§0.01 — Is it really necessary to be so cryptic? This question will do, as a trigger. It seems – however querulously – to ask everything our title seeks to, and more than a book is able to comprehensively engage. The implicit reciprocal: Is it not possible to be clear? What begins with a minor irruption of cognitive irritation, agitated by a few specific words, opens into a history of secrecy invested with hazily-discernible momentum, and beyond, into the dark Herakleitean gnosis – matrix and crypt of Occidental philosophy – Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ (“Nature loves to hide”).[2] The provocation of integral obscurity leads to the 10,000 things.
§0.00 — Crypto-current exists if secrecy has a trend. Such a suggestion is naturally obscure. It coaxes attention toward the surreptitious direction of things. ‘Crypto’ is simultaneously the topic, and the retraction of the topic. This evasiveness is compounded by the complexity of its complement. The current eludes docile conformity with the order of objects. This is – apparently – quite independent of any strategic commitment to concealment. It is a flow of time, electricity, [1] and cash – a turbulent conceptual confluence. Current events are the only kind. If we are unable to step into the same current twice, it is because of what irreversibility has secured in the past. A double blockage then – produced, in a stream, as concealment and as sedimentation. Subsequently, everything we have to say here is already over (but unseen).
v1.0, published 10/31/2018
---
Ten years to the day since Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper is long enough.
Serialization of Crypto-Current: Bitcoin and Philosophy starts here, and will continue (with some moments of disorder) until the damn thing is all out. Further notes on the order of release will be forthcoming. Chunks will be limited until they’re drowning in footnotes – which means not getting beyond the epigraphs today.
A cryptic Halloween to all.
There is a sort of vast cycle of flows of production and chains of inscription, and a lesser cycle, between the stocks of filiation that connect or encaste the flows, and the blocks of alliance that cause the chains to flow.
— Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari"Capitalism and Schizophrenia Volume I: Anti-Oedipus."
Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it ‘money’.
— David MametHeist (2001)
What is truth?
— Pontius Pilate (John 18:38)
I have a lot of friends who are programmers. The programmers have always gone like, 'Those [Bitcoin] guys are crazy.' […] And then, almost 100 percent of the time, they sit down, read the paper, read the code – it takes them a couple weeks – and they come out the other side. And they’re like: 'Oh my god, this is it. This is the big breakthrough. This is the thing we’ve been waiting for. He solved all the problems. Whoever he is should get the Nobel prize – he’s a genius. This is the thing! This is the distributed trust network that the Internet always needed and never had.'
— Marc Andreessen [1]
It would be very surprising if [the Bitcoin solution to the Byzantine Generals’ Problem] didn’t have substantial application. … That something very significant has happened – I think the prospects for that are quite good.
— Larry Summers [2]
Bitcoin is hard to grasp because it’s almost like a technology from an alien civilization.
— Ian Bogost [3]
In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions.
— Satoshi Nakamoto [4]
Nullius in verba
— Motto of the Royal Society [5]
