Part 2. Bitcoin governance cases
Bitcoin reveals where governance is displaced, delayed, or mismatched: from code into implementation norms; from market participation into public legitimacy; from exposure into agency; and from exit into the problem of collective response.
In the case chapters, I follow the institutional responsibilities that Bitcoin relocates. Each chapter begins from a different action arena but the same challenge arises in different situations: a Bitcoin transaction can be technically valid, economically useful, or administratively legible while the governance form needed to settle its institutional meaning remains incomplete.
Relay policy shows how implementation choices became disputes over Bitcoin’s purpose (Chapter 3). Mining shows how PoW security becomes a claim on society’s broader energy governance infrastructure (Chapter 4). Custody shows how financialization can increase holders exposure to Bitcoin price while weakening the agency that Bitcoin’s bearer control was meant to preserve (Chapter 5). The need for future quantum migration shows how an architecture built to resist unwanted authority may struggle to authorize and implement coordinated defensive action (Chapter 6).
In addition to increasing our understanding of how institutional economics can help specify Bitcoin governance, these cases also make Bitcoin useful for the broader study of institutional economics because it exposes governance at its boundaries. Bitcoin is permissionlessness but that does not mean it has no governance. Instead, Bitcoin reveals where governance is displaced, delayed, or mismatched: from code into implementation norms; from market participation into public legitimacy; from exposure into agency; and from exit into the problem of collective response.
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