The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy

Blockchains are not simply about money. The modern-day alchemists who minted Bitcoin and other digital assets have animated a generation of technologists to reimagine how the financial and commercial world operates. The vision that these technologists aim to bring to fruition is not just about payment systems and other financial instruments. Large ... See more

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, wrote that “Legitimacy is a pattern of higher-order acceptance.” When enough people within the system question the system’s fairness it threatens the system's ability to continue to function, and you get a legitimacy crisis.

The three fundamental pillars of this argument are,

1. Blockchains are differentiated from traditional finance through their strong property rights – the inalienable right to store and transmit value.


2. Centralization provides a means by which powerful entities can influence the outcomes of blockchains.


3. The value stored in a property rights system is direc

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