StephanKinsella.com

I’ve been interested in bitcoin for some time, ¹ and witnessed the BTC vs. BCH blocksize war from 2015–2017 from the sidelines. Last year I read Roger Ver and Steve Patterson’s Hijacking Bitcoin: The Hidden History of BTC (2024) (foreword by my buddy Jeffrey Tucker, whose Atlanta Crypto-Currency Conference I spoke at in 2013). ² I found it to be well-written and organized. I was not persuaded by their case, however. Seemed like spin, whining, typical activism to me. If bitcoin can ever work, it has to work on its own, not because of flogging by activists to “use” it or “adopt” it. (Same thing with libertarianism.) ³

I was aware of another book on this topic, Jonathan Bier’s The Blocksize War: The battle over who controls Bitcoin’s protocol rules (2021), but I’ve never read it. In a Tweet, Miguel Vidal commented that “Roger Ver is deeply dishonest: he’s who tried to hijack Bitcoin. He attacked (bcash) and he failed (he had no interest in the underlying debate)” and that Jonathan Bier‘s “essay is quite well documented, fair, engaging and riveting. Highly recommend.” I noticed he had written the Prólogo (prologue, or foreword) ⁴ to the Spanish translation and he sent me a link to an a automatic English translation of his Foreword, which I append below. [continue reading…]

1. Am I a Bitcoin Maximalist?; various podcast interviews and posts. [↩]
2. KOL085 | The History, Meaning, and Future of Legal Tender (Crypto-Currency Conference, Atlanta, 2013). [↩]
3. Activism, Achieving a Free Society, and Writing for the Remnant. [↩]
4. Pat McNees, “What is the difference between a preface, a foreword, and an introduction?” [↩]

My book Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) contains updated essays published over a 29-year period, and thus is quite lengthy—about 800 pages, including bibliography and index and about 712 page of text.

As I pointed out on the landing page, for those who just want a taste of what the book is about, I recommend the Foreword by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, my Preface, and chapters 1 (“How I Became A Libertarian”) and 2 (“What Libertarianism Is”). However, as I pointed out in the Preface, “For those who want to skip the more extraneous material and focus on the core libertarian theory chapters, I recommend chapters 2–12, 14–15, and 18.”

With this in mind, I have produced a version of the PDF with the extraneous material stripped out: LFFS—Core Chapters Only, PDF. This version is 304 pages shorter than the main text, containing 408 pages of text as opposed to 713 for the original version–so about 57% the length of the original.

As I mentioned to the folks at the CEES in Guatemala, ¹ when I spoke there earlier this week, ² which had expressed some interest in translating Legal Foundations of a Free Society—it’s so far been translated into Chinese and Portuguese, but not Spanish—this “core chapter” truncated version might be more suitable for translation since the overall length would be much shorter and result in a slimmer paper volume. Food for thought for others interested in publishing a translation.

1. Centro de Estudios Económico-Sociales, affiliated with Universidad Francisco Marroquín. [↩]
2. Speaking at APEE IP Panel in Guatemala. [↩]

From twitter:

As early as 2011 I recognized that bitcoin could be closer to ideal money than anything else before. https://stephankinsella.com/2024/10/am-i-a-bitcoin-maximalist-or-big-blocker/…:

“(IN the bitcoin thing with digital currency, you can arbitrarily increase the granularity by adding more digits; in such a digital numeraire (which I confess I sort of think is the ideal money, in some sense, though not in a practical sense given some political and other problems), you never need to increase the supply at all (once it reaches its asymptotic maximum), because any supply truly is enough: you never face the granularity problem you guys allude to.”

The “political” problems I was thinking of was my fear that the state would kill it, if it became a real threat. For once I was too pessimistic (too confident in the competence of the state to realize the danger bitcoin poses) and thus I lost a bet to @real_vijay … but that led me to buy some bitcoin to repay my debt to him, so I don’t regret losing that bet! [continue reading…]

As I relate here, My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025, I’m trying this year to slow down, or at least change, the number of libertarian and related events I attend this year. For example I recently attended a completely non-normative (well mostly) and non-libertarian scholarly legal conference which I thoroughly enjoyed.¹
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A friend on an email discussion list had a long post starting with:

It strikes me that humanity is by and large trapped in a false dilemma where we have to choose between an all-powerful egotistical dictator and an all-powerful soulless bureaucracy. In the mean it boils down to the Soviet Union versus Hitler.

Person A: Hitler was really bad because he killed millions of innocent people.
Person B: The Soviet Union was worse because it killed even more innocent people.

I didn’t read the rest but chimed in with this: [continue reading…]

A normie friend asked me for my take on a recent Louisiana Supreme Court case, KATHLEEN WELCH AND CARROLL DEWAYNE WELCH VS. UNITED MEDICAL HEALTHWEST-NEW ORLEANS L.L.C. AND UNITED MEDICAL HEALTHCARE INC. (La. March 21, 2025).

The case involves the La. governor issuing various executive orders during Covid, “limiting gatherings and encouraging people to stay home” and also limiting liability of health care providers to cases of gross negligence or willful misconduct, under the Louisiana Health Emergency Powers Act (LHEPA), La. R.S. 29:760, et seq., which provides:
“During a state of public health emergency, no health care provider shall be civilly liable for causing the death of, or injury to, any person or damage to any property except in the event of gross negligence or willful misconduct.”

As the case notes, “On March 11, 2020, Governor John Bel Edwards declared a public health emergency in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic.” (The federal limitation on liability of pharmaceutical companies has also been criticized by libertarians.) ¹

It’s almost impossible to meet this standard of liability, as it’s much higher than the normal standard of negligence found in La. Civ. Code
Art. 2315: [continue reading…]

1. Jeffrey A. Tucker, “The Pandemic Excuse for a Corporatist Coup,” Brownstone Institute (July 11, 2024); Tucker’s tweet; Leslie Manookian, “Policy Imperatives for Health Freedom,” Brownstone Institute (October 3, 2024). [↩]

Bryan Mercadente, “The Illiberal Nature of Limited Liability: A Libertarian Critique,” The Libertarian Alliance [UK] (22 March, 2025). Excerpt:

https://libertarianism.uk/2025/03/30/the-illiberal-nature-of-limited-liability-stephan-kinsella-replies/The question I have been set is why, if it is as wonderful as I claim, capitalism produces immense inequalities and waste? Why is it so harmful to the environment? Since the purpose of the question appears to be a requirement for me to explain in more detail certain points I have argued in class, I hope I shall be forgiven for putting aside its exact wording in favour of what I think a more productive question. Before doing this, even so, I will make some effort to deal with question as set—even if my effort here will be brief.

The argument from inequality is easily answered. If one looks at the Lorenz curves for those countries that have economies based even slightly on free market principles, they show more equality than those countries that do not allow free markets. The correlation between economic freedom and prosperity is undeniable. Consider, for example, Switzerland and South Korea—two countries where markets are moderately free. Both have high GDP per capita and a large middle class. Compare them to command economies such as North Korea or Venezuela, where wealth is concentrated in the hands of the political elite, and the general population is impoverished. To be precise, capitalist countries, by any honest measurement, both richer and more equal than non-capitalist countries.

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Some outfit known as Million Podcasts has produced a list of the Best 100 Libertarian Podcasts, with Kinsella on Liberty ranking as #31, followed by the Property and Freedom Podcast.

For more meaningless rankings, see Kinsella Ranked #113 Most Influential in Law, 1990–2020.

A little biography of mine was just completed: Alan D. Bergman, Adopting Liberty: The Stephan Kinsella Story (2025) (pdf; epub; Amazon). Jeff Tucker just tweeted it to his large following so I suppose I might as well blog it here. This was prepared for family and close friends; I was on the fence about posting this, for fear of appearing self-indulgent or narcissistic, but I really don’t care what people think and I figured some people might find it of interest. I know at least one guy is 🙂

[From my Webnote series]

On why I write, why I fight, the Remnant, and the problem with libertarian activism and “waystation libertarians.”

From the Tom Woods Elite Letter, 19 August 2025, The Hans Hoppe Interview Concluded:

Woods: Are there any reasons to be hopeful or optimistic about the future that you see?

Hoppe: You know that Murray was always an optimist. But looking over the last 30 or 40 years, I don’t see any progress that we have made. I think that the people who rule us want to dumb down the people as much as possible. It is easier to rule dumb people than to rule smart, smart people. So I see my obligation more in keeping up the things of—of helping people not to forget what has already been achieved intellectually. To be a remnant until some time or whatever in which a great breakthrough will happen and a new dawn will appear.

The Irrelevance of the Impossibility of Anarcho-Libertarianism

Where are the best pracitical suggestions along those lines – if any of you know and are willing to share?

My personal view is that in the long run the only that that can work is economic literacy. [My older view. See now: Where I’ve Changed My Mind] Thus we need to educate people; and one way to do it is to support the Mises Institute, and to keep spreading a consistent, principled message of liberty. We can keep learning, both to improve ourselves and to improve our ability to persuade. And by improving ourselves we help present “one improved unit” to society, thus helping to win over people to our other views by the power of attraction.

I would recommend not deluding oneself that we can “win” once and for all; or that winning is all that matters. That way lies the perils of self-delusion, compromise, despair, disengagement, and activism (see my The Trouble with Libertarian Activism). [continue reading…]

[From my Webnote series]

Regarding various new or increased or changed tariffs being proposed by Trump: of course free trade is good and the US should unilaterally abolish tariffs. ¹ (I seem to recall other arguments for unilateral free trade—perhaps by Mises, Rothbard, Hazlitt, Friedman—but cannot find them; if anyone recalls any of these please notify me.)

The uncertainty faced by businesses and actors in the US as a result of these changes is simply one consequence of the state having the very power to legislate. [continue reading…]

1. On Trump’s recent tariffs, see Gigi Foster et al., Has Team Trump Blinked?. On unilateral free trade, see Ron Paul, “Free Trade and Protectionism,” in Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., ed., The Free Market Reader (“Even if other countries maintain tariffs or subsidies, we would be helped, not hurt, by unilaterally ending ours.”); Laurence M. Vance, Why Libertarians Loathe Tariffs; Louis Rouanet, The Case for Unilateral Free Trade; Patrick Barron Unilateral Free Trade; Ryan McMaken, We Need Unilateral Free Trade with Post-Brexit Britain; Ryan McMaken, It’s Time for Unilateral Free Trade with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK; Louis Rouanet, Britain Should Embrace Unilateral Free Trade Right Now; Patrick Barron, Two Common Objections to Unilateral Free Trade. But see Jeffrey Tucker, “Does the Trade Deficit Matter?“; idem, The Discrediting of Free Trade. [↩]