Case Study - Bitcoin

Bitcoin may be the most talked-about financial construct on the planet—with good reason. Built on several generations of digital money, Bitcoin pioneered a true global, peer-to-peer digital currency. It is all but synonymous with blockchain technology. Bitcoin is also an almost perfect embodiment of an ExO. Indeed, all it lacks is an explicit MTP. But if it had one, it would likely be “A global, peer-to-peer, 21st-century monetary system.” Still, Bitcoin encompasses the remaining nine  ExO attributes, with Autonomy ranked highest: 

1. Staff on Demand via open source. Note that, as a peak Autonomous organization, Bitcoin has no core organization. In fact, we predict DAOs will eventually replace Staff on Demand.

2. Community and Crowd. In fact, Bitcoin exists only as Community and Crowd.

3. Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. Proof-of-work algorithms are the heart of Bitcoin, along with Merkle Hash trees. 

4. Leveraged Assets. Bitcoin piggybacks on others’ computations.

5. Engagement. Bitcoin mining is fully gamified, with a feedback loop to keep Engagement high and to create reward structures for miners.

6. Interfaces are part of Bitcoin’s protocol. The protocol is the interface.

7. Dashboards. Bitcoin’s blockchain is public, transparent, and analyzable by anyone.

8. Experimentation. Thousands of developers have built new ideas on Bitcoin.

9. Autonomy.: Bitcoin is so decentralized there’s not even a core organization. The entire effort is just a protocol.

10. Social Technologies. With its public blockchain and transparent wallets, Bitcoin resides entirely in social space.