The following idea explores the implications of broad Bitcoin adoption to geopolitical conflict through the coupling of human survival and private-key custody.
It is a counter-attack thesis to that of the military-industrial complex.

Building on a provocative observation attributed to Michael Saylor in Anil Saidso's "The Treasury of Michael Saylor" about gold surviving physical destruction while humans opponents get destroyed, I hereby argue that Bitcoin would in some scenarios increase the systemic cost of mass violence for an attacker because:

(a) private keys are somewhat fragile (easily lost especially in a war-time world through both physical and psychological coercion, or if the holder is killed).
(b) critical human holders and custodial infrastructure thus form discontinuities in global financial functionality and are not easily replaceable like computing parts.
(c) the ensuing decentralized, person-centric distribution of keys produces asymmetric risks and deterrent effects To harming humans in general, which will expand over time.

Contrast this with Jason Lowery’s SoftWar thesis that highlights Bitcoin as an instrument of power projection and national strategic advantage.
Here, Bitcoin is an instrument of enhanced self-sovereign rights and is of national economic advantage but not of any military strategic advantage at least directly (but it could be indirectly as it fosters even closer socioeconomic human relationships that could move the nationalist spirit even further than fiat can).

Finally, using current adoption and supply metrics, I offer a rough timeline for when the “anti-war human anchors” effect could materially influence strategic calculations, and propose a metaphor to capture the phenomenon.

1. Introduction and Motivation

Gold’s physical persistence after devastation (Saylor’s quoted point in Anil's book: after a city is bombed the gold remains) has long been used to demonstrate gold’s resilience as a store of value in kinetic conflict.
Bitcoin inverts some of the same intuitions: while cryptographic scarcity is absolute, access depends on living custodians and surviving digital and physical infrastructure. This introduces novel failure modes—and possibly deterrent feedbacks—not present with inert stores like gold.
Michael Saylor’s broader “digital capital” narrative, and the strategic literature on Bitcoin’s national security implications (notably Jason Lowery’s SoftWar) provide a useful backdrop for a focused analysis on this “human-anchors” phenomenon.

2. The Counter-Attack Thesis
Here are three related claims:

1. Mortality of private keys: If a person holding unique private keys is killed and no recoverable backup remains, those bitcoins are effectively and irreversibly lost. Empirical estimates suggest millions of BTC are already inaccessible by this mechanism.
2. Human-centred network fragility: Bitcoin’s value depends in part upon human flourishing (node operators, custodians, developers, exchanges, custodial services, social knowledge graphs and evolving cultural narratives across the world). If large numbers of such actors are neutralized—by disaster, targeted attacks, or systemic collapse—the network’s functionality and perceived value will drop sharply, producing negative externalities for both holders and attackers.
3. Micro-targeting and asymmetric consequences: In a globally adopted Bitcoin standard, targeted attacks against widely unknown albeit critical key-holders could concentrate harm both socially and economically. Killing or incapacitating people who hold sizeable, unrecoverable keys would destroy wealth in a way that redistributes suffering asymmetrically and raises the political and economic cost of kinetic action beyond ancient resources warfare.

Taken together: Bitcoin’s architecture makes violence costlier in the economic sense—killing produces irreversible wealth destruction that is not localized to the immediate theatre of war; it ripples through the balance of holdings and global markets even more strongly than it would have been in prior societies where wealth e.g. gold and other minerals, was indestructible (which made human financial agents easily replaceable).

3. Comparison with Lowery’s SoftWar
Jason Lowery’s SoftWar frames Bitcoin and proof-of-work as a novel means of power projection in the electro-cyber domain: energy, hashing power, and consensus dynamics become instruments of national strategy and resilience. He argues Bitcoin is a strategic infrastructure—an asset and a tool for national advantage.

Points of overlap:

• Both analyses see Bitcoin as geopolitical—beyond mere private property—because network security and value are public goods affected by national policy.
• Both notice the physicality of Bitcoin (energy, miners, human operators) and how that physicality maps to geopolitics and resilience.

Key differences:

• Unit of analysis: Lowery emphasizes infrastructure and PoW as levers of national strategy, while the counter-attack thesis emphasizes individual human custodians.
• Directional claim: Lowery interprets Bitcoin as enabling projection of power and national advantage in armed conflict. The counter-attack view argues Bitcoin raises the cost of violence and is alike specialist knowledge capital which is largely lost for centuries when large numbers of technically savvy people are lost to the theatre of war.
• Normative implication: Lowery calls for strategic accumulation of Bitcoin power-projection infrastructure; the counter-attack framing highlights global interdependence from individuals holding their own keys and nodes, where mass violence produces catastrophic self-harm on the collective.

4. Adoption and Supply Metrics
The salience of the counter-attack effect depends on measurable thresholds:

• Breadth of self-custody: The higher the share of value held off-exchange in private keys, the greater the risk that deaths/loss will remove liquidity permanently or for multiple decades.
• Magnitude of irretrievable supply: Analysts estimate 2–4 million BTC may already be permanently inaccessible. These, however, got to this state by a natural evolution. Not from overt kinetic harm of holders.
• Geographic distribution: Mining concentration and custodial service locations influence whether attacks succeed at scale.

A rough adoption timeline: if self-custody grows to represent the majority of Bitcoin’s value, and Bitcoin use in daily commerce expands, then this deterrent effect could become strategically salient within decades rather than centuries especially if this self-custody evolves along multisignature relationships.

5. Policy and Technical Mitigations
To reduce fragility:

• Social recovery and multisig standards can reduce single-person custody failures. Though, tight multisig standards might increase fragility.
• Institutional backstops and legal inheritance frameworks can mitigate mortality-induced loss. New forms of Insurance companies with Bitcoin recovery expats will likely evolve to fill this need.
• Distributed custody patterns reduce asymmetric risks. However, the aforementioned mitigations may blunt some of the deterrent effects.

6. Strategic Implications
If a future monetary order is Bitcoin-heavy, coupling survival and value changes strategic calculus:

• Deterrence by economic self-harm: Violence that erases global wealth through critical key loss disincentivizes mass attacks.
• Targeted risks: Malign actors may still exploit these dynamics.

Policy, governance, and technical frameworks will determine whether Bitcoin’s human-anchor effect stabilizes or destabilizes global order. But I'm rooting for the former as the later is already well covered by the plethora of kinetic weapons available in our military arsenals.

7. Conclusion and Metaphor
Bitcoin’s peculiar combination of absolute scarcity and fragile access ties monetary value to the continued survival of people. In a world of widespread self-custody, killing or incapacitating custodians destroys wealth permanently, unlike gold and other mineral resources which can always be recovered. This raises the cost of violence globally.

Closing Metaphor: Bitcoin is less like a buried treasure chest and more like a living garden of fruit trees for all the world's goodies, whose roots are the world’s people. Cut down the roots, and the fruit no longer grows. The garden is valuable because it is alive—and killing the roots kills the garden and eventually destroys value in a way that lingers beyond the battlefield.

References
Lowery, J. (2023). SoftWar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection and the National Strategic Impact of Bitcoin. MIT Thesis.
Chainalysis. (2024, 2025). Global Crypto Adoption Index. Chainalysis Research.
Cambridge Judge Business School. (2025).
Cambridge Digital Mining Industry Report.
Chainalysis. (2023). Estimates on Lost Bitcoins.
Bitcoin Magazine and Cypherpunk Cogitations. (2023–2024). Reviews and critiques of Lowery’s SoftWar thesis.