#so swap arbiter would be the one driving around

[sui-imi]

classic, swap and fell Roo.

... and Roo.

(UnderEats is technically a multiverse thing, not an AU. but that doesn't mean there can't be alternate versions of Roo running around haha)

[castielcommunism]

i loooved ur new fic!! angel politics. exquisite

thank you!!!! I was never satisfied with how angelic free will is discussed in the show and it’s like one of the most interesting aspects of spn. Like Cas is essentially the first angel since Lucifer to “produce” his own set of goals external to the mandate of heaven. Because like angels in spn are in a weird position where they are given the ability of discretion (ie they can interpret their own orders and decide how those orders are carried out and completed), but they are NOT allowed to produce their own orders for themselves. And so like given the state of heaven around the time of s8/9, Cas would be INCREDIBLY valuable to other angels, because he discovered the ability to produce his own set of orders. And the consequences of all other angels learning this information would be catastrophic, so Cas would have a vested interest in keeping that information private unless it was beneficial to him in some way. Which positions him in a very weird moral space where he has to juggle the well-being of other angels (since a lack of orders from heaven seems to literally drive most of them insane), his own personal interests and goals, and the well-being of Earth.

So ANYWAY the purpose of the fic was to work through some of that, because I think the question of “why did Cas rebel” can’t simply be answered with “because of Dean” (like imo there is a higher moral context for his rebellion that allowed him to discover the idea that Dean is somebody worth rebelling for, but Dean himself isn’t the cause, which seems to bear out with the Naomi plot), and I think Cas would deny that anyway, but ultimately his loyalties will always lie with Dean, and parsing the difference between those things is difficult not just for Cas, but especially for other angels observing his behaviour. Because like if you argue that Dean is essentially Cas’ new “god”, I think that is overly simplistic and reproduces the relationship he had with Heaven, and can’t really be called free will in that sense because he’s just swapping Chuck out for Dean. But Cas is also still an angel and will fall back on that dynamic, especially when he feels uncertain of himself, so there is a contradiction between “Cas has free will independent of anyone” and “Dean is the arbiter of Cas’ capacity to have free will”. Both of those statements aren’t entirely true, but they become more true when they work in concert with one another, even if they are mutually exclusive.

[cryptoga-blog]

Erik Voorhees - CoinDesk

http://www.cryptoga.com/news/erik-voorhees-coindesk/

Erik Voorhees - CoinDesk

This is an entry in CoinDesk’s Most Influential in Blockchain 2017 collection.

“You’ve got invited a thinker, and the curse that arrives with that, is you have to listen to a bit of philosophy.”

And as promised, which is just what Patrick Byrne, CEO of e-commerce large Overstock.com, proceeds to give. It may perhaps be the depths of January, but Byrne is bringing his personal kind of heat to the roomful of bitcoin insiders assembled for the annual “Satoshi Roundtable” retreat in Cancun, Mexico.

Virtually two many years into a debate over how ideal to alter bitcoin’s software (and nevertheless months away from anything resembling a path ahead), significantly of the event’s itinerary centers on the issue, or as significantly as it can right before devolving into possibly acrimony or aimlessness.

Refreshing off a go away of absence from his firm, even though, Byrne provides a burst of existence to the proceedings. Having heart stage for a speech, he rifles through a brisk dialogue that equates bitcoin with the American Revolution and pokes enjoyment at key banks.

“They have not internalized how significantly they have to transform. You’ve got demonstrated up with a Ferrari and they’re insisting on placing a lawnmower in it,” Byrne quips.

This immediate speed of enjoy before long can take a pause, nonetheless, when Byrne factors to a person with his hand elevated in an effort to check with a issue. Byrne before long balks at the title. “Voorhees, the Erik Voorhees?” he asks.

On affirmation, what starts off out as surprise swiftly turns to reverence, as Byrne nods, bends at the middle and commences a shorter collection of bows. “I am not deserving,” he suggests a few instances in a sing-track tone.

Seeking back on the incident some months afterwards, Voorhees is nevertheless taken aback by the gesture. Talking from the workplaces of his startup ShapeShift, approximately a calendar year eliminated, he admits he’d by no means met Byrne right before that instant, and that he hasn’t accurately had significantly make contact with with him since.

“It was awesome, I failed to know if he understood who I was,” Voorhees remarks.

However, you will find an noticeable shared camaraderie, one particular Voorhees traces back to not just their desire in cryptocurrencies, but the way in which they have approached advocating for the technology, typically in protracted fights with U.S. regulators who don’t see eye to eye with their philosophy.

And in Voorhees, Byrne finds rare firm, as the entrepreneur’s personal battles against the governing administration stretch back many years, to a time when he was just a person defending bitcoin on message boards. But if Voorhees was an oddity then, he’s maybe much more exceptional now in that he’s remained, always a contact out of phase with the mainstream.

Irrespective of whether it truly is having still left-of-heart positions on bitcoin’s complex roadmap, how business business enterprise need to be structured to improve advancement or the nature of cryptocurrency as revenue, Voorhees remains the shapeshifting fox his company’s logo enshrines.

Then and now

One of the earliest evangelists for cryptocurrency (his on the internet posts on the make a difference day back to 2011 and 2012), Voorhees is now one particular of its most distinguished business people.

An early employee at its to start with key startup, New York-based mostly BitInstant, he afterwards started and offered a gambling system known as SatoshiDice that was so preferred it congested the bitcoin blockchain right before scaling was even a greatly acknowledged problem. However, SatoshiDice was not without its critics, such as the U.S. governing administration, who fined Voorhees for the unauthorized trade of cryptocurrency for startup equity.

If that appears acquainted, that may perhaps be since the product is en vogue these days, with so-known as original coin offerings (ICOs) doing related revenue on an just about day-to-day foundation. Because 2013, revenue of tailor made cryptocurrencies have resulted in approximately $4 billion in task funding.

“I wish tokens have been a factor back then. I went through all that threat and all that crap,” he suggests, reclining back in his corner workplace chair.

If which is the case, even though, ShapeShift’s new workplace sophisticated also doubles as a assertion on how far he’s arrive, and also how he’s always been a bit early to the long run.

Full with reclaimed wooden tables, catered lunch for staff and enough home for expansion, the workplace is a residing I-explained to-you-so to the naysayers who mocked Voorhees for remaining one particular of the few to embrace the strategy cryptocurrencies outside of bitcoin had any benefit.

Nonetheless, the advancement of his firm, which hired much more than 50 people in 2017, at the time when several early bitcoin startups are having difficulties or pivoting, is credence to his foresight.

What began as a web site that made available the capacity for customers to swap cryptocurrency without a counterparty now has five whole offerings – its eponymous ShapeShift provider PRISM (a synthetic asset portfolio built on ethereum) KeepKey (a components storage providing) CoinCap.io (a knowledge company) and Arbiter (a stealth initiative).

Anarchist blues

But for Voorhees, the success has arrive with trade-offs. Particularly, he hasn’t been in a position to be quite as obvious – and outspoken – as he once was.

“When you operate a firm, you can’t also be tremendous political. You have a focus on on your back I have to censor myself all the time,” he suggests.

For one particular, he’d like to be much more outspoken about the romantic relationship among revenue and the governing administration, the matter for which he to start with rose to renown in the business.

Before he was an entrepreneur (having difficulties or prosperous), he was a blogger, authoring extensive believed pieces on the nature of politics and revenue, and how cryptocurrencies, by proficiently moving the equipment for revenue creation back into the hands of the people, have been destined to upset this balance.

And for all there is to handle at ShapeShift, Voorhees nevertheless attempts to maintain in contact with his Libertarian roots. Scenario and place, the weekend right before the job interview, Voorhees was supposed to check out Ross Ulbricht, the founder of on the internet dim market place Silk Street, now serving existence driving bars for his creation.

While he’s by no means met Ulbricht, Voorhees likens his planned two-hour travel, delayed because of to an abrupt hand surgery, to a type of pilgrimage, one particular that acknowledges Ulbricht’s impact in developing what was fundamentally the to start with significant-scale business enterprise of any type operate exclusively on blockchain payments.

“He’s in jail eternally at minimum till we bust him out. So, I want to go talk to him and enable him know that he’s not neglected about,” Voorhees suggests.

But if all this helps make you believe Voorhees has a bit of a fetish for oppression, he pushes back against the declare. A reasonably new father, he suggests he’s eager to stay away from a related destiny.

“I don’t want to close up in a cell,” he provides.

It can be the to start with of several statements in which Voorhees appears to see himself as another person sure to his beliefs, at once optimistic they will be vindicated, but also ready to settle for the final result of their adherence.

Imply and horrible

On windswept streets, this predilection is on display screen yet again as Voorhees commences tearing into the meat of the matter we have been dancing all-around, his position in the business in 2017, one particular that was generally (publicly at minimum) outlined by his assist for failed bitcoin scaling proposals.

Like several other business people, he signed a assertion of assist for the Segwit2x software improve that would have altered bitcoin’s code to boost its block size parameter. The backlash was shift, and without wide assist, several CEOs pulled out over buyer grievances and normal in-fighting.

On the matter of how he emerged from that nevertheless highly regarded – if voting on our ‘Most Influential’ poll is any indicator – it truly is very clear he’s a bit bitter about the insinuation at all, contacting it “absolutely absurd.”

“What was most tragic about the calendar year was that all these people who have been on the identical aspect and they concur on 99 % of points became not just opponents in a debate, but like vitriolic hating enemies of each individual other,” he argues.

Seeking back, he’s sympathetic to his friends, like early trader Roger Ver, who have mostly borne the brunt of fierce internet trolling. To Voorhees, it truly is an illustration of how “mean and horrible” the debate bought over what he thinks was a well-intentioned, and in the long run important, transform.

Voorhees, like Ver, maintains his placement that bitcoin’s 1 MB block size needs to be elevated for the software to succeed, and he remains taken aback by ideas that the events served as a referendum that discovered developers staking a distinct path ahead.

Asked to retort common criticisms of the Segwit2x proposal, Voorhees is brief to tear down arguments that have seemingly grow to be accepted mantra.

“Are you saying bitcoin was not supposed to be utilized as a peer-to-peer cash program? It can be the sub-title of the white paper,” he suggests sarcastically.

However, he does appear to refuse what appears to be the mainstream consensus, that bitcoin is now an asset much more akin to a electronic gold. To Voorhees, bitcoin can’t just be an asset class, or even a store of benefit, since it truly is primary utility is just not to be held, but to be spent.

“I’ve by no means baffled price tag and utility. The only motive that the price tag need to increase is if much more people are acquiring it practical,” he suggests. “Keeping is a derivative use case, it only applies extensive expression if you will find some thing else the factor is practical for. In this case it was benefit transfer.”

Sly fox

From there, the issue is pressured even more, to the place in which it truly is maybe far too onerous to condition the quantity of conditionals I use to prod at his preconceptions. But to this barrage, Voorhees holds the line, and over the study course of the dialogue, his positions grow to be a bit much more outlined.

He thinks bitcoin are not able to succeed as just a store of benefit (and that greater scaling is essential), that the growing tide of competing cryptocurrencies is just not probably to be overwhelmed back (by any bitcoin advance) and that, this aside, bitcoin remains truly worth fighting for as it truly is the ideal probability for the cryptocurrency notion to be certainly understood.

It can be maybe this past purpose that appears to most encourage Voorhees and his continued visibility in bitcoin, in spite of ShapeShift’s embrace of a much more realistic product that focuses on several protocols.

In fact, if Voorhees proves absolutely nothing else in discussion, it truly is that he’s maybe uniquely in a position to see both equally idealism and practicality as two independent suggestions to be embraced.

Time just after time, he defends the strategy that “magic internet revenue” can’t be silly or arbitrary, no make a difference how several there are, going so far as to struggle against the strategy that cryptocurrencies only have benefit when measured against a fiat currency.

“If it was not, why would anyone be fascinated in it? Other than some cryptographers,” he suggests.

But he remains devoted to bitcoin since he wants to see the earth cryptocurrency unleashes quicker than afterwards.

“The issue is that of all the work and effort going to build bitcoin today, if it gets surpassed or wrecked, it delays the full task,” he suggests.

The hanging wire

This mental recreation of fox and the hound now over, we retreat back to ShapeShift’s workplaces, both equally maybe not sure of what to make of the discussion.

Somewhere at a coffee store, we determine on a title for the dialogue – “The philosophy of transform as it relates to bitcoin and cryptocurrency” –and before long just after contact it a attract. While, you will find a sense of disorientation that remains.

Seeking at a twin pair of fox paintings on the wall, my perceptions blurs. Made of a million black and blue brushstrokes, I recall you will find no these factor as colour at all. The photos I am observing usually are not even proper aspect up, they appear to say.

Voorhees stops to correct the photo.

A minimal to the proper, a minimal to the still left.

“It might just be the wire,” he suggests at past.

Do I see what he sees? I linger on the way out, stepping back, altering viewpoint, seeking at the images from distinct angles. Stepping into the elevator, I solve that if they’re off, I can’t explain to.

But it truly is a testament to Voorhees that I really feel like they need to be.

Want much more? Listen to Erik Voorhees talk about his philosophy toward electronic belongings.

Authentic artwork by Luis Buenaventura II, creator of the CryptoPop web site. Click below to check out much more by the artist, and to examine out the official CoinDesk Most Influential T-shirt.

Video by Ali Powell at 40 Intruders Films 

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