Bitcoin is About Power, Not Money
Everyone thinks Bitcoin is about money. That's like thinking gunpowder is about fireworks. It CAN do that, but that's not the important part. Bitcoin is about power, real physical power, converted into digital form.
"The primary value-delivered function of Bitcoin is not about money, it's about physical empowerment and physical balance of power." Bitcoin changes the dynamics of power projection, taking control of precious resources out of the hands of those with imaginary power and placing it in the hands of those who expend real energy.
Lowery argues (pp. 370-376) that the monetary framing of Bitcoin represents a category error analogous to Chinese alchemists categorizing gunpowder as medicine. The "coin" suffix itself is a hypostatization, treating an abstract monetary concept as concrete when the underlying mechanism is physical power conversion. The proposed rename to "bitpower" (bits of physical power) more accurately captures the technology's function.
"The primary value-delivered function of Bitcoin is not about money, it's about physical empowerment and physical balance of power."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 382
To Understand Bitcoin, Understand Warfare
Why do countries have armies? To stop bullies from taking everyone's stuff. Warfare is basically nature's way of saying "you can't just CLAIM everything is yours. You have to physically back it up." Bitcoin does the same thing, but instead of soldiers and tanks, it uses electricity. Instead of pushing heavy things around, it pushes electrons through circuits. Same idea, totally different scale. Some countries like El Salvador already figured this out and started using Bitcoin as a national defense tool.
The social value of warfare is to physically constrain the expansion of abstract power, to prevent any single ruler or group from claiming unlimited control over resources. This is precisely the same design concept that Nakamoto encoded into the Bitcoin protocol.
The key insight: Bitcoin swaps matter for energy. Traditional warfare imposes severe physical costs by applying forces to masses like soldiers, ships, and tanks. Bitcoin imposes severe physical costs by passing charges across resistors. The result is a non-kinetic, massless, software-defined form of warfare. Nations like El Salvador have already started adopting this technology to secure their property, policy, and freedom of action in cyberspace against nuclear-armed superpowers.
Lowery argues (pp. 372-374) that to understand Bitcoin's national strategic implications, one must first understand the complex emergent social benefits of warfare. Warfare physically constrains those who claim abstract authority over resources. It prevents the centralization and expansion of oppressive rulers. This is precisely the design concept Nakamoto encoded into Bitcoin: a non-kinetic form of globally-scalable warfighting that swaps matter for energy. Instead of imposing physical costs by applying forces to displace masses, the Bitcoin system imposes physical costs by passing charges across resistors.
"The social value of warfare is to physically constrain the expansion of abstract power, thus physically decentralize people's abstract power over resources using a global-scale physical power projection competition. This is precisely the same design concept that Nakamoto encoded into the Bitcoin protocol, except Bitcoin does what Einstein claims is possible: it swaps matter for energy."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 373
Reverse-Optimized Computing
For 80 years, computers have gotten faster, smaller, cheaper. Bitcoin goes the OTHER direction on purpose: bigger, slower, more expensive. That sounds crazy until you realize the "waste" IS the protection. Making it cheap would make it breakable.
80 years of computing progress has optimized for less constraint, less restriction, more efficiency. Bitcoin represents the deliberate inversion: MORE constrained, MORE restricted, MORE energy-expensive. It's "the largest, heaviest, slowest, and most energy-expensive computing network ever built."
This isn't waste. It's a novel form of computing that challenges every assumption about what computing should be. Computational inefficiency is a feature, not a bug.
The reverse-optimization thesis (pp. 373-374) argues that Bitcoin represents a fundamental departure from von Neumann computing paradigms. Whereas traditional computing optimizes for computational efficiency (minimizing energy per operation), Bitcoin optimizes for physical constraint (maximizing energy per state change). This architectural inversion is not a design flaw but a necessary condition for physical power projection in cyberspace.
Physically Costly Bits
Every photo, video, and message on the internet is basically free to copy. Bits are cheap, almost free. Bitcoin flips that completely. It creates bits that are incredibly expensive to produce. That sounds backwards, but think about it: if everything digital is free to copy, how do you make anything digital actually valuable? You make it cost real energy. Bitcoin miners aren't wasting electricity. They're turning watts into the world's first scarce digital thing.
In a virtual world filled with infinitely cheap bits of information, Bitcoin introduces something unprecedented: infinitely scarce bits. Physical cost function protocols create an infinitely scarce supply of infinitely-more-physically-costly bits of information.
The electric power deficit produced by mining isn't waste. It's a power-modulated control signal that changes the state of our surrounding physical environment. Miners aren't being "inefficient" when they run these systems. They're programming our planet as if it were a computer, using the globally-decentralized electric power grid as the motherboard of a planetary-scale state mechanism, converting the watts it produces into physically restricted bits of information.
Lowery contends (pp. 373-374) that the critics who label Bitcoin "wasteful" are inadvertently validating its design. The substantial electric power deficit produced by physical cost function protocols doubles as a power-modulated control signal, one that changes the state of the surrounding physical environment and thereby changes the complex emergent properties and behavior of software. In a world devoted to creating the least-physically-restricted bits possible, Bitcoin goes directly against the mainstream approach by endeavoring to create the most-physically-restricted bits possible.
"People aren't being inefficient when they run these systems, they're programming our planet as if it were a computer. They're using our globally-decentralized electric power grid as the motherboard of a planetary-scale state mechanism, converting the watts it produces into (physically restricted) bits of information."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 374
Bitcoin Could Disrupt Dominance Hierarchies
Right now, the people in charge get to make the rules, control the resources, and decide who owns what. What if there were a system where nobody gets special control? Where you compete fairly using energy instead of connections? Bitcoin could change everything: how we settle disagreements, who controls valuable stuff, and how we prove we own things. It might even replace big parts of the internet with something nobody can cheat. That's not just a new app. That's a whole new way of running civilization.
Bitcoin's implications extend far beyond finance. It could fundamentally disrupt human power hierarchies at their very foundation:
Policy disputes: Bitcoin offers a way to peacefully settle
disputes in a zero-trust, egalitarian manner, one not systemically
vulnerable to corrupt, self-serving power holders.
Resource control: It provides permissionless competition
for control over resources in a non-lethal and egalitarian way.
Property ownership: It enables international consensus on
legitimate ownership and chain of custody without requiring trust.
Internet architecture: Bitcoin could represent a "strangler
pattern" replacement for our legacy internet infrastructure, a modern
architecture with a foundationally different state mechanism at its base
layer.
New polity: Humanity could be at the dawn of creating a
completely new type of governance system, one enabled by electro-cyber
physical power competition.
Lowery argues (pp. 374-376) that proof-of-work technologies have the potential to disrupt human polities at their very foundation by changing how our species manages information itself. The way societies settle policy disputes could change forever, because Bitcoin offers zero-trust and egalitarian dispute resolution. The way society determines who controls resources could change forever, through permissionless physical power competition. The way property ownership is established could change forever, through trustless international consensus on chain of custody.
Bitcoin could represent a "strangler pattern" replacement of legacy internet infrastructure, a modern architecture that gives people zero-trust and permissionless access to cyberspace, where they compete for administrative control using their respective physical power projection capabilities. With the global adoption of electro-cyber physical power competition, humanity could be at the dawn of creating a completely new type of polity.
"Technology like Bitcoin could represent the discovery of an unprecedented power projection tactic which gives people a new way to establish their dominance hierarchies and physically secure the properties and policies they value. This technology has the potential to disrupt human polities at their very foundation by changing the way our species manages one of its most precious resources: information itself."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 375
Five Policy Recommendations
The thesis gives five suggestions to leaders:
1. Don't ask only money-people about Bitcoin
2. Think of it as a security system, not money
3. Maybe protect it like the right to defend yourself
4. Proof-of-Stake is NOT the same thing
5. The next big conflict might already be happening, with electricity
The thesis offers five concrete policy recommendations:
1. Stop relying exclusively on financial/monetary theorists for
Bitcoin policy. The security implications require military and strategic expertise.
2. Think of Bitcoin as an electro-cyber security system, not a
monetary system.
3. Consider protecting Bitcoin under the Second Amendment, specifically the
right to bear non-lethal arms.
4. Recognize that Proof-of-Stake is NOT a viable replacement for
Proof-of-Work. They serve fundamentally different functions.
5. Don't expect the next war to look like the last war. It may
have already started, in the electric domain.
Lowery's policy recommendations (pp. 377-382) argue for a strategic reframing of national Bitcoin policy. The Second Amendment recommendation (pp. 379-380) is particularly noteworthy: if Bitcoin constitutes a physical power projection technology (non-lethal "arms"), then mining could be constitutionally protected under the right to bear arms. This reframing shifts the regulatory conversation from financial regulation to national security strategy.
Electronic Antlers: Worth Every Watt
Remember the antlers from Chapter 1? Nature's way of competing without killing? Bitcoin might be humanity's electronic antlers. Non-lethal competition using energy via proof-of-work proof-of-work Converting real-world electricity into digital security. The 'work' is thermodynamic: real watts consumed, not abstract computation. Chapter 3 . Fair for everyone. Nobody dies. And yes, it costs a LOT of electricity. But the antlers were "expensive" too. That's the whole point.
The thesis comes full circle. If Bitcoin functions as "electronic antlers," it represents: non-lethal competition for establishing dominance hierarchies, physical power projection without intraspecies injury, all the benefits of warfare and none of the bloodshed.
"If we could figure out a way to set up our dominance hierarchies using a globally-adoptable, non-lethal power projection technology... that would not just represent a technological breakthrough; that would double as an evolutionary breakthrough."
The thesis's concluding argument (pp. 384-385) frames Bitcoin as a potential evolutionary breakthrough, not merely a technological one. If proof-of-work enables non-lethal physical power projection at global scale, it could fundamentally alter the dynamics of intraspecies competition that have governed human societies for millennia. The energy expenditure is not a cost to be minimized but the essential mechanism that grounds digital security in physical reality.
"If we could figure out a way to set up our dominance hierarchies using a globally-adoptable, non-lethal power projection technology... that would not just represent a technological breakthrough; that would double as an evolutionary breakthrough."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 385
Are we Constantinople?
Every major power projection technology was dismissed before it transformed the world. Cannons, airplanes, nuclear weapons, and torpedoes were all rejected by the establishment. Bitcoin has been called a 'scam,' a 'waste of energy,' and 'rat poison.' The thesis asks: are we the emperor refusing the cannon?