Craig Wright talks civil disobedience and Bitcoin

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nChain chief scientist and creator of Bitcoin, Dr. Craig S Wright, has explored the moral issues around civil disobedience, and the role of Bitcoin in opposing the current power structures of the Internet.

The comments come as part of an extended post published to his blog, where Dr. Wright said he believed in the principles of law, as well as the mechanisms of civil disobedience for changing flawed rules. 

I believe in law. To me, it holds the convictions of all that is valuable. Having said so, all systems of law require bounds. As societies develop, such bounds are tested and change. Here lies one of the reasons why the concepts of ‘Code is law’ or even ‘Code as law’ are each fundamentally flawed.

He went on to say that only through civil disobedience can citizens identify the flaws in legal systems and society, noting:

“It is only with law that we can challenge society and the boundaries that are set. It is because of law that civil disobedience allows people to see the flaws in society and for people to rectify them. It is not just the common law but equity, too, working together, that create the balance in the scales that measure life and ensure justice to the greatest extent possible. For it is never possible to achieve perfection. For what is perfect now would not be perfect a generation, three generations, or further down the track.”

With Bitcoin, Dr. Wright said citizens are able to see more clearly the power structures of the Internet, which works on “selling our souls” while appearing to be free. Rather than encouraging illegal activity such as drug dealing, he said Bitcoin is designed to utterly destroy these markets.

“With Bitcoin, the world becomes more transparent. As the people start to see what has been hidden from them, when they start to see the Internet that is not free but works on selling our souls, they will start to awaken, and as they do, change is about to occur. Bitcoin is not designed to allow anonymous drug markets, it is designed to utterly destroy them,” he explained.

“If people want to fight to change laws, they need to do so with courage and face the consequences of what will occur. Bitcoin doesn’t merely stop drug markets, it will stop corruption. In increasing the cost, the economic cost of crime, in making corruption more difficult to hide, in making cybercrime, political bribes, and all forms of large-scale monetary payments more difficult to hide, Bitcoin makes a more honest world.”

The post comes in the same week Dr. Wright was recognized by a major hedge fund as the original creator of bitcoin, fueling significant price spikes in BSV.