<ol><li>adaptable</li><li>decentralised</li><li>symbiotic</li></ol>

Cryptocurrency/Fungi

Just as fungi and plants formed a symbiotic relationship to successfully colonize dry land, humans can form symbiosis with Bitcoin to improve individually and to advance our species. In this article…

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Cryptocurrency

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Technology & The Future

Exploring Bitcoin through the lens of natural selection, evolution, and symbiosis

This is a story of how symbiotic relationships can change the course of history forever.

Just as fungi and plants formed a symbiotic relationship to successfully colonize dry land, humans can form symbiosis with Bitcoin to improve individually and to advance our species.

In this article we’re going to explore Bitcoin as a catalyst for human evolution, through the lens of geological timescales, evolution, and symbiosis.

Definition of Symbiosis: when two dissimilar organisms live together in intimate association (as in parasitism or mutualism). Example: Clownfish and Sea Anemones

This is part 4 of “The Mycelium of Money,” here’s the whole series for reference.

Five hundred million years ago, all biological life lived in the oceans. Dry land as we know it was a sterile volcanic wasteland devoid of life. That is, until plants and fungi formed a fateful partnership that changed the course of history forever.

This symbiotic partnership created a cascade of evolutionary forces leading to the creation of all terrestrial life, including homo sapiens.

Fast forward to modernity, humans now organize around network based technologies, such as the internet and Bitcoin, which are reincarnations of the ancient mycelial archetype out of which we emerged.

Take a deep breath. Life is amazing.

Ok, so how did we get here?

First, a quick biology lesson. Organisms are classified as either Autotrophic or Heterotrophic .

Autotrophs are organisms that make their food. For example: plants convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into food via photosynthesis.

Heterotrophs are organisms that find their food. For example: lions eat the gazelles and fungi produce enzymes to externally digest their environment.

Like human settlers, organisms colonizing new territory are most vulnerable in the early days. In order for fungi to colonize dry land (terra), they needed to secure a reliable food source.

Fungi effectively domesticated photosynthesis machines (algae) to harness a self sustaining food source. We can think of these algae as little solar panels bolted onto fungal networks which made colonizing virgin dry land possible.

Soon after getting established, the fungi began digesting the volcanic rock upon which they sat. This ultimately liberated valuable nutrients which were then traded with other nearby fungi, algae, bacteria, etc. Together, these early settlers bootstrapped life on dry land. Let’s see how this compares to Bitcoin.

How Satoshi bootstrapped embryonic Bitcoin

In order to colonize the internet (terra incognita ) with a new form of money, Satoshi needed to form a symbiotic partnership.

Fortunately, he found the perfect partnership and made a series of wise decisions that maximized Bitcoin’s chance of survival during the bootstrapping phase.

How satoshi “partnered with the algae” to bootstrap Bitcoin’s life on the internet

<ul><li>High early issuance rate disproportionately rewarded early adopters (the early issuance rate might have been too aggressive) </li><li>Launched on the Cryptography mailing list (if anyone could incubate Bitcoin it was the Cypherpunks on that email list) </li><li>Timing the launch during the 08/09 financial crisis (was this blind luck?) </li><li>Satoshi’s message in the genesis block “Chancellor on the second brink of bailout” (rallying cry to gain ideologically motivated supporters) </li> </ul>

Mutualism or Parasitism: Examining the Cypherpunk-Satoshi-Symbiosis

Were the algae complicit in the fungal partnership (mutualism)? Or were the fungi taking advantage of the algae’s ability to make food at the expense of the algae (parasitism)?

It appears to be mutualism. The algae may have been initially kidnapped, however in exchange for photosynthesizing, they gained a mycelial security system, and the opportunity to colonize a new niche.

Were the cypherpunks complicit and did they benefit in the partnership (mutualism)? Or did satoshi take advantage of the cyberpunks because he needed an initial distribution strategy (parasitism)?

“It’s very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I’m better with code than with words though.” — Satoshi Nakamoto

Most cypherpunks dismissed Bitcoin initially, however a select few (most notably: Hal Finney) jumped onboard. Considering they were first to learn about Bitcoin, they had a chance to acquire Bitcoin’s native monetary units in exchange for the marginal electricity cost to mine (essentially nothing). With the advantage of hindsight, acquiring Bitcoin during the first few years would lead to wealth beyond measure.

“The possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute time may be a good bet, a payoff of something like 100 million to 1!” — Hal Finney

(Economic) Evolution by Natural Selection

With the initial conditions of life on land set into motion, the fungal-plant alliance can start welcoming new market participants (organisms) to enter the ecosystem.

Fungi interact with the world through chemistry. They secrete enzymes to externally digest their environment. Volcanic rock was the only restaurant in town. These early fungi liberated molecular resources by metabolizing the volcanic rock upon which they stood.

This enabled a proto-economy made up of primitive fungi, plants, and bacteria. They traded essential molecules required for carbon based lifeforms (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc).

Fungi were essentially turning rocks into fungible biology tokens. These biology tokens were then traded on top of mycelial rails connecting all nearby life. Fungi both created the market and facilitated trade leading to an explosion of biodiversity on dry land.

Before plants colonized dry land, our earth’s atmosphere wasn’t very hospitable. As you know, plants inhale CO2 and exhale O2. This ultimately led to the formation of our oxygen rich atmosphere — planet earth was taking her first breath.

In a sense, fungi unleashed free market dynamics in a new market which led to an incredible proliferation of life. Now let’s explore the parallels with Bitcoin.

Just as novel organisms emerge (via speciation) to occupy newly created niches on dry land, Bitcoin evolves it’s DNA (code) to produce new phenotypes (novel features) to take advantage of new niches.

In other words, Bitcoin enables novel financial use cases that were not possible before. This increases the size of the economic pie, thus generating wealth for society.

Novelty provided by Bitcoin:

<ul><li>The first and only implementation of absolute scarcity (hard to overstate) </li><li>A global, near instant, apolitical, settlement system </li><li>Neutral money not easily captured by special interests. </li><li>Uncensorable medium of exchange for black/grey markets </li><li>Democratization of basic financial services </li><li>Non-sovereign store of value with negligible barrier to entry </li> </ul>

Mycelial networks act as a resource transport layer and communications network connecting organisms in the biosphere. This enables organisms to voluntarily trade resources and knowledge across species lines. Increasing trade leads to increased specialization (division of labor), further increasing biodiversity (wealth and resilience) in the ecosystem.

Currently, our governments form economic monopolies which prevent many citizens from accessing the global markets.

Think about all the unproductive human capital siloed in countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Argentina. Without access to a common economic language (Bitcoin) many people are unable to participate in global trade.

As Bitcoin becomes ubiquitous, it unleashes human productivity leading to increased innovation, specialization, and trade. We’re already seeing some basic examples such as <a href="https://medium.com/open-money-initiative/latin-american-bitcoin-trading-follows-the-heartbeat-of-venezuela-71a28cb86ba0">freelancers in Venezuela using Bitcoin as a bridge currency to access USD </a>which effectively evades financial controls.

We can extrapolate “Bitcoin being used as a bridge currency” into a grander vision of the future where everyone speaks the same economic language. A global market for talent leads to more goods and services produced for a cheaper price. Not to mention, increased trade with developing countries will help lift people out of poverty.

Bitcoin enables economic evolution by natural selection

Darwinian evolution by natural selection is a biological engine designed to reward successful actors and eliminate unsuccessful actors. When the antelope gets eaten by the lion, it dies, no one bails out the antelope. Nature has skin in the game. This feedback loop is crucial. Individuals are fragile in order to ensure the system is antifragile.

Market based economics is an engine designed to seek more efficient uses of capital by rewarding successful ventures and punishing the unsuccessful. However, our current form of “capitalism” is more like cronyism or as <a href="https://twitter.com/Travis_Kling?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Travis Kling </a>said: “socialism for the rich.”

Instead of letting companies fail, we bail them out. This results in broken incentives which create a moral hazard making the entire system more fragile. Not to mention, disproportionately hurting the working class. Heads I win, tails you lose .

A sound money system (like Bitcoin) improves this economic engine by tightening the feedback mechanism that rewards value creation and punishes failure. In a Bitcoin world, bailouts aren’t really possible because monetary expansion is restrained by a fixed monetary base. Bitcoin ensures individual people/companies are fragile in order to ensure the economic system remains antifragile.

In other words, Bitcoin increases economic “skin in the game” which improves the feedback loop leading to economic evolution by natural selection. Economic Darwinism for the win.

Due to a symbiotic relationship with fungi and plants, and evolution by natural selection, our pale blue dot was transformed from a barren rock to the garden of eden. Truly marvelous.

Let’s zoom in to the tail-end of the Cretaceous period (~65 million years ago). The planet was dominated by dinosaurs both on land and in our oceans. Mammals were hardly relevant. Narrator: but things were about to change.

A giant meteor crashed into present day Mexico ending the dinosaurs and most life on planet earth. The impact caused a short term spike in surface temperatures followed by an extended cooling due to debris blocking out sunlight.

Although most organisms were culled during the cataclysm, some species thrived during the chaos. Most notable for our story are Fungi (of course) and a small shrew-like mammal known as the Tenrec (surprising).

Without sunlight, most plants quickly perished. However, the Fungi thrived because they don’t rely on sunlight (remember they find their own food). Fungi were happily decomposing all the newly deceased organisms.

As temperatures declined and food became scarce, most animals who survived the initial shock were killed by fungal pathogens or eventually starved to death as the global food chain seized up. However, not the Tenrec.

Tenrecs are humble shrew like mammals that lived underground which protected them from hostile conditions on the surface. Their favorite foods (insects and aquatic plants) were relatively unaffected.

Tenrecs are capable of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213634/">hibernating for up to 9 months at a time </a>. This protects them from short term volatility and enables them to outlast their competition. The best offense is a good defense .

“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” — Sun Tzu

Give thanks to the tenrec

Turns out, the tenrec is the <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/02/ancestor-all-placental-mammals-revealed#">common ancestor to all living placental mammals </a>. In other words, the only reason both you and I are alive today is because the tiny tenrec survived the dinosaur-ending apocalypse 65 million years ago.

Although mammals got off to a slow start, we’ve really come into our own over the last million years. One particular great ape, the homo sapien, achieved global dominance in a relatively short timespan.

Current evidence suggests Humans have only been around for about ~500k years, making us a relatively young species. For comparison, modern elephants have been around for ~5m years.

Like our fungal forefathers, humans have formed symbiotic relationships with our environment throughout history. In fact, we owe our lives to the networked based organisms we call fungi.

One especially relevant fungal organism is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, otherwise known as brewers yeast.

Human agriculture appears to have begun around 11,500 years ago (<a href="https://grahamhancock.com/america-before/">although it might be much older </a>). Interestingly, the first crops we cultivated were also the best grains for brewing beer. This begs the question: did we settle down for food/stability or to brew more beer?

Turns out fermented drinks (beer, wine, etc) provided a safe way to stay hydrated as water often contained pathogens that killed ancient man.

Although we didn’t know it at the time, humans formed symbiotic relationships with fungi in order to produce healthy drinking options that saved many lives.

Unbeknownst to most moderns, we still heavily rely on our fungal allies today. Without fungi, say goodbye to all beer, wine, chocolate, bread, and many medicines such as penicillin.

Like ancient man partnered with fungi to survive, us moderns have a similar opportunity to partner with Bitcoin…

We’ve established how both fungi and Bitcoin symbiotically partner with other organisms to bootstrap life and build antifragile ecosystems. Now let’s finish up by exploring how humans can partner with Bitcoin to improve individually and to advance our species.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.” — E.O. Wilson

Money is the most important coordination mechanism for society and our existing fiat system is driving our species off a cliff. Instead of arguing red vs blue, it’s time we address the root cause of our societal malaise. It’s time to unfuck the money.

Fiat money has appeared periodically throughout history, however, it’s the exception not the rule. Throughout most of history, humans coordinated around a free market for money. Gold and silver, mainly. Time to wake up from our fiat money coma.

Bitcoin is an Extended Phenotype for humanity

<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658563/">Extended Phenotypes </a>are behaviors that extend an organism’s natural capabilities. Beaver dams are a good example. Bitcoin is an Extended Phenotype for humanity — it lowers the trust required for a global society to communicate value, which enables more sophisticated cooperation.

This offers a unique opportunity to re-architect society based on the separation of money and state aka “natural money.” A huge win for humanity. As such, it’s our duty to form symbiosis with such a force.

Take another deep breath as we’re fortunate to be alive during such an inflection point.

It all starts with individuals forming symbiosis with Bitcoin

Bitcoin was the best performing asset of the last decade. This created unimaginable wealth for early adopters. Besides financial gain, individuals also can benefit from bitcoin in other ways. Interestingly, the values imbued into bitcoin seem to rub off on its adherents.

As a deflationary asset, Bitcoin teaches us to delay consumption today in order to reap greater benefits tomorrow (low time preference).

In a world fulfilled with uncertainty, Bitcoin provides something to be optimistic about. Rather than change the system from the inside, we can put our energy towards a parallel system.

Bitcoin forces us to take personal responsibility for our wealth, both a blessing and a curse. In a world that doesn’t value personal responsibility, Bitcoin serves as a wakeup call.

Partnering with Bitcoin is good for the individual but is it good for mankind?

Cryptography is fundamentally about defense

Bitcoin is a Catalyst for Human Evolution (Symbiosis) — Part 4/4

Cryptocurrency/Fungi

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