Many well-known Bitcoiners say that bitcoin is money for enemies: Vijay Boyapati[1] tweeted about it; Nic Carter has written on it[2]; Peter McCormack and American Hold chanted that conclusion here[3]. On these pages in January 2022, Mark Goodwin[4] wrote: “Bitcoin simply must be for enemies, or it will never be for friends.”
It sounds good and it feels nice, drop-mic style, but what does it mean for bitcoin to be for enemies? Or any money for that matter? What is the trustless, decentralized nature of bitcoin bringing to the table?
One answer is that bitcoin doesn’t care about your opinions[5], including your assessment of potential trading partners. It works, whether operated by friend or foe. That’s true, but holds for every other money, too: With fiat, I can shop for groceries from strangers and heretics just fine. Another is that bitcoin allows people to transact peacefully without knowing about the other’s status as an enemy. That’s true but holds for every other money, too: We don’t vet baristas for their ideological righteousness before we order a cup of morning coffee.
Perhaps it’s about censored transactions, where buyer and seller are happy to transact but a third party (politician, bank, payment processor, law-enforcement) stands in the way and blocks the payment. That’s an improvement that bitcoin and other bearer assets[6] like gold or cash bring to the monetary table, but it doesn’t imply that the traders are enemies.
In the past, I have shown[7] that the more developed bitcoin’s ecosystem becomes, the more it resembles the incumbent monetary system it hopes to supplant. Not
