network. 

These rules are written and are visible and audible. You need a total consensus in order to change them, something that is very difficult, almost impossible. There’s no such thing as emergency powers or govern by a majority, decree or executive orders. 

The best government is the one who governs the less, and the bitcoin monetary policy can be reduced to this simple geometric regression:

The Bitcoin fixed supply and predictable monetary policy are key rules of the protocol. They incentivice savings and eliminate inflation forever. It also eliminates currency supply manipulation forever, giving clarity to the individuals and facilitating economic planification based on strong principles: certainty and predictability.

This not only preserves and grows the value of the bitcoins but it also serves as a check on the power of governments and central banks that manipulate the money supply for their benefit. 

Miners are the executive power

They execute transactions, validate blocks and maintain the network flowing. But they cannot manipulate the code, they execute, they do not govern. The process of mining employs cryptography to secure transactions and prevent fraud, ensuring the system remains trustworthy and reliable for its users.

Miners have skin in the game, they invest in hardware and energy to mine the bitcoins, so they have an incentive to act honestly to get the rewards, cheating is against their interest and if they do their blocks get rejected by the network of nodes and they waste valuable energy.

In fact miners are incentivized to find the cheapest source of energy, usually wasted energy to mine bitcoin. In this process they not only maintain the network alive and secure with the transactions flowing but also monetize energy: they turn energy into bitcoin! 

The nodes are the judicial power

They are the guardians of the protocol, they make sure the rules are being followed and if someone is trying to cheat they can invalidate the transaction. 

Nodes have a complete copy of the bitcoin transactions history (blockchain) as a publicly-accessible record of all transactions that have ever taken place within the system. Nodes verify that every new transaction is following the rules of the protocol. This feature ensures that the record cannot be altered or hidden, promoting transparency and accountability in its operations. 

They act like the supreme court, they don't produce laws, they don't process transactions, but they can say “this is not valid”. **This is the equivalent of having thousands of judges all around the world that nobody can buy or shut down. **

Like citizens can vote in a constitutional republic, users of the Bitcoin network can do it by running nodes. Changes in the protocol require total agreement among nodes to ensure that no single entity or group can modify the rules. This maintains the integrity of the network. This system of governance ensures that decisions are made transparently and with input from all nodes runners. 

**Users: Citizens of the Bitcoin Republic a.k.a bitcoiners **

With no central authority or supreme power all bitcoiners are equal under the code. Bitcoin is a global system, it works 24/7, totally accessible for everyone, it cannot be manipulated by bankers or by governments and everyone is free to build a business around Bitcoin. 

There’s no need for IDs, licenses or approvals, the network is open to everyone and functions in a permission-less way. Bitcoin is a parallel system and does not depend on the state or banks infrastructures, in fact it serves to ***protect private property and make payments in a more secure, easiest and cheaper way. ***

Bitcoiners can earn, save and spend bitcoin, they are the human part of the network, some of them are behind the nodes and the miners, others contribute to the improvements of the network and some are just ‘regular’ users. 

Even do they are not ‘regular’ in any sense, in fact they are sovereign individuals who can control their own wealth in the form of private keys, they do not depend from the state, they can operate with freedom, they don't have to ask for permission in order to convert their value and protect it against the parasites.

**This is real freedom and bitcoiners are the citizens of a worldwide perfect republic funded on cyberspace but not limited to the metaverse. ** The system has been operating without interruption for more than a decade. An idea that in less than two decades became a worldwide giant network with trillions in value. If this is not winning I don't know what it is. 

So Bitcoin is working as a libertarian Republic, based on voluntarism, nobody is forced to join the network but if they want they can, enjoying the benefits of: equality under the code (law), accountability, and the protection of individual rights by limiting the power of central authorities and ensuring that the decision-making processes are transparent and accessible to all participants requiring a total consensus to be implemented.

One of the biggest differences with traditional Republics is that you don't have to be lucky to born in its territory, in fact you can live in a communist country and still be part of a global libertarian digital and perfect Republic; where your property rights are respected, where you can save and protect the fruits of your labour in a ultra-secure way with military level cryptography, where you can provide your services or sell your goods to the world; monetizing your work directly without state intervention or unnecessary intermediaries. 

Earning freely and keeping the totality of what you earn is proof that the torch of freedom is still on,  even with a system that continuously conspires to turn it off. 

**5. This time is different **

As republics usually do, Bitcoin had its own civil war. This kind of war is generally between those who want to centralize control and power and those who want to distribute control and power. In the case of the Bitcoin civil war this was no different. 

The Block-size war lasted from August 2015 to November 2017 and it was the biggest challenge and the most turbulent moments that bitcoin has faced so far. 

The fight was around the following: Bitcoin doesn't scale, we have to do something.

From February 2015 to 2018 the intellectual debate around the Lightning Network developed. But it wasn't until 2019 that started to get traction among users and proved to be a good form of scaling Bitcoin without sacrificing decentralization if you are running a node. 

I personally believe that 2020 was a turning point. There was an explosion of companies working on the lighting network and they have been building nonstop since then improving many aspects and lowering the barriers for new users. 

From that year Bitcoin had enough time proof and had survived enough difficulties to get the credibility and trust needed to scale to the next level. 

6. Conclusión

Bitcoin has no competition and everything else is a distraction. There’s no second best, there’s no such thing as a “crypto currency / blockchain revolution” there is only a Bitcoin re-evolution. **The United States government is bankrupt, on the verge of economic disaster, we are witnessing the death of the dollar and nobody is going to save us but ourselves. **

The solution is here, its adoption is optional, the incentive creates an honest consensus that is almost impossible to destroy thanks to the decentralized network of nodes. The block-size war demonstrated this fact, it was literally the civil war for Bitcoin and proof that where our constitutional republics failed, Bitcoin is succeeding. BUT WE NEED TO STAY VIGILANT. VICTORY IS NOT GUARANTEED.

Nation-States, corporations and individuals can interact in some way with this worldwide distributed perfect republic to enjoy the benefits it provides, but the individual is the one who can gain the most out of it. 

Bitcoin is a sovereignty-increasing tool that liberates the individual from the tyrannical forms of government and many of the corporate products that extract its wealth in a parasitic way. **Bitcoin makes legislators, accountants and financial advisors obsolete. But it requires the individual to embody self-determination and responsibility. **

Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past, we have to embody the spirit of our constitution and put these freedoms into practice, because information and freedom are worthless if they are not applied in the real world. Let’s keep building on the wisdom we inherit from our founding fathers and let’s not forget where we came from. 

**Final quotes **

"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people." - James Madison

"A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty is more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?" - George Washington. 

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of Bitcoin. In the information age, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty is more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be future developers guardians of the protocol? -Micael

"The education of a nation instead of being confined to the studies of youth during school-time, should be extended to all its stages of life, to all its pursuits, to all its duties; and the principles of knowledge should be in constant application." - Thomas Jefferson

"The Republic owes its existence to the wisdom, the courage and the devotion of its citizens." - Calvin Coolidge.

“Bitcoin owes its existence the the wisdom, the courage and the devotion of its developers, enthusiasts and supporters” Micael

"A strong constitution is the foundation of a stable and prosperous nation." Juan Bautista Alberdi (JBA)

“A strong protocol is the foundation of a stable and prosperous Bitcoin network”

"A nation's success depends on its ability to adapt to changing circumstances and embrace new ideas." JBA

"The most effective way to prevent corruption is to create a transparent and accountable government system." JBA 

"A nation's progress is measured by its ability to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology." JBA

"The most effective way to promote economic growth is to create an environment that encourages entrepreneurship, innovation, and investment." JBA 

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."  JBA

A nation's prosperity depends on its ability to attract and retain talented individuals." JBA

BITCOIN IS ALBERDI'S IDEAS IMMORTALIZED IN CODE.

IF OUR FOUNDING FATHERS WERE ALIVE, THEY WOULD UNDOUBTEDLY BE BITCOINERS.

THANK YOU SATOSHI! THANK YOU BITCOINERS!