Cryptographic Power
also: Władza kryptograficzna · The fifth category of power
A proposed 5th category of social power (alongside Mann's IEMP): power whose rules are enforced by mathematics, not by an organization of people. First working instance: Bitcoin (2009).
A 5th category of social power proposed by this project — alongside the 4 categories of Michael Mann’s IEMP model (The Sources of Social Power, 1986-2013): ideological, economic, military, and political.
What sets it apart categorically
All 4 of Mann’s powers are networks of organized people — priests, merchants, soldiers, officials. Cryptographic power is the first whose enforcement requires no organization of people: the rules are executed by mathematics. Hence its properties:
- permissionless — participation without anyone’s consent
- aterritorial — there is no capital city to deliver an ultimatum to
- binary — holding the key gives full power over the resource, lacking it gives zero; there is no “partial access by administrative decision”
The first instance
Bitcoin (2009): settlement of value without a central arbiter, enforced by cryptography and incentives (chapter 1). An honest caveat: cryptographic power in its pure form applies only to those who hold their own keys — entrusting them to an intermediary restores the intermediary’s ordinary economic power.
Status of the term: a theoretical proposal of this book (chapter 7), not academic consensus.