Bitcoin is Tetris

Every passage, on the record.

1. 00:00Prediction

   The idea for today's episode is that Bitcoin is like Tetris, and Tetris is fantastic, and so is Bitcoin, and we can look to the success of Tetris the game and pull out from that why Bitcoin will continue to win while we will become the global reserve asset, and why the world will be a better place because of it.

2. 01:15Claim

   We can use the energy reserves as our life health indicator, again like you would in a video game. It's our health status. We can tell by whether it's going up or whether it's going down what the likelihood is that we are heading in the right direction when it comes to the game of life. More reserves, or the more full the life bar is, the higher the chance we can continue to survive, and life is all about swimming against the natural current of increasing entropy.

3. 01:15Analogy

   We can use the energy reserves as our life health indicator, again like you would in a video game. It's our health status.

4. 01:55Claim

   I often say that life is the act of lowering entropy in the world around us, creating order. Now that's not entirely true, okay, so please note, if you are listening along to this, that there is an entirely accurate description of what is happening, but it's a faster way of saying it, of saying something that would take a little bit longer to project, and in the end would have very little impact on what we need to focus on to understand what's going on. Life cannot reduce entropy overall, but it is lowering local entropy.

5. 02:31Claim

   Yes, life is lowering entropy in the world around it, but in the local world around it, not overall. Every action life takes to reduce local entropy is in fact increasing total entropy.

6. 03:04Claim

   In just a basic argument as to why this is an ethical good, we can use the idea that more energy reserves for the extended order means more comfort, less pain, for the most number of players, the most number of participants. So less energy equals more suffering. Therefore we should maximize our efforts to promote energy transformation so as to minimize the amount of suffering.

7. 03:40Claim

   At the very base level the rule is that you transform energy, and the excess you then make available to the economy, to those around you. In return for making your excess available, you get, or you're given, calls on future energy by other participants in the economy.

8. 04:14Claim

   The vast majority agree to play the energy exchange game because it makes them vastly better off in every sense of the word. The game is superior to the alternative, which is why it continues to be played.

9. 04:49Idea

   So there have been lots of different ways this takes shape, but for our purposes here we can look at it like money, quote unquote, money is what is used to track these energy exchanges and their rightful owners. So who has calls on future energy is who is in control of the money, because that is what is used to keep track of the excess reserves that are shared within the system. Now if the money can be tampered with, well, this is breaking the rules, because the rule states that the only way to get money, i.e. calls on future energy reserves, is to have produced excess in the past.

10. 05:19Claim

    When you're playing a game it's imperative to know if others playing with you are following the same rules. If they are not following the same rules that could be ruinous for you or for them or for both of you. But the problem is how can you ever really be sure everyone is following the same rules, and this is where it all falls apart.

11. 05:19Quote

    The simple answer is you have to trust. Trust is important.

12. 05:51Claim

    You have to trust that everyone else playing is playing by the same rules, and the really bad part is you won't know that your trust has been misplaced until after it has been broken. So this puts anyone that is actually following the rules at a serious disadvantage to the party that would break the trust. When the stakes are at their highest this creates an almost insurmountable issue, and that issue is trust, and this really is where Bitcoin shines.

13. 06:32Claim

    Bitcoin has created a game where if the rules are broken by any participant they are automatically playing a different game. They were moved from the Bitcoin game and they are playing something different, and not only are they removed from the game, but it is made known essentially immediately to all other players before any harm is done. This isn't enforced by a central authority or a human at all, but rather the code itself. You actually can't play unless you follow every rule.

14. 07:20Quote

    Bitcoin emerges from the rules. Bitcoin as we understand it emerges from the rules of the system, and what we have attached to those rules is money.

15. 07:20Claim

    It forces you to understand the rules just so that you don't break them, because you can't break them and be playing. It doesn't matter if it's through ignorance or whether it's malicious, it doesn't matter.

16. 07:51Claim

    Eliminating the need to trust has never been possible in the game of ledger based energy exchange, and ledger based systems out competed token systems faster. There's more exchange, there's more velocity.

17. 07:51Claim

    Now if the rules can't be broken, how do we position ourselves to take advantage of those rules, both on an individual level and when looking at it from the extended order, because knowing the rules makes you a better player, and you can only make an educated decision by examining the opportunity cost of each move.

18. 08:23Analogy

    Imagine playing chess with someone, and in the middle of the game they move their pawn in the same manner a queen is allowed to move. How would this change the game, and what would your reaction be to that move? You'd be at a significant disadvantage.

19. 09:53Claim

    It would be in the rule breaker's interest to make it as difficult as possible to identify the rules in the first place. You don't want to give out the rule book, because then that makes it obvious that you are breaking the rules.

20. 11:24Claim

    What if you had to play, what if the stakes were so high that you were forced to play because choosing not to play was so disadvantageous that it forced your hand, you needed to play, it was the only game in town.

21. 11:24Event

    That was essentially the state of the energy transformation game until 2009, until before Bitcoin, and with Bitcoin a new kid showed up on the playground. You could opt out of the game where rules were complex and cheaters were rewarded. For the first time ever you had a choice to play a game that required everyone to play by the rules.

22. 11:24Claim

    The most obvious first order efficiency gain here is that you no longer have to invest any energy in trust verification, that is completely taken care of, because if they are not following the rules they are out of the system and you don't have to worry about that, and neither does anyone else.

23. 12:54Claim

    One of the other immediate wins is that the bad actors in the previous system would now be forced to positively contribute if they wanted to play. Where they were a net negative on the previous system, where they were allowed to cheat, now, because they are forced to participate positively inside of the system, you get their energy transformation gain as well.

24. 12:54Quote

    There's no force, there's no coercion. People adopt Bitcoin because they are better off in doing so.

25. 12:54Quote

    The Bitcoin system doesn't care who you are, where you are, or even that you actually are. It can't know anything of the outside world. It is completely contained. It simply does what it does.

26. 14:24Claim

    The extended order attaches a utility to its function.

27. 14:24Claim

    In the game of Bitcoin it is very, very simple: you want to control as much Bitcoin as possible. That is the objective.

28. 14:24Claim

    There are five things a game needs to be fun: you need goals, what's the goal of the system, they have to be clearly defined; rules, we need to understand what the rules are so we know when we're breaking them; feedback; it has to be voluntary; and it has to have obstacles.

29. 15:54Claim

    You have to have excess energy to exchange for Bitcoin, and you can either transform the energy into hashes yourself to acquire the Bitcoin from the system, or you can find someone willing to trade your energy for their Bitcoin. That's it.

30. 15:54Claim

    You can't give your Bitcoin to someone else and keep it yourself, that's against the rules and it's not possible, and if you do it you're playing another game that isn't Bitcoin. You also can't give the same Bitcoin to two different people, it doesn't work that way. Only the person with the private keys to move a Bitcoin can move a Bitcoin.

31. 15:54Claim

    The power of the game, the power of Bitcoin, is its simplicity. There's not a lot of stuff in there.

32. 15:54Claim

    Bitcoin being an open source, transparent ledger that is permissionless means everyone has a copy of everyone's score.

33. 15:54Quote

    Bitcoin is the feedback in that department. It is flawless in its execution.

34. 17:25Claim

    No one is forced to play. You can opt out any time you want, you can play for as long as you want, you can leave any time that you want. It's completely up to you.

35. 17:25Claim

    Bitcoin has obstacles that make the game more challenging. The more players playing Bitcoin the harder it becomes, the difficulty is increased, because the more people that are playing, the more energy is required to accumulate the same number of bitcoins.

36. 17:25Prediction

    If you hear about Bitcoin but you don't act for a few years, you will, in a very real way, feel the impact of that decision not to play.

37. 18:55Analogy · condensed

    Tetris really is a pure game in the end. It has obstacles, and not only does it have obstacles that make it challenging, but those obstacles get more difficult over time as you generate more and more success inside of the system, it actually makes it harder on you by speeding up, and that's essentially the same thing that Bitcoin is doing.

38. 18:55Claim

    If we take the longest term possible, we look out to the future of the universe, it is known essentially that entropy will continue to increase, eventually there will be the death of the universe. All of this order that we are creating through life, it is futile, and we can translate that to mean that the game of life is futile.

39. 18:55Reference

    That is like your John Maynard Keynes, your ultimate, in the end nothing really matters.

40. 18:55Quote

    It's about the game, it's about the creating of the order, it's about chasing down the goals, playing by the rules, experiencing the feedback, and overcoming the obstacles.

41. 20:25Claim

    It isn't so much the objective end of the game that is important, but it's actually the playing of the game, and it's the doing of all of these things, that if you can make it enjoyable, if you can make it rewarding, that will keep people continuing to come back.

42. 20:25Prediction

    I think with that information, if you track the success and the staying power and the amount of enjoyment that comes from individuals playing Tetris now so many years after its original invention, I think you can mimic that with Bitcoin. I think you can start to see why the adoption of Bitcoin will continue, because it is a better game than the alternative.