Think piece: Bitcoin and the English legal system
Commercial lawyer and ASI Fellow Preston J. Byrne explains why, despite the cries of his inner libertarian, more government involvement in Bitcoin would be a step forward for the cryptocurrency-cum-payment-system, rather than its end.
When Mt. Gox went offline last week, taking half a billion dollars’ worth of bitcoin with it, many of the cryptocurrency’s public advocates – some of whom lost “life-changing” sums – moved swiftly to its defence. Erik Voorhees’ rallying cry, in particular, was a standout piece of Austrian rhetoric, warning against the near-universal social-democratic impulse to “cry out for Leviathan’s intercession” to remedy every petty inequity and misfortune.
This reaction should not be a surprise. Many early adopters, and practically all bitcoin users I know personally, are libertarians (Roger Ver, in his video-recorded post-Gox appeal for calm, can even be seen wearing a voluntaryist lapel pin). Many are mathematicians; few are lawyers. From this outside perspective, I’ve therefore arrived at a conclusion with which most of them will disagree.
To achieve its full potential, cryptocurrency needs a legal system in the traditional sense. It therefore needs a state.*