Only a prophet or a genius could believe Bitcoin, which started as a code is on its way to solving the world's financial crisis. It was once a mystery and touted an ideology of cyberpunk. Bitcoin has become a religion, a philosophy, an innovation, and an economic messiah today. Thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudo-anonymous entity who shared the invention a few decades ago. Today, Bitcoin is on par with the Internet. It is a sound argument that Bitcoin is a simple experiment that sets the world on fire. Once an experiment whose creators and believers risk jail terms, leagues of intellectuals, from the parliamentarians to the least of the masses, are studying Bitcoin. Within a decade, Bitcoin boasts rank with the Internet to be the future of finance, leaving the Internet 2.0 to power the new Internet, Web 3.
Yes, Bitcoin is the creed, oh, most Holy Bitcoin. Satoshi is the chief priest, and Bitcoin, the future of finance is the sermon. Driven by a fanaticism of believers, a sound philosophy of neutrality, a voluntarist economic principle, and a game changer for the connectivity of all things, Bitcoin is disrupting the world. Better put, we are discussing Bitcoin from "Codes to Creed" as a religion. Bitcoin as a philosophy. Bitcoin as an innovation. Bitcoin is an economic messiah.
Let's answer a few questions!
- What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a programmable money, powering a peer-to-peer electronic and distributed payment method.
- What has Satoshi Nakamoto, the Mysterious, done that shocked the world? He invented Bitcoin.
- How is Bitcoin connecting world finance from a socialist or capitalist to voluntarism? It allows self-custody, voluntary, and decentralized and ushers the world into truly open decentralized finance.
A glance at Bitcoin
On Oct. 31, 2008, a pseudo-anonymous entity posted a paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System on a cryptography mailing list with "Satoshi Nakamoto" as the author. Despite numerous speculations, the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is yet to be reviewed. The anonymity of Bitcoin's creator has added to the allure and mystery of the cryptocurrency. Nakamoto vanished in 2011, just two years after the introduction of Bitcoin, leaving behind a revolutionary digital Gold and over one million Bitcoins in a digital wallet that have never been moved.
Bitcoin operates as a decentralized currency without a central bank or intermediaries. Transactions are conducted over a peer-to-peer network, with nodes (users) authentication and recording on a blockchain, a distributed ledger technology, DLT. The first Bitcoins were mined by Nakamoto, who created the Genesis Block, containing the first 50 Bitcoins. In 2010, Bitcoin saw its first commercial transaction when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins—now worth over $650 million while writing this article.
Bitcoin's journey from an obscure digital asset to a globally recognized digital currency has been fascinating. Initially, it was primarily used in black markets, riddled with the currency of cyberpunks and dark worlds. Hence, Silk Road was one of the largest platforms, trading nearly 10 million Bitcoins before it was shut down. From being cited as a banned item, Bitcoin and associated words have been added as a new set of lexicons. From a lexiconian construct, Bitcoin is taking center stage in parliaments, congresses, and elections such as the US 2024 election.
Bitcoin: an Asset Backed by Faith
Satoshi's experiment has gone from a mere personal opinion to a mainstream religion. In perspective, Bitcoin is the Religion of the millennium; AI and Bitcoin are the Religion of GEMZs. You could literally see everyone talking and attempting to live the Bitcoin dream. Remember, Bitcoin as a religion does not reference Matt Liston and artist Avery Singer's Blockahin-backed church, OxOmega. Rather, I'm talking about the similitude of Bitcoin to Religion and, of course, how it operates as a cult. However, it still shows how millions believe a pseudo-anonymous entity vanishes and will return one day to usher them into economic utopia. Similar to mainstream Religion, the increase in belief increases the price.
Bitcoin as Religion posits that Bitocin's value is driven by belief. Therefore, the more evangelists, the more believers and the more valuable incentives for evangelizing it.
Let's understand what Religion is before relating Bitcoin to Religion.
According to Émile Durkheim in "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life,
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices that unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.
He further said,
[Religion is] the self-validation of a society by means of myth and ritual.
While Emile's definition of Religion holds, I maintain that Bitcoin is an asset-backed by Faith. Most Bitcoin faithful follow the trend, but one thing is that they are fanatical about the voluntary economy offered by Bitcoin.
Satoshi has set into motion a set of beliefs and practices relative to Bitcoin. He introduced a voluntary, non-socialist, non-greed-driven economy where people figured that the state should neither control who has or has not. From dark web gatherings, people now hold open discourse about Bitcoin; for instance, Bitcoin is one of the spotlights of the US 2024 election. Like Religion, like Bitcoin, GEMZs don't care much about what it is; they are driven by trends and self-validation of decentralization myths and "not your keys, not your coins" rituals.
A philosophy called Bitcoin
Bitcoin as philosophy looks at Bitcoin through the lens of metaphysics. It answers a series of questions, rhetoric, and non-rhetorics. It asks about the "essence and the existence" of Bitcoin. By existence, Bitcoin is trust-free, built on a DLT that favors a "don't trust but verify" principle. This means you don't care to know if there is a Bitcoin anywhere, but you are more concerned about a Bitcoin, owned or given as shown on the hash ID. To show that Bitcoin exists, the Bitcoin existential rule could convince you.
It posits that since we collectively postulate that if the Bitcoin network is live and Bitcoin's blockchain includes transactions, there is some x such that x is Bitcoin.
You don't need to know where Bitcoin exists by the above postulation. It sure exists since it is live and you see millions of transactions on the Bitcoin network daily, and you can verify it with different IDs.
Bitcoin centers its message on decentralization, trustlessness, and self-custody. There is a belief that he who has control over money has power. While the old money system gave a gigantic institution called a central bank, control over money, Bitcoin's philosophy holds that it was not making sense. In contrast, Bitcoin is neutral. Bitcoin argues that no central party should hold or dictate how we spend money. Satoshi's peer-to-peer algorithm relies on the power of the people who volunteer to validate blocks on the Bitcoin node to create Bitcoin. Hence, achieving a people-based voluntary monetary policy.
Bitcoin as an innovation
Bitcoin queries and provides alternatives to traditional finance, human rights (control), and the idea of privacy. Though before Satoshi's white paper, the concept of DLTs existed, Bitcoin made DLTs and associated technologies more and more popular. From a simple, open-source, peer-to-peer electronic cash system, Bitcoin popularized the idea of programmable money. Bitcoin was primitive before various folks suffered throughput, scalability, and interoperability problems. However, it opened ways for innovation.
It inspired many innovations, such as Smart contracts, DApps, consensus mechanisms, DAOs, NFTs, sidechains, etc. Innovations such as Rootstock's sidechain, Ethereum's Smart contract, DApps, consensus mechanisms, and other Web 3 and Bitcoin native technologies make trades and transactions easier, faster, independent, and interoperable. Beyond finance and trades, Bitcoin reminded most of us of the need for privacy and control of our data and assets. Today, we are clamoring for "not your keys, not your coin." We are talking about self-custody and even being more and more concerned about who has our data than ever before, thanks to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin as the economic messiah
I quite agree with Stephen Diehl, a crypto-skeptic software engineer, as referenced by FT in an article, inside the cult of Crypto. According to Stephen, Crypto is an economic cult that taps into basic human instincts of fear, greed, and tribalism. Unlike the fiats, Bitcoin introduces an economic model that allows people to earn voluntarily. To an average Bitcoin believer, Bitcoin means as much power as financial prosperity.
Like signs and wonders make every Religion manifest, Bitcoin has its wonders. Truly, Satoshi, the mysterious' Bitcoin, has neither turned water into wine nor walked on the water- it surely raised the dead and healed the sick. Bitcoin, of course, raised the financially dead and healed the financially ill. Never happened in history; being believers of a new religion, Bitocin, People considered poor have seized the opportunity of Bitcoin's early adopters to become millionaires, which the stock market and mainstream investments might not afford.
What did they do? They believe in a new religion, Bitcoin. And so they prospered- the miracle of Bitcoin
Connecting the dots
We were told philosophy is the mother of all-knowing. Satoshi built a peerless, peer-to-peer system by knowing and embodying an ideology of decentralization, a trust-free state, and self-custody. Satoshi's novel system aimed to facilitate transactions in a distributed manner. This peerless system later inspired several technologies that now power the new Internet, Web 3.0, and interconnectivity of all things. From there, we see Bitcoin as a philosophy that inspires many innovations, is driven by Faith, and is blessed by economic prosperity.
Post Satoshi, people believe in Bitcoin, similar to people do in a religion, and have since embodied it as a belief system. In the media, in private, open cults, and decision rooms, Bitcoin is a central topic because of the increasing number of believers and raging evangelicals. The message is that Bitcoin, pioneered by Satoshi, the chief priest, is the future of finance and emerging technologies. This raging of evangelists has shown how a distributed ledger technology-driven system, Bitcoin, can facilitate world trade and solve more and more human problems. It has shown from the genesis block that it has the potential to usher us into unprecedented financial prosperity.