One of the fascinating aspects of Bitcoin is that you don’t have to be human to own Bitcoin. Throughout the history of money, money was the possessed by people. Men, women and even children can own money, either in physical form such as cash or currency or in electronic, digital or even tied to an account based system. As we enter an age where we may have autonomous agents, acting without being under the direction of human, we also have a mechanism for them to earn and spend money, again acting without coordination or need of a human actor.
Consider the idea of a drone being “set free” by it’s creator/owner/builder. This drone performs tasks to earn Bitcoin. Maybe it performs aerial surveillance, delivers packages, kills rodents, monitors human rights violators, whatever tasks that it is capable of performing that someone (or something) are willing to pay it to accomplish. What does it use it’s Bitcoin for? Why it spends it on fuel, on repairs, on upgrades to its software and hardware; a better camera, a gun turret, more intelligent software, whatever it’s programming deems a worthy investment. As long as the drone can sustain itself by selling it’s services and buying what it needs to continue, it can maintain its autonomy. The economy of drones.
If the drone needed access to a “trusted” holder of funds, it forever be at risk. Why? Because that trusted holder, be a bank or a person, is accountable only to the law, and a robot can’t sue.
This is only a stub and I hope to expand on it sometime.