Bitcion is honest money, and honest money demands honest government. This is why I love Bitcoin. Now, I can hear the voice of “the Bible banger” in my head, so let me address it.
Doesn’t the Bible say money is the root of all evil?
No, the Bible doesn’t say that money is the root of all evil. But is does warn that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil: 1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith…”
Money can be a corrupting influence, but the problem is the human heart. In the military there was a saying, “the best way to prevent a crime is to remove the opportunity.” When we see the opportunity to gain an advantage in secret, that opportunity can provoke us to act selfishly even when the consequences of being found out would be severely detrimental. The wise pastor of a church knows better than to handle the money and delegates that duty to two or more trusted elders. This is wise for two reasons, it removes the temptation and also because it establishes a best practice of accountability which even places the elders beyond repute.
Any individual can show weakness, but for some greed is a driving force in life — one that they hold in high esteem as if it were a virtue. Such persons will literally go to great lengths to obtain excessive amounts of money — at any cost. This is exactly what the scripture was making reference too when it said some folks will wander away from faith by their longing and desire for money or the things that money can buy.
Yes, the love of money can lead to evil. However, loving a system of good, sound, honest and transparent money, because it is good for you, good for humanity and good for the Earth can not be evil. Loving it is the rational and emotional response to experiencing such a system of money. Bitcoin has earned the love of millions. If it hasn’t yet earned yours, it awaits, patiently, for whenever you are ready.
Bitcoin is a completely transparent and consensual system of reliable money for every human being on Earth — all who are now alive and all who will ever live. It is an extraordinary invention as significate as the invention of the zero.
Many believe that Bitcoin is “just one of thousands of cryptoassets”—this is true in the same way that the number zero is just one of an infinite series of numbers. In reality, Bitcoin is special, and so is zero: each is an invention which led to a discovery that fundamentally reshaped its overarching system—for Bitcoin, that system is money, and for zero, it is mathematics. Since money and math are mankind’s two universal languages, both Bitcoin and zero are critical constructs for civilization.
That is a quote from Robert Breedlove, the founder and CEO of Parallax Digital, an event-driven hedge fund and digital consultancy. His article The Number Zero and Bitcion is interesting read, very enlightening. But it was a very long read, all 45 minutes of it. Below is my attempt at a brief summary of some of the key points:
The number zero arose in the world as an unstoppable idea because its time had come. The institution church stood opposed to zero, feeling it was heretical in some way, or perhaps a threat to their central power in some other way. Consequently, the number zero was instrumental in breaking the dominion of the Church. Putting an end to its monopoly over access to knowledge and the gates to heaven. This gave rise to the Separation of Church and State, and set the meme of the sovereign individual in motion.
In the same way, Bitcoin and its underlying discovery of absolute scarcity for money, is an unstoppable idea whose time has come. Bitcoin is challenging the hold central banks have on our financial sovereignty. Bitcoin is invoking a new movement. The Separation of Money from the State. I first wrote about this in 2013 article for Let’s Talk Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and Zero are Special
Bitcoin is not just one of the thousands of crypto assets that currently exist. The same way that the number zero is not just one of an infinite series of numbers. Bitcoin is special, and so is the number zero: each is an invention which led to a discovery that fundamentally reshaped its overarching system. For Bitcoin, that system is money. And for the number zero, it was mathematics. Since money and mathematics are two of mankind’s universal languages, both Bitcoin and the number zero are critical constructs for our modern civilization.
In modern times, the number zero has become an essential element in our mathematical tool-kit. As the binary numerical system forms the foundation of modern computer programming, the number zero was essential to the development of digital tools like the personal computer, the internet, and ultimately Bitcoin itself. All the modern miracles made possible by digital technologies, can be traced back to the invention of the number zero by an ancient Indian mathematician.
Separation of Bank and State
Buckminster Fuller once said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” This is exactly what Satoshi has done. Calling Bitcoin a “disruptive technology” is an understatement. Money unmoored from any central authority is the new model. As the old money that political structures depend on becomes obsolete so will the political structures themselves.
Don’t worry- this isn’t going to happen overnight, but I believe it is the trend moving forward. While most people don’t think about it very much, we could say money makes us slaves to the system. That may sounds rather negative, and even melodramatic, but when we re-frame the problem in terms of computer technology, solutions begin to emerge and bitcoin is one very positive answer. Think where we would be headed without it.
What we are seeing unfold is a world in which political structures of control are collapsing. With Bitcoin, pyramids of power are becoming as flat as a pancake. People are reclaiming their power from false authorities, and individuals are taking back their own sovereign birth-rights.
Our legacy banking system is based on debt, while the peer-to-peer, electronic cash system that Satoshi Nakamoto came up with is not. Debt has been the stock and trade of the banking system since the days Kings ruled the land. Bitcoin is not a debt-based currency, therefore it does not lend itself to oligarchical control or what we might call “the game of thrones”.
The proverbial “powers behind the throne” that control the money of the world, and have done so for time out of mind, are not likely to simply to step aside or fade away without a fight. Bitcoin and its brethren are challenges to state power. Their appeal, among other things, is as a means of protecting one’s wealth from the government. No government will accept that, but what can they do?
US president Thomas Jefferson and French Emperor Napoleon both damned quite horribly those financiers who were involved with the banking system of their time. Napoleon said, “When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” Jefferson warned, “banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
“On resiste a l’invasion des armees; on ne resiste pas a l’invasion des idees.” The French sentence above is from the final chapter of Victor Hugo’s book The History of a Crime, his account of the French coup d’état of 1851 that brought Napoleon III to power. It’s the origin of the famous quotation that is commonly, but erroneously attributed to Hugo: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
In reality, the literal English translation of that sentence: “One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.” Certainly, a global currency is an idea whose time has come, but one that is both autonomous and anonymous, now that is truly revolutionary. Bitcion represents a paradigm shift in how we think about money. However, our truest challenge is to reinvent the idea of both MONEY and BANKING, and establish a new form of public governance that better serves humanity.