(For RH)
On February 1-2, 2022, Microstrategy hosted a virtual event, Bitcoin for Corporations. A few days prior, Microstrategy’s CEO, Michael Saylor, tweeted the event’s purpose:
“If you are a corporation interested in integrating #bitcoin into your products, services or balance sheet, join us next week. You will hear from experts in bitcoin strategy, treasury, accounting, law, technology, trading, custody, payments, & banking.”
As part of my Bitcoin Modeling research, I watched and analyzed most of this corporation-centric event.
The Keynote lasted an hour, during which Saylor interviewed Jack Dorsey, ex-CEO, current ‘Block Head’ and Chairperson of Block (aka Square) and founding engineer and first CEO of Twitter. Saylor broke the interview into three parts:
• What does Bitcoin mean to the World?
• What does Bitcoin mean to Block?
• What does Bitcoin mean for Companies?
As you might expect, there is so much to unpack from an hour long interview between two business and intellectual heavyweights. So, I won’t do that. Instead, I’ll limit my review only to the first 10 minutes during which Dorsey’s talks about what he thinks Bitcoin means to the World.
(If you are interested, I’ve included a link to the full Day 1 video below.)
Dorsey’s path to understanding Bitcoin began by his questioning how the world works and how it doesn’t. Then, looking for solutions to fix what is broken, specifically in finance, his field of passion, Dorsey discovered The Bitcoin Development Model and concluded that it might be the greatest solution to address our ‘currency issues’.
Dorsey describes the development model as having these attributes:
• Open Source Code
• No Single Leader
• Inclusive to all Contributors
• Trusted, Principled
• Transparent Operations and Governance
These attributes remind Dorsey of the early internet he grew up on. And while he doesn’t state this explicitly, I will: it is glaringly obvious that these commendable attributes stand in polar opposite to those which generally describe today’s models of monetary policy and financial systems: closed source, internal control, exclusive participation, opaque processes and governance.
Logically, Dorsey argues that Transparency is the single most important attribute of the Bitcoin Development Model. He and Saylor discuss and credit the Bitcoin’s 2015-2017 Blocksize Wars as demonstrating the importance of transparency and open governance in establishing stronger credibility and security in the Bitcoin network. While the Blocksize Wars are out-of-scope today, the Wars began over a seemingly mono-causal, technical issue of Bitcoin block size but escalated into a complex, multi-causal conflict which was resolved by the Bitcoin Community through open governance.
It is this Bitcoin Community which Dorsey finds most interesting. He calls its influence The Spirit of Bitcoin. The Spirit has its foundation in the community’s ethos of “Don’t Trust, Verify”. And, since Verified Outcomes and conflict resolution require work, there is a price. And that price is paid by the Community through Participation.
The Community, by the way, is diverse and includes you and me: you by reading this post and me by researching and writing it. Dorsey includes Developers, Miners, Node Operators, Users, Bitcoin Hodlers in the community, but I’ll add Policy Makers and Educators (me) and Students (me and you). The work needs to be done and the effort by the community feeds the development model process, thereby growing and strengthening it. It is this Spirit which encourages and demands curiosity, thinking and questioning – and contribution.
So, what is the meaning of Bitcoin to the World, that which Saylor calls Satoshi’s gift to humanity? According to Dorsey, the meaning and the gift is the world’s most open, verifiable network for monetary exchange of value, a network is built upon a principled and transparent development process and supported by an incredible community of contributors resulting in, what Saylor terms, “the ultimate open, free market.”
Thanks for reading.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you…
1. Identify and evaluate blockchain opportunities and adoption strategies
2. Special topics research, modeling, content creation and training
3. Architectural, process and technical consulting, oversight and coaching
Click here for the Keynote Interview of Bitcoin for Corporations between Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Block CEO Jack Dorsey
