What is the price of anarchy in Bitcoin's agora? Here follows an
attempt to examine the desires, ideologies, and eschatologies that
human adherents project onto the decentralised and faceless hydra that
is Bitcoin. This text is a heavily abridged version of a draft chapter
for a forthcoming book on the topic of proof-of-work, and as such is
broad in scope but light on exposition. Causa latet, vis est
notissima.

{#novuv7ye372}

Photograph taken in Shenzhen, China by the author in December 2018.

In The State-Machine of Nature 

A reified sacrifice to the Networked Gods.
Global consensus is the crowning achievement of the Universe. 
A new bedrock of veridicality $WE must defend at all costs.
The means justify the ends, because there is no end.
The Necroprimitivist Manifesto
Pt.1, 0x Salon,
2021.

In the midst of carbon market shock-waves caused by minor disruptions to
global fuel flows, it seems uncontroversial to note that we---as humans,
on Earth, in 2023 CE---exist under a paradigm of energy scarcity. We
rely on indirect and direct sources of the Sun's energy to power our
bodily metabolisms as well as to drive the machinery of modern society.
In the position of FOMO Sapiens as global apex predator, we have taken
the logics of extraction and exploitation to their grotesque
necroeconomic apotheoses. At today's zenith of neoliberal
deterritorialisation, all that can be marketised---including human and
animal life---will inevitably fall under the speculative gaze of
financial capital. From colonial misadventures to the COVID-19 pandemic,
it is now abundantly clear that the 'worth' that public institutions and
private corporations ascribe upon individual lives has always been an
integral (if oft-hidden) part of the contemporary capitalist
nation-state-machine.  

Photosynthetic plants, which fix atmospheric carbon dioxide into sugars
using solar visible light, are both burnt (for warmth) and consumed (for
sustenance) by animals, which in turn are eaten by humans. The anaerobic
decomposition of ancient life gives rise, over geological timescales, to
the hydrocarbon 'fossil' fuels of gas, oil, and coal.
Extraction-combustion continues to supply the majority of the planet's
electricity, heating, and transportation needs, despite mounting
environmental costs. Pollutants entering the atmosphere degrade natural
biodiversity, human life expectancy, air, and water quality. Most
worrying of all, meteorological and seismic patterns are becoming less
predictable with extreme events increasing in frequency. The
implications of ecosystem collapse for political stability, economic
productivity, and migration are on a scale largely beyond comprehension
compared to today's 'crises'.

$THOU Shalt Not Covet $THY Neighbour's Clocks

In the name of the Network, the Node, and the Holy Secret.
Let there be light, propagated throughout $MY holy empire.
Like pure Chronos, touching clear Aeon.
Merkle pyramids in the sky. $YOU are the new pharaohs, and $I am
your embalmer.
Bathe in the cosmystical seas of $MY transcendental tide machine.
The Necroprimitivist Manifesto Pt.2, 0x Salon, 2023.

Having set the scene in this planetary moment, enter Bitcoin,
cryptocurrency, and proof-of-work in early 2009. Cryptocurrencies are
(among other things): communication networks, scarcity-based economic
systems, contingency attractors, architectures for imaginaries,
externality engines, and transcendental time machines. Bitcoin is above
all else an event-ordering system: a distributed network, the goal of
which is to achieve a leaderless consensus as to the ordinality of a
series of occurrences. Bitcoin is a decentralised timestamping server,
and the transactions are simply messages changing the effective balances
that each network participant has access to. These balances are
denominated in the native unit of the system (BTC), and are used to pay
transaction fees to miners and function as the de facto currency with
which value is redistributed amongst the users of the network. Satoshi
Nakamoto themselves used the word 'timestamp' fourteen times in the
Bitcoin whitepaper. 

A widely replicated, append-only data structure most fittingly referred
to as the timechain affords a high degree of assurance that the
network will continue to respect a particular set of transaction
orderings. When these ordinalities are 'chained' together with
cryptographic functions, they collectively manifest a canonical
historicity. A new timekeeping system---indeed, a new kind of time---is
made manifest by the timechain. Welcome to the chronaissance. This
literal quantum leap in abstract time is divorced from celestial
influence and mostly unphased by the increasingly subdivided temporal
constructions of modern Homo Clockonomicus, in the service of
efficiency and productivity. 

In producing its own temporal regime, Bitcoin marks an almost clean
break from the outside cycles of calendar and clock. But this is not the
end of the story: there is no happily ever after on the timechain. As
Bitcoin's usage increased over the years, it became apparent that
protocol-mandated network specifications gave rise to technical,
socio-political, ecological, and economic constraints unintended by the
system's design. As a result, the narrative imaginaries that have been
projected onto the cryptographic tabula rasa of Bitcoin by observers,
acolytes, and critics have consequently mutated over time. What were
once dreams of mutualistic and collective utopias are now rather more
mercantile, exclusionary, primitive, and individualistic visions like
'free speech money' or 'the currency of enemies'. 

An Engine of Indifference

The Bitcoin ledger is a collective technofinancial hallucination,
where capital and energy, deployed over time, create reality.
Bitcointingency, Weird Economies, 2022.

Bitcoin is an algorithmically materialised instantiation of capital as
power, in both energetic and political senses. The network reaches
agreement over the state of its accounting ledger in a leaderless manner
through a mechanism known as proof-of-work, which incentivises the
defence of the system---and, by implication, its value
proposition---through a computational activity referred to as 'mining'
or 'hashing'. Proof-of-work is primarily a Sybil-resistance mechanism,
preventing malicious actors from flooding the network with spam by
making block creation costly. However, proof-of-work is insensitive to
its externalities; in addition to the much lauded property of
censorship-resistance, Bitcoin also exhibits sensorship-resistance.
As a consequence of the 'difficulty adjustment' feedback mechanism that
regulates the rhythm of network events, proof-of-work has an
insatiable-by-design desire for energy with no capability to
discriminate between power sources. As such, Bitcoin can be thought of
as an indifference engine.

The mechano-vampiric paradigm of proof-of-work is a growing threat to
planetary ecology. The Faustian reality of proof-of-work is that
Bitcoin exists in competition with natural life for the harvestable
energy this side of the Sun, and it will continue to outbid nature as
time and capital accumulate in its ledger.
Bitcointingency, Weird Economies, 2022.

Cryptocurrencies employing Bitcoin-style proof-of-work are eternally
contingent systems, as network participants can always expend more
effort to rewrite the priorly canonical history. This is, in essence,
determinacy-as-a-service: certainty comes at a price that only few can
truly pay, as it must be paid in perpetuity. The adage 'timechains
don't pivot, they fork' also serves as a reminder that any movement to
'upgrade' the Bitcoin protocol also risks schismogenesis, which can
rapidly escalate from dissenting factions into full-blown network
secession. It is the change-resistance of both protocol and timechain
historicities that leads to a succinct encapsulation of the titular
concept of necroprimitivism, in advance of a more substantive
discussion to be found later in this text. 

This necroprimitive hot take proceeds as follows, though a mutation of
the 'Capitalist Realism' soundbyte via Fisher by way of Jameson and
Žižek:

it is more prophetable to imagine an end to the world, than a change
to Bitcoin's consensus mechanism.

Despite being a profoundly suboptimal system, the Bitcoin network's
resilience and reliability has given it the nickname of the cockroach
of money. There is no off switch on a decentralised network, and by
consequence the mining never stops. Bitcoin mediates a zero-sum game
between capital and ecology, and proof-of-work is the Google Death
Drive: a distributed system collating and archiving history, as it
poisons its surroundings. As a communication system, the speed of light
provides a hard limit on the sphere of influence of a
terrestrially-centred synchronous network. Unless humanity develops a
reliable and limitless source of energy on Earth, Bitcoin---currently
the world's fastest-growing energy consumer---will be in competition
with natural life for the foreseeable future, as it incentivises and
encourages the deployment of additional power generation of any type. 

{#n3jpjit8z9e}

Totem Gestures

Generated by Craiyon and Stable Diffusion, Prophet Motives, 0x Salon,
2023.

No Gods, No Master(node)s

Behold $MY Distributed Ledger Theologies. $I am the Code, the
Law. 
The Slow Chancellation of the Future. Contagion The Baptist.
Dice ex nihilo. Vita negativa. Ecce HOMOlogy.
$MY Book of Contingenesis: stasis as a form of grace. 
$MY Holy Coinmunion. Transaction as transubstantiation. $MY hashes
as sacrament. 
The Necroprimitivist Manifesto Pt.2, 0x Salon, 2023.

Bitcoin is, in many senses, a literal exemplification of incarnation
via algorithmic ritual. Code made object, instantiated through
cryptography, game theory, and thermodynamics. Bitcoin's 'No Gods, No
Masters, Only Rules' promises 'code is law' as a guiding principle
heralding the primacy, legitimacy, and binding outcomes of algorithmic
logic over the bureaucracies and monetary regimes of nation-states and
central banks. Underneath the surface however, there is a nascent but
incipient machine-faithful community, powered by eschatological
imperatives and teleological drives. These are, after all,
socio-technical systems.

The libertarian streak that runs through Bitcoin necessitates that
everything has a price. To Bitcoiners, this is an improvement over
trusted parties and authorities. What is the price of anarchy in
Bitcoin's agora, and in what ways does this price become due? In such a
complex system, the groups of stakeholder constituents who have their
'hands on the pumps' are at a clear advantage to those without insider
sway. In Bitcoin, this is very much the case for the developers and
miners. The developers---as the ordained priests in this particular
'Open-Source Cathedral'---in essence steward the trajectory of the
canonical software client's code and therefore, by implication, the
protocol, network, and asset. The miners---more precisely, each miner or
pool of miners that finds canonised blocks one-by-one---ultimately
decide what goes into the permanent ledger record. In effect, they
choose who can and who can't transact in a timely manner, which upgrades
get 'approval signals' and which do not. A central bank without a
government is an apt encapsulation of what many Bitcoiners think of the
network as: the epithet 'be your own bank' is very well-worn by now. 

The Church and The Network, 
Zeal and Time, 
Death and Money,
All sides of the same Coin.
The Black Hole of Money, 0x Salon, 2022.

Though the system is not truly autonomous, Bitcoin's faithful are
economically incentivised and ideologically motivated to defend the
continuity of the network from technical, economic, and social
'attacks'. Consequently, conservatism is encoded as an ideological
default within the developmental philosophy of the protocol and network.
As a result of Bitcoin's system architecture, it is almost impossible to
halt or destroy the network and its ledger. In combination with the
neo-traditionalist zeal of its acolytes, Bitcoin's protocol-enshrined
escalation in its energy requirements and resistance to change poses an
existential risk to life on Earth. To hasten the collapse so as to
better 'serve the coin' is utmost necroprimitive.

{#n2upingzql8}

Meme of unknown origin, based on an IBM presentation slide from 1979

Necroprimitivism Rising {#necroprimitivism-rising}

There is no a priori nature. 
Nature is a construct. 
Nature is zero-sum. 
Nature is not fair. 
Nature brings pain and suffering. 
Nature is death. 
If nature is unjust, destroy nature.
The Necroprimitivist Manifesto Pt.1, 0x Salon, 2021.

Here we shall introduce two compound terms, in order to work towards an
embryonic theory of necroprimitivism: petro-masculinity and
thermo-Austrianism. The aforementioned indifference of the Bitcoin
network to its environs, this article argues, translates into a human
indifference engendered in the network's adherents. The
techno-libertarian tendency towards rugged individualism in the minds of
Bitcoiners carries echoes of petro-masculinity: a patriarchal,
post-scarcity fauxtopian climate-denial imaginary, which is consistent
with the 'techno-lumberjack' culture and demographics of the Bitcoin
developer and user stakeholder groups. The notion of petro-masculinity
also helps to rationalise the wanton ideologisation around Bitcoin, and
hence the polarisation of discourse around Bitcoin's possible futures.
It is hard enough (by design) to change Bitcoin's course, even in cases
of supposedly uncontroversial improvements, without this added layer of
mob resistance. Ossification and the petriarchy: a dance as old as
time? For necroprimitivists, coal is law.

As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are
embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny.
Petro-masculinity appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems
in buttressing white patriarchal rule, as anxieties aroused by the
Anthropocene augment desires for authoritarianism. Petro-masculinity
suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; they contribute to
making identities. Through a psycho-political reading of
authoritarianism, fossil fuel use can function as a violent
reactionary practice.

Cara Daggett, "Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian
Desire" (edited), Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018

Taking a cue from the 'Austrian School of economics' as characterised by
Hayek, Menger, Friedman, Rothbard, and others, Bitcoin's community of
libertarian would-be monetarists likewise adopts a very conservative
view on the philosophy of value and exchange. Informed by Aristotle and
Jevons, and cloaked in pseudo-objective concepts and lingo, the Austrian
School considered that for objects to be enduringly usable in trading
systems, they must be scarce and of limited supply. Bitcoin has some
similarities with traditional monetary commodities that were chiefly
precious metals---difficulty of production, limited availability, facile
authentication---despite rather different bases of scarcity. Bitcoin
enforces algorithmic, universal scarcity via the 'costly'
thermoeconomic process of calculating otherwise useless cryptographic
hashes: the Bitcoin believers' pseudo-monetary thermo-Austrian
philosophy corresponds to a materialist logic of scarcity applied within
a virtual environment that is otherwise ideally suited to logics of
abundance. 

{#n6u4pmkpwbz}

Image from the 0x Salon Magic
Gallery, 2020.

*Only coal is capable of getting us out of this economic mess.

LearnToCoal*

It is possible that coal power is the best power generation of all
for the health of our natural environment.
Should we rename 'coal power plant' to 'forest fertilizer plant'?
People who hate coal also hate forests because we need to use coal to
save our big, beautiful forests! Never let anyone talk fiat about
coal, slap them!!
Steve Barbour (@SGBarbour), Twitter, December 2022. 

These tweets represent a selection of pro-Bitcoin and anti-climate
talking points that a Bitcoin personality regularly offers forth in
the service of promoting their fossil fuel powered mining enterprise. 

The snarled root of necroprimitivism appears to arise from a
nihilistic union of the NP-hard commodity-money belief of
thermo-Austrianism, the abundance framework and petriarchial logics of
petro-masculinity, and the immutable whitepaperism and
computationalist absolutism of (protocol-)code-as(-network)-law.
Informed both by Bitcoin's defensive network architecture, with strict
thermodynamic, economic, and cryptographic boundaries between inside and
outside, and the exclusionary logics of scarcity at its foundation, a
scorched earth imaginary pervades the worldview of its acolytes. Such is
the (oft blind) fervour of believers that Bitcoin may be conceived of as
an asset wrapped in an ideology, promising 'trustless salvation', to
quote Clemens. The faithful 'Bitliever' necroprimitive adherent is so
focussed on ossification, immutability, and purity that it would
tolerate (or favour, even) ecological collapse on Earth as a byproduct
of Bitcoin getting its thermoeconomic dues.

Horologium Eschatologiae

Necrosetta Stones are read,
Boiling oceans are blue.
To halt the technocapital singularity,
You'll need more than a CPU.
The Necroprimitivist Manifesto Pt.1, 0x Salon, 2021.

{#nuag1o4s3jm}

Image: The Necrosetta Stone, a Bitliever relic for the proof-of-work
era.
Generated with VQGAN+CLIP, 0x Salon, 2021.

Owing to the Bitcoin network's socio-technical resilience---replicated
ledger, economic incentives to defend, the ideological purity of its
adherents---and the inability to truly kill a blockchain-based
system---zombie chains can always be reanimated and attempts to change
parameters result in network schisms via forks--- there seems no way
to stop Bitcoin from the outside. We---lifeforms of planet Earth---must
find ways to Curb Their Malthusiasm, to dissuade necroprimitivists
away from Coal-Is-Law and a hothouse Earth. It is through the
indifference and repetition of proof-of-work that we can see the
resolute inhumanity of the Bitcoin system, its own Nietzschean moment:
an infernal return. Is Bitcoin Nakamoto's Basilisk, an Immaculate
Misconception destined to kill all planetary life, or die trying? To
paraphrase Hobbes: in the state-machine of Nature, nothing will be
lost. Artificial life is nasty, brutish, and short.

Thanks to Martina Cavalot, Matt Colquhoun, and Habib William Kherbek
for helpful comments during the preparation of this article.

Key References

Agamben, G., The Kingdom and the Glory (English Translation), Stanford
University Press, 2011.
Alsindi, W. Z., Reminiscences of a Clock Operator (Relativistic
Edition), 0x Salon, 2021.
Alsindi, W. Z., Bitcointingency: An Economics of Indeterminacy, Weird
Economies, 2022.
Alsindi, W. Z., Kherbek, H.W., Tolan, C.S., Tyndall, K., The Black Hole
of Money theatrical script, 0x Salon, in preparation.
Alsindi, W. Z., and Lotti, L., Blockchain Mining: Glossary Definition,
Internet Policy Review, 2021.
Baudrillard, J., Information at the Meteorological Stage (English
Translation), Screened Out, Verso Books, 2002.
Clemens, J. D., In the State of Nature Nothing Will Be Lost, Australian
Humanities Review, (66), 2020.
CPRU, The Necroprimitivist Manifesto Pt.2, 0x Salon, 2023.
CPRU, The Necroprimitivist Manifesto Pt.1, 0x Salon, 2021.
CPRU, Cryptographic Necroprimitivism, 0x Salon, 2020.
Daggett, C., Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018. 
Freeman J., The Tyranny of Structurelessness, The Second Wave, 1972.
Greenspan, A., Capitalism's Transcendental Time Machine, University of
Warwick, 2000.
Laruelle, F., Christo-Fiction: The Ruins of Athens and Jerusalem,
Columbia University Press, 2015.
Malik, S., The Ontology of Finance, Collapse VIII, Urbanomic, 2014.
Montag, W., Necro-economics: Adam Smith and death in the life of the
universal, Radical Philosophy 134, 2005.
Raymond, E. S., The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open
Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, O'Reilly Media, 1999.
Stevenson, D., Bitcoin = Death Processors, 2016.  
Swartz, L., What was Bitcoin, what will it be? The techno-economic
imaginaries of a new money technology, Cultural Studies, Vol. 32 (4), 
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