What is game theory? Have you ever played a game of Jenga? If so, you know what game theory is. Every time you pull a piece from the Jenga tower, you are always strategically going after the piece, which will make it harder for your opponent’s next move but easy for you to not topple the tower. The game goes on such that every move you make will always be countered by your opponent’s move until the tower crashes and the most strategic player wins. This is game theory in its most simplistic form.
Bitcoin has been playing a 13 yr old game of Jenga with the entire world. Bitcoin has been strategically outmaneuvering every move its opponents have made. Who are Bitcoin’s opponents, you ask? BItcoin is playing against the central banks, ESG advocates, politicians, and many more FUDsters.
In this particular game of Jenga, the tower is our existing monetary system. Every time Bitcoin demonstrates to the world that it is the best monetary system ever discovered, it strategically pulls out a piece of the legacy monetary system. All of the plebs eagerly and joyfully chant, “JENGA JENGA JENGA,” because they know how this game is going to end.
Bitcoin has a mind of its own and has no regard for its opponent’s moves. Some would say that it is just a protocol, but I believe that Bitcoin has a beautiful mind breathed into it by its Creator. Those that truly understand Bitcoin understand that Bitcoin is the most intelligently designed protocol. Its game-theoretic incentives allow it to slowly peck away at the Jenga pieces of the already stressed and fractured monetary system. Unbeknownst to its opponents, Bitcoin is helping them destroy their monetary system. Bitcoin is referred to as a Trojan Horse because it does not directly attack fiat. The opponents of Bitcoin don’t realize that their competitor is guised as a gift to the world, which ironically it is. While they are trying to keep the monetary system from toppling, Bitcoin is quietly infiltrating and removing strategic pieces to suddenly topple the world’s monetary tower. The saying, “slowly, then suddenly,” will catch the world by surprise when all of Bitcoin’s opponents realize that it had won the game before it even started playing. Bitcoin did not have to play to become the champion; it was already a champion of the PEOPLE.
So what about Bitcoin’s game theoretic’s make it the best monetary system ever discovered by man? Why is Satoshi’s discovery going to separate money from the State, much like Gutenberg’s discovery of the printing press separating the Church from the State?
- Bitcoin was designed with a fixed monetary supply of 21 million bitcoin. This incentivizes people to save because governments cannot inflate the supply away like they have, ad infinitum, since the creation of fiat currencies.
- Bitcoin’s Proof of Work design incentivizes people to trust that all transactions on the monetary network have been backed by the work of the vast network of nodes that validate blocks and miners that add a new block on average every 10 minutes.
- Bitcoin’s game theory incentivizes miners to be honest economic actors by awarding them a fixed amount of Bitcoin for every block they create.
- Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment design feature incentivizes miners by providing a fair playing field for all miners. It does this by decreasing the difficulty of the “guessing game” that the miners are playing if there are just a few miners versus increasing the difficulty if there are many miners. This fair playing field allows a mere pleb to mine with his/her one S9 right along with Marathon’s thousands of miners.
- Bitcoin incentivizes miners to use the cheapest energy sources because the cheaper the energy source, the more bitcoin they get to keep.
- Bitcoin incentivizes the use of stranded energy because it is the cheapest energy source and because Bitcoin miners can come to the energy source. Case and point, instead of flaring off methane gas on oil fields, which is a typical, wasteful, and environmentally unfriendly practice, miners are setting up on oil fields and using this methane to power generators that power Bitcoin miners.
- Bitcoin incentivizes the world to become self-sovereign by empowering individuals with money that no one controls but THEMSELVES.
- Bitcoin incentivizes self-discipline because individuals must protect their Bitcoin by properly safeguarding their Bitcoin through self-custody.
- Bitcoin incentivizes individuals to verify, not trust. Individuals can run their own nodes on widely accessible hardware and validate transactions against their own copy of the blockchain.
- Bitcoin incentivizes transparency through its 13-year-old open ledger. The world can see every transaction that ever has occurred on this ledger.
- Bitcoin is designed and built as a peer-to-peer cash system. It does not need a middle man like the legacy monetary system has needed for thousands of years.
Imagine if the world’s legacy monetary elites truly understood the power of these incentives? Eventually, a few of them will get out of their “fiat drunken stupor,” and they will become sober when THE PEOPLE choose Bitcoin over fiat.
If you think that Bitcoin is going to win this Jenga game against the elites for monetary supremacy without a major fight, study your monetary history some more. All monetary transitions usually occur after a hard-fought war in which the victor chooses the money that will be used. Bitcoin doesn’t care about the wars of men and steadfastly hums a quiet tune, “tick-tock next block.” The plebs will be the ones that will be going to war as they fight for Bitcoin’s fair, trustless, openly-verifiable, censorship-resistant monetary system.
For those that still doubt Bitcoin’s inevitability, take a seat and watch the game of Jenga be played out by Bitcoin and its opponents. Remember, the Jenga tower is the monetary system, and every time Bitcoin takes out a piece, it gets stronger, and every time its opponent takes out a piece, Bitcoin gets doubly stronger. The plebs anxiously watch the inevitable but hidden path to the outcome of the game. They chant with joyful and reverent fervor, “Satoshi, Satoshi, Satoshi,” for they know that Satoshi’s selflessness to leave behind a “gift of freedom” will result in a cataclysmic collapse of the existing monetary system as they know it. Thank you, Satoshi!
This is a guest post by Jeremy Garcia. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Satoshi’s Journal or Satoshi’s Entertainment Company.
