Bitcoin & Urbanism

Much has been said about Bitcoin as a revolutionary technology and how it can impact various aspects of our lives and the wider world. This article is specifically meant to take an introspective look at our built environment (specifically in and around U.S. cities) and how bitcoin can rejuvenate urbanism. I believe, like many, that bitcoin is as much of a social instrument of change as it is a technological or financial instrument of change. Lets dive in.

Current State of our Built Enviornment

Public Enemy #1: Car Culture

Unfortunately, there is a series of unfortunate events that lead to the destruction of American cities through the 20th century. I’ve boiled down the main culprits to Lobbyists for car companies, corrupt/morally bankrupt politicians, and State Departments of Transportation).

Car culture is the the intrinsic idea that a car is needed to get anywhere. They have been perversely glorified over people in our own cities – the very tool that has facilitated human flourishing across the arc of our species. As a result we (we = the fellow Americans who came before us) made the decision to destroy huge swaths of economically and societal valuable land (homes, businesses, churches, 3rd places, parks, water fronts, etc.) to build… highways and parking lots. Perhaps no more visibly than Kansas City Missouri – 1955 & 2014

80+ years of embracing car culture has left it’s fair share of scars across the country. The urban core of many of our cities have been reduced to surface parking abandoned after 5pm on any given work day. A web of highways eventually connects the urban core with the low density suburban sprawl that surrounds it. Painfully illustrated in the picture below

This infrastructure is very expensive to maintain and in many occasions in a state of disrepair. Of course with a currency that doesn’t hold its value and is constantly being de-based only makes whatever potential for maintenance that much more expensive
Cities are measured in linear feet. Constantly expanding the necessary infrastructure needed to support a world-class city to the edges of suburbia is of course very expensive and inefficient. Reminder – this was only done in the first place to support cars. Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota explains this problem beautifully in the below video.

Public Enemy #2: NIMBYism

Not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) is a pollutive mindset many de-growthers share. The whole idea is that they block new development because “how dare a train stop or apartment complex built next to my single family home and lot.”
You may have seen the videos on X of a usually empty town hall meeting being invaded my old land owners hell bent on stopping any new development. This mindset is unethical and lacks any morality involved with loving your neighbor. Not only do they oppose growth in general (evil) they largely oppose housing for people and families (evil)

Why does this mindset exist? Well besides those people who will always argue, the only charitable explanation I can come up with is they are protecting the value of their home.
- Real Estate is hyper local. Living on one side of a highway or another can have a massive effect on the value of your property. Throughout the history of most of modern America the home was not only a family’s largest investment but it was also served as the main store of value for most of their wealth. Hence further supply would drop demand for their home and ultimately devalue their life’s savings.
- This of course is a preposterous proposition to a bitcoiner because in reality while a home is a hard asset, there is a better hard asset to custody and save in. All NIMBYism really does is prevent the next generation from having an opportunity to own a home themselves.

Current State of our Social Fabric

Effect: Anti-Social Behavior

- Ask just about anyone on the street nowadays and you will get a pretty similar response. The social discourse in the U.S. is very polarized with extremes pulling hard to their respective sides. Participation in local communities and neighborly interactions have all but eroded. Many people nowadays just avoid social interactions in general opting for their Uber Eats to just be left on the doorstep opposed to even meeting the delivery person at the door.
- 68% of people drive alone to work…sad…

Cause: Central Planners

Zoning: It is innate in any sort of central planning to think your centralized entity can perfectly plan how resources should be used. In reality that is never the case and specifically in the case of zoning it is the residents of the specific municipality who bear the brunt of central planners egos. Regulation like zoning has removed 3rd places or even made them illegal. These were the places where communities used to gather and interact with each other fostering a serendipitous sense of human interaction. In many cities it is illegal to have a corner store in a neighborhood or for a small 10 unit apartment building to be next to a single family home or for a triplex to occupy a lot that used to be a single family home. FOR YOUR SAFETY central planners have made it illegal for the family of the bodega owner to practically live next to their doctor. Additionally, these burdens on the free market increase cost and delay or prevent market driven supply.
Suburban Sprawl: Bulldoze cities for highways and parking lots = a transitory concrete waste land where no one lives or interacts with each other. Central Planners in the 20th century opted to destroy economically productive land to build a sprawling network of subdivisions and highways. The result, people isolate themselves in their steal boxes for 2 hours a day as the commute into the city completely devoid of any sort of community interaction. They leave the urban core abandoned and go back to their box amongst the boxes in suburbia, completely devoid of any sort of community interaction (again). Rinse and repeat; day-by-day, year-by-year, generation-by-generation.

How Bitcoin Affects the Built Enviornment

A better store of value

Bitcoin is a savings technology. The limited supply, decentralized, and digitally native nature of bitcoin make it a very unique asset/network. It is more scarce, more liquid, more transferable, cheaper to maintain, easier to buy, and easier to protect than a house. If American’s main store of value isn’t their home. I believe this would drastically reduce the amount of NIMBYism choking our cities. This would ulitmatley lead to more growth and prosperity. Affordable housing increases diversity, creates more welcoming people driven communities, more economic activity, etc. the benefits go on and on. It is important to recognize that this idea of car centric development is less than 100 years old. Humans are social creatures, we used to build our environment to be social, why did we stop?

Real Costs

I think it says a lot that if you walk into any given bar across the country and you tell the patrons that their taxes pay for roads and you universally receive laughs, should tell you all you need to know about the current state of our physical infrastructure and fiscal responsibility. The Sprawl choking almost all of our American cities is so expensive and inefficient, about the only way to pay for it is to just print money. The cherry on top – cars are a depreciating asset bought predominatly on debt and provide very little value besides some transportation utility that could be more efficiently provided anyway. I believe on a BTC standard, it will be far too economically costly to live and build as inefficiently as sprawl is.

How Bitcoin Affects the Social Fabric

Remove the State

Building on Ray Dalio’s 4th turning thesis, I believe the moral foundations of Western Civilization have degraded to a point of worshiping the State Leviathan. The State has become so strong and the populous so docile that the populous depends on the State’s welfare and/or economic intervention. A large State that has fostered and facilitated a docile populous is equivalent to a tyrant. Bitcoin doesn’t need a 3rd party to intermediate the interactions of two parties. Bitcoin enables sovereign individuals to transact on a personal level. No tyrant needed.
- Bitcoin is a decentralized open-source software protocol designed to remove the middle man. It is built to transfer value between individuals so part of it’s utility naturally lends itself to financial transactions. I don’t think it is a stretch to theorize that when you can decentrally verify trust, you create a society that is more willing to interact with each other in general. Humans are not only technological beings, they are also social beings. I believe a return of more human to human interactions will create not only more prosperous cities but also a more prosperous society.

I believe a bitcoin standard will empower humans (technological and social beings) to cultivate the best urban environments ever built. Bitcoin is a decentralized open source software protocol that is secured by proof-of work. It is my assumption that a technology so resilient and aligned with human moral incentives will lend to new economic and social systems. Negative trade-offs like destroying economically viable land to build economically unsustainable infrastructure that facilitates the usage of depreciating assets will have negative price signals that will be expressed by market participants. Positive trade-offs like removing the State Leviathan from markets, decision making, and P2P transactions will be received positively by market participants. Trade offs = transparency. Transparency = good decision making and resource allocation.