Ever since the end of the gold standard, world currencies have free-floated in value against each other.This system has created a zero-sum competition among currencies that, when enhanced by nationalism, becomes a global proxy war for domination.The value of currency is neither intrinsic nor related mostly to purchasing power.Instead of focusing on competitive industries and mutually beneficial trade, many countries today use their currency as a weapon to tilt the trading field in their favor.By manipulating currencies, usually through devaluation, governments can simultaneously juice the earnings of large corporations, erode and lighten the national debt, and destabilize the economies of rivals.In the process, they also destroy the value of savings for their own citizens.But right in the middle of this global currency war, bitcoin was born.And it is set to undermine everything we thought we knew about currencies.By now, several generations have grown up with a concept of money that is closely associated with a national identity and that implicitly or explicitly competes against the moneys of other nations.

Currency is no longer scarce, but the right to originate currency is scarce — that is, it’s the purview only of nation-states.bitcoin email providerThe prevailing assumption therefore is that for a “new” money to arise, it must replace an old currency.bitcoin echeckThere are 194 currencies in the world, each a “flag-money” of a nation, a notion as anachronistic as the airline flag-carriers of the 1970s.bitcoin fbi saleAligning currencies with national borders has a certain rationale to it in a world of paper bills, travel restrictions, trade restrictions, and national banking regulations.bitcoin gatineauThe national boundaries mean territory for the banks, border crossings for the citizens, and natural monopolies for the currency.bitcoin gladia

To most people who have been raised in this context, it would appear that geography and borders — monopoly and limited choice — are inherent characteristics of money.bitcoin fontNothing could be further from the truth.The introduction of decentralized, non-national, instantly global, and entirely digital currencies such as bitcoin directly challenge these basic assumptions.The artifice of borders melts away when currency is instantaneously global, fluid, electronic, and decentralized.Bitcoin ignores borders in exactly the same way that the Internet ignores borders.In the context of national flag-currencies, a borderless, non-nation-state currency is an aberration that shatters the dominant context.If money is borderless, then suddenly competition among national currencies is irrelevant.Bitcoin doesn’t have to “replace” anything because it’s not part of the zero-sum game of gaining flag status.Currency that was once a geographical constant becomes a consumer choice instead.

When nations establish monopolies for their airlines, TV networks, and newspapers, the flag-carrier monopoly status is anachronistic, but it could be worse.Commercial monopolies erode competition in airfares and the truth, but at least they don’t start wars.In currencies, however, nationalism and national monopolies are very harmful and are directly connected to war.Currency wars have become the proxy wars of this century, with dozens of countries locked in a devaluation spiral to externalize their debt.Currency wars can even be the precursor for kinetic wars (read: lethal combat), and even when they don’t lead to bombing, they can still devastate economies.In this context, non-national currencies like bitcoin are not just revealing the quaint, anachronistic simplicity of state monopoly over currency; they are also offering a safe haven and relief valve for the citizens of the currency-war-torn nations.Bitcoin and other decentralized digital currencies are not trying to displace other currencies, dominate a country, or establish a monopoly.

They are supranational from the moment of their inception and stubbornly resist being constrained to the existing regulatory and nationalistic structures.But the prevailing context of nationalistic currency is apparent in the questions that surround these digital currencies.For example: Which nation will be the first to adopt bitcoin?The first “place” to adopt bitcoin is not a place, but people around the world.Will bitcoin unseat the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency?Bitcoin will coexist with all national currencies, offering a global, non-national alternative to people everywhere.Can bitcoin become the universal currency?The very concept of a universal currency is as meaningless as that of a universal language.After all, currencies are a form of language, a means of expressing value to each other.Bitcoin represents a new choice of currency, and in offering that choice globally, it leads to a world of currency pluralism, not a dystopian one-world-currency caricature of the currency wars of the 20th century.

A misfit like bitcoin shatters the whole context and allows us to see a nationalist currency for the caricature it is.I recently posted about so called "user activated soft forks" and received a lot of feedback.Much of this was how such methodologies could be applied to segwit which appears to have fallen under the miner veto category I explained in my original proposal, where there is apparently a lot of support for the proposal from the economy, but a few mining pools are vetoing the activation./bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.6.0/src/main.cpp#L1281-L1283)], a soft fork which is remarkably similar to segwit.The disadvantage of a UASF for segwit is there is an existing deployment.While absolute node count is meaningless, the uprgrade trend from version to version seems significant.Also it is quite clear a substantial portion of the ecosystem industry has put in time and resources into segwit adoption, in the form of upgrading wallet code, updating libraries and various other integration work that requires significant time and money.

Further more, others have built systems that rely on segwit, having put significant engineering resources into developing systems that require segwit - such as several lightning network system.This is much more significant social proof than running a node.The delayed activation of segwit is also holding back a raft protocol of innovations such as MAST, Covenants, Schnorr signature schemes and signature aggregation and other script innovations of which, much of the development work is already done.A better option would be to release code that causes the existing segwit deployment to activate without requiring a completely new deployment nor subject to hash power veto.This could be achieved if the economic majority agree to run code that rejects non-signalling segwit blocks.Then from the perspective of all existing witness nodes, miners trigger the BIP9 activation.Such a rule could come into effect 4-6 weeks before the BIP9 timeout.If a large part of the economic majority publicly say that they will adopt this new client, miners will have to signal bip9 segwit activation in order for their blocks to be valid.

/shaolinfry/743157b0b1ee14e1ddc95031f1057e4c (full text below).References: [/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.6.0/src/main.cpp#L1281-L1283 [/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/services.html [/r/Bitcoin/comments/5yyqt1/evidence_of_widespread_segwit_support_near50_of/ Proposal text:

 BIP: bip-segwit-flagday Title: Flag day activation for segwit deployment Author: Shaolin Fry  Comments-Summary: No comments yet.Status: Draft Type: Informational Created: 2017-03-12 License: BSD-3-Clause CC0-1.0 

==Abstract== This document specifies a BIP16 like soft fork flag day activation of the segregated witness BIP9 deployment known as "segwit".==Definitions== "existing segwit deployment" refer to the BIP9 "segwit" deployment using bit 1, between November 15th 2016 and November 15th 2017 to activate BIP141, BIP143 and BIP147.==Motivation== Cause the mandatory activation of the existing segwit deployment before the end of midnight November 15th 2017.==Specification== All times are specified according to median past time.

This BIP will be activate between midnight October 1st 2017 (epoch time 1538352000) and midnight November 15th 2017 (epoch time 1510704000) if the existing segwit deployment is not activated before epoch time 1538352000.This BIP will cease to be active when the existing segwit deployment activates.While this BIP is active, all blocks must set the nVersion header top 3 bits to 001 together with bit field (1<<1) (according to the existing segwit deployment).Blocks that do not signal as required will be rejected.=== Reference implementation ===

 // mandatory segwit activation between Oct 1st 2017 and Nov 15th 2017 inclusive if (pindex->GetMedianTimePast() >= 1538352000 && pindex->GetMedianTimePast() <= 1510704000 && !IsWitnessEnabled(pindex->pprev, chainparams.GetConsensus())) { if (!((pindex->nVersion& VERSIONBITS_TOP_MASK) == VERSIONBITS_TOP_BITS) && (pindex->nVersion & VersionBitsMask(params, Consensus::DEPLOYMENT_SEGWIT)) != 0) { return state.DoS(2, error("ConnectBlock(): relayed block must signal for segwit, please upgrade"), REJECT_INVALID, "bad-no-segwit"); } } 

==Backwards Compatibility== This deployment is compatible with the existing "segwit" bit 1 deployment scheduled between midnight November 15th, 2016 and midnight November 15th, 2017.