BITCOIN AS A SECULAR RELIGION
A whole generation is looking for something to believe in. So why not believe in something that promises so much?
A whole generation of young men and women— born into an uncertain post 9/11 world, pounded by the ‘Great Financial Crisis’, haunted by precarity, betrayed by politicians and atomized by social media -— are looking for something to believe in.
So why not believe in something that promises so much? That is a mirror for all our hopes, ambitions and dreams? A slow-motion lottery that will make us all rich as Croesus and, at the same time, save the world?
If it is a religion it already has soothsayers and a priesthood, churches and sacred martyrs.
Many truly believe in it.
AND SATOSHI SAID ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT’
Bitcoin is an intangible paradox. A digital construct that lives in the human mind. Yet it is also finite. And this is what makes it special because unlike everything in this replicable digital cloud we live in there will only ever be a certain number.
This means that, potentially, it is infinitely valuable because when infinity is divided by 21 million what do you get?
Each one is a Van Gogh. A Mona Lisa. A Taj Mahal…. maybe even a God.
But only if we believe in it.
OCTOBER 31ST
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the White Paper was published on the same day in 2008 as Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg Germany in 1517.
Both events were designed to throw a cold bath over corruption and save us from ourselves: one by giving us a list of strict rules for how to govern our worst impulses…. the other by giving us a strict set of rules for how to govern our worst impulses.
And by giving us an implacable, workable code in this post-moral, post-God, post-modern world we live in, Bitcoin might save us in a way that Luther never could.
We just need to believe in it.