Bitcoin Ethics in a Corrupted World

Are We Achieving Satoshi Nakamoto's Vision or Simply Succumbing to Unethical "Regulators"?

By: Jamil Hasan

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The best place to reintroduce the concept of ethics and Bitcoin together, a topic I wrote about in my first book Blockchain Ethics: A Bridge to Abundance in March 2018, is the discovery of the Truth, with a capital T. I'll be the first to admit, I have struggled with the Truth, and discovering the Truth recently in the crypto and blockchain space. What appears to be true isn't necessarily so. And what I've considered being "common knowledge" over the years is not so common. It appears the truth, with a little t, is it looks like a confusing narrative thrown out there by U.S. regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission has stated that Bitcoin is not a security, but everything else is. Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has called Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin commodities. The SEC has informed crypto firms to come into compliance with the U.S. crypto regulations, but there are no documented regulations to come into compliance with. There have been a slew of recent bank failures at the time of this writing, that the U.S. government has blamed on crypto, but the banks that failed had no strict risk management policies or people on the Boards with experience in stress testing requirements placed on banks by the Dodd Frank Act. Crypto firms are told they are no longer welcome to have bank accounts, and the industry is being pushed offshore, yet giant firms Fidelity and BlackRock and others are opening crypto custody for their customers.

We certainly live in confusing times, exacerbated by what many in the crypto industry call unethical regulators. This seems to be an accurate statement looking at random fines and lawsuits doled out by the SEC. What is not confusing is that Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, had a different vision than Wall Street in mind when he created Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer cash system in 2008. And the question that I pose in this book is: should we be using Satoshi's vision to determine our ethical framework for the future of crypto in the U.S. and other western countries?

This twenty-sixth book in the Crypto Hipster Chronicles series, entitled "Bitcoin Ethics in a Corrupted World" draws upon four Crypto Hipster Chronicles podcasts. Nick Saponaro, CIO and co-founder of Divi Project, shares the importance of hybridization and explains the Great Centralized Compromise in dealing with incumbent financial giants. Mike McGlone, commodities analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, shares his market insights on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether from an institutional perspective while telling us the importance of Bitcoin as a store of value narrative. Richard Boase, co-founder at Satoshi Block Dojo, shares his insights into why and how Bitcoin SV, and not BTC, may just be the real Bitcoin. And Geoff McCabe, co-founder of Divi Project and founder at Lightning Works, shares insights on Bitcoin in El Salvador.
I hope you find this book both educational and useful in your crypto and life journey.