a source familiar with the matter on Nostr: If I "go for a run", running does not suddenly exist, except when we are speaking in ...
If I "go for a run", running does not suddenly exist, except when we are speaking in a loose and metaphorical way. I exist, and I run.
Similarly, if your computer executes a piece of software then perhaps we can point to a pattern in the memory of the computer and say "that is the software and it exists right there physically as electrons". But usually when we talk about software what we are really talking about is the computer doing a certain thing. The computer exists but its doing does not, just like I exist but my running does not.
If you want to say that Bitcoin is a pattern of electrons in the same way that words on a page are a pattern of ink, that's totally fine. In that sense I must admit Bitcoin exists. But if you define Bitcoin in this way it is not scarce. I can spin up way more than 21 million copies of the entire Blockchain, or the Bitcoin source code, or a given cryptographic signature. The thing the computer does when it runs the Bitcoin code does not exist.
It is a doing, and not a being.
Similarly, if your computer executes a piece of software then perhaps we can point to a pattern in the memory of the computer and say "that is the software and it exists right there physically as electrons". But usually when we talk about software what we are really talking about is the computer doing a certain thing. The computer exists but its doing does not, just like I exist but my running does not.
If you want to say that Bitcoin is a pattern of electrons in the same way that words on a page are a pattern of ink, that's totally fine. In that sense I must admit Bitcoin exists. But if you define Bitcoin in this way it is not scarce. I can spin up way more than 21 million copies of the entire Blockchain, or the Bitcoin source code, or a given cryptographic signature. The thing the computer does when it runs the Bitcoin code does not exist.
It is a doing, and not a being.