Nick Szabo  🔑

$BTC Maximalists: What is your favorite argument for why all other public #blockchain protocols other than #Bitcoin are useless? #Crypto Maximalists: What is your favorite argument for why all public blockchain protocols including Bitcoin are valuable? Asking for a friend.

Money is simply the most liquid (saleable) good. Bitcoin is saleable due to its decentralization (resistance to govt control), monetary policy and in general fundamentals reputation. It's also first mover and has by far the best network effects, development, hashrate, etc.

Money is violent currency. Satoshis are an example of peaceful currency.

Govt fiat money requires monopoly privilege to exist with such poor store of value characteristics (inflation). Arguably money emerges on a free market, not by force, so I don't consider govt fiat to be a true money. Only reason we have many different (bad) monies is force.

Money is a creation of governments/forced marketplaces. Hence money is violent. I prefer a future of ‘currencies’ accessing voluntary marketplaces referred to sometimes as public blockchain protocols.

This is patently false. Money is an emergent phenomenon that existed long before govts. The paradigm of govt money has distorted our collective understanding of monetary phenomena. I recommend @NickSzabo4 Shelling Out as a primer on monetary history: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/ 

Menger is another good source

I am patent-ly aware of Menger being trapped in forced marketplace constructs. Hence his disbelief in barter, which is literally what satoshis and the secondary marketplace for satoshis & other public protocol software access tokens represent—barter.