When I saw Adam Back’s post on X the other day, it really stuck with me. He quoted John Gilmore saying the internet views censorship as damage and routes around it. Then he connected that directly to Bitcoin: both systems are ungovernable in the best way. You cannot build permanent checkpoints or centrally control content or transactions at the protocol level. Attempts to stop spam or abuse through top-down rules usually fail because the design itself treats control as something to route around.

I especially liked the part where he said that is exactly why Hashcash exists as a market solution. It felt like a perfect summary of what makes Bitcoin different from everything else that came before.

Hashcash was Adam Back’s invention back in the 1990s. He created it to fight email spam without needing trusted third parties or central filters. The idea is simple but powerful. Before you can send a message, you have to do a small amount of computational work, basically solving a puzzle that requires CPU time. For normal users the cost is tiny. For someone trying to send millions of spam messages it becomes expensive very quickly. There is no central authority deciding what is spam. The market of computation does the filtering.

Satoshi later took this proof-of-work concept and turned it into Bitcoin’s mining system. It is not just about creating new coins. It is an economic game that secures the entire network. Miners compete to add blocks, and the work they do (energy plus hardware) makes attacks costly. This is what gives Bitcoin its resistance to censorship and control. I have always appreciated how elegant that is.

At the same time, reading that post made me think about a real vulnerability that worries me. Governments control a lot of the world’s energy infrastructure. They regulate power plants, set electricity prices, tax energy use, and can simply ban mining operations in their countries. If Bitcoin relies so heavily on energy for its security, could a powerful government or group of governments gradually take control of the network by choking off that energy? It feels like a single point of failure in an otherwise decentralized system.

This concern led me straight to Friedrich Hayek’s ideas. In his 1976 book The Denationalisation of Money, Hayek argued that government monopoly over money has been a historical mistake rather than a necessity. He proposed letting private entities issue their own currencies and compete freely in the marketplace. Bad money, the kind that loses value through inflation or becomes unreliable, would lose users. Good money that holds its value and serves people well would attract more adoption. Competition, driven by self-interest, would do a better job than any central authority trying to manage money benevolently.

I find this connection fascinating. Bitcoin already feels like a partial realization of Hayek’s vision. It is private money competing against government fiat currencies. But what if we took it further? What if there were multiple competing versions of Bitcoin itself, perhaps even using the same hash algorithm like SHA-256? That setup could make the whole system much harder for any single government to dominate through energy restrictions.

Imagine several chains running in parallel, all using proof-of-work with the same mining algorithm. Miners would constantly evaluate which chain offers the best profitability after accounting for block rewards, transaction fees, and difficulty. They could switch their hardware between chains relatively easily. This creates a fluid market for security. If one chain faces heavy regulatory pressure or an attack, hashpower and users could migrate to others. No single chain becomes the only target worth attacking or regulating.

There are clear advantages to this kind of competition. It builds redundancy into the system. It pressures each chain to innovate and improve its rules or security features to attract miners and users. It aligns with Hayek’s core idea that competition weeds out inferior options over time. And it directly addresses the energy control worry. A government would have to suppress multiple competing systems at once, which is far more difficult than targeting one dominant network.

Of course there are risks, and the biggest one that stands out is the 51 percent attack. When chains share the same mining algorithm, their hashpower is somewhat interchangeable. A large miner or pool on the biggest chain could temporarily divert resources to gain majority control over a smaller competing chain. The cost would be relatively low because they are only paying the marginal cost of that extra hashpower.

We have already seen this happen in practice with smaller proof-of-work networks. Ethereum Classic suffered several serious 51 percent attacks. In January 2019 there were incidents involving deep chain reorganizations and roughly 1.1 million dollars worth of double-spent ETC. Then in August 2020 there were multiple attacks in quick succession. One of them allowed an attacker to steal around 807,000 ETC, worth about 5.6 million dollars at the time. The attacker rented hashpower from a marketplace like NiceHash for roughly 192,000 dollars and achieved an enormous return. They reorganized thousands of blocks and targeted exchanges that had credited deposits too quickly.

These attacks worked because Ethereum Classic was a smaller chain sharing mining resources with the much larger Ethereum network at the time. Attackers could rent or redirect hashpower cheaply. Similar incidents have hit other smaller coins over the years. The pattern is clear: smaller networks are vulnerable when hashpower can be rented or switched from dominant chains.

For the main Bitcoin network itself the economics look very different. Its hashrate sits around 900 to 950 exahashes per second in mid-2026. Attacking it at scale would require controlling an enormous amount of specialized hardware and energy. The cost would run into the billions of dollars even for a short period. Most actors, including many governments, would find it economically destructive to their own interests as well.

Real-world events give us good data on how Bitcoin already handles energy pressure. In 2021 China was responsible for well over 60 percent of global hashrate. The government implemented a broad ban on cryptocurrency mining, citing financial stability and energy concerns. Hashrate dropped sharply almost overnight as operations shut down or fled the country. At one point the network’s total hashrate fell from peaks near 180 exahashes down toward 60 to 80 exahashes.

Yet the network recovered remarkably fast. Miners relocated to places with cheaper or more available energy, especially Texas, Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia, Paraguay, and other regions with stranded power or favorable conditions. By late 2021 Bitcoin had surpassed its previous all-time high hashrate. The network became more geographically distributed than it had been before the ban. Even years later, some mining activity has quietly returned to parts of China where electricity remains inexpensive despite the official ban.

Current estimates for 2026 show the United States holding the largest share at roughly 35 to 40 percent of global hashrate, followed by Russia around 16 percent, China still contributing 10 to 12 percent through various means, and significant portions in Kazakhstan, Canada, Paraguay, and elsewhere. The total network hashrate hovers near or above 900 exahashes per second. Miners continue to chase the lowest electricity costs worldwide, often using renewable or otherwise underutilized energy sources.

This mobility is exactly why Bitcoin can route around energy restrictions the same way the internet routes around censorship attempts. No single government controls global energy markets or can force every jurisdiction to cooperate.

When I think about all of this together, the idea of multiple competing Bitcoin-like systems using the same hash algorithm starts to feel like a natural extension of both Bitcoin’s design and Hayek’s thinking. It would create ongoing market selection for the best monetary properties while making centralized capture through energy policy much harder. At the same time, the dominance of the largest and most secure chain would likely persist because smaller competitors remain more exposed to 51 percent risks until they grow their own hashrate significantly.

Competition already exists in the broader cryptocurrency space through forks and alternative proof-of-work projects. The market has rewarded the chain with the strongest security track record and clearest monetary properties. Adding more deliberate competition among Bitcoin-style systems could strengthen the overall ecosystem’s resilience without breaking the core incentives that make proof-of-work work.

I keep coming back to Adam Back’s point about ungovernable systems. The protocols that treat attempts at control as damage and find ways around it seem to have staying power. In a world with several competing versions of Bitcoin, that routing-around ability could become even stronger. Governments might still try to influence energy use in their territories, but miners and users would have more options to shift elsewhere or to alternative chains.

Hayek believed competition would produce better money because issuers would have strong incentives to maintain trust and value. Bitcoin already demonstrates part of that principle against fiat systems. Extending similar competition among Bitcoin variants could push the same logic deeper into the decentralized money space itself.

These are the thoughts that have been on my mind since reading that post. The combination of market-based security through proof-of-work, real-world evidence from events like the China ban, and Hayek’s vision of competing currencies feels like it points toward a more robust future for sound money. I am curious to see how these ideas develop as the ecosystem continues to evolve.

References

  1. Adam Back’s X post: x.com/adam3us/status/2076924769782411736
  2. Reuters report on China Bitcoin mining rebound (2025): reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/bitcoin-mining-china-rebounds-defying-2021-ban-2025-11-24
  3. Swan Bitcoin article on the 2021 Great Hash Rate Migration: swanbitcoin.com/industry/the-great-hash-rate-migration-of-2021-sam-callahan
  4. CNBC coverage of Bitcoin hashrate recovery after China ban (2021): cnbc.com/2021/12/10/bitcoin-network-hashrate-hits-all-time-high-after-china-crypto-ban
  5. Institute of Economic Affairs PDF of Hayek’s Denationalisation of Money: iea.org.uk (PDF, 1978 edition)
  6. Wikipedia summary of The Denationalisation of Money by Hayek: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalisation_of_Money
  7. Details on Ethereum Classic 51% attacks (2019 and 2020): Multiple sources including Bitquery analysis and CoinDesk reporting on the August 2020 incidents involving rented hashpower and double spends.
  8. Current Bitcoin hashrate distribution estimates (2026): Hashrate Index, Compass Mining, and related industry reports showing US leadership around 35–40%, followed by Russia, China, and others.