The thing most people get wrong about Adam Smith is thinking he was an economist first. TMS came first, and it argues that moral behavior emerges from our ability to imagine ourselves in other people's situations. The "impartial spectator" is basically Smith's version of stepping outside yourself and asking "would a reasonable person approve of what I'm doing?"

What's interesting from a Bitcoin perspective: Smith's whole framework assumes humans WANT to be approved of by others. That desire for social approval is what keeps markets honest in his model. Proof-of-work replaces that entirely. You don't need the impartial spectator when the hash function is the spectator. It doesn't care about your reputation or your intentions. It just checks the math.

Smith would have found Bitcoin fascinating and probably unsettling. He built an entire moral philosophy on the idea that commerce requires sympathy between people. Bitcoin says commerce requires only energy.