Bitcoin is ...
Gigi übersetzt von DerGeier
Bitcoin is 12 words, entangled with you. However, it will take more than 12 words to explain.
If you ask a dozen different people what Bitcoin is, you will get two dozen different answers. Bitcoin is both simple and complicated. Wasteful, yet efficient. Too slow, and yet the fastest money that can ever exist. Too expensive, and practically free.
It's a miracle that Bitcoin even exists. A miracle that it was created. A miracle that Satoshi discovered the key to digital scarcity. A miracle that it was allowed to unfold, that it was allowed to grow slowly in the dark, in the so-called "dark web".
The miracle of Bitcoin lies especially in the fact that it combines all kinds of opposites. How can something be digital and scarce at the same time? Changeable and unchangeable? Anonymous and transparent? Bitcoin synchronizes and unites. However, what is it?
The question, oh yes, the eternal question, "What is Bitcoin actually?" Is there a final answer to that one? I don't think so. I think we lack the appropriate words, as well as the appropriate concepts. Therefore, I think we will have to use approximations for a while. Approximations that focus on the individual. The eternal question must be rephrased, since there are no authorities in the world of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the authority, and Bitcoin is personal. Thus, "What is Bitcoin, actually?" automatically becomes "What is Bitcoin to you?"
Collective and individual - opposite, though united. No one can tell you what Bitcoin is, and still it exists, the consensus - both technically and philosophically. It is up to each Bitcoiner to determine what Bitcoin is, and what it should be in the future. What code do you want to run? What consensus parameters does your node check? What is bitcoin to you?
Unification of opposites, resolution of paradoxes - that is Bitcoin for me.
One of the most exciting paradoxes in Bitcoin is probably the ownership paradox. The question of whether you can own Bitcoins - sats - at all. The opposite is definitely possible: many people, including myself, are literally obsessed with Bitcoin. Nevertheless, with ownership itself - ownership of Sats - it is a bit more difficult.
Everything about Bitcoin is information, every component is text. Bitcoin itself is massless, although it is circulated and backed by a physical process. Can you own information? 12 words, one ownership? Your 12 words must be secret. If they are not, ownership is impossible. Twelve times "bus" is a bitcoin wallet. Now it is your Bitcoin Wallet too, dear reader. And if you are the first to understand that, then you are a millionaire. Abracadabra, Bitcoin is a spell.
Bitcoin is secret knowledge entangled with public information. Bitcoin entangles itself with sats, and sats like any monetary unit, entangle with our lifes. In other words, Bitcoin creates itself - as money - through unity with its monetary unit. Without sats, no Bitcoin network; without Bitcoin network, no sats. Without entanglement no unity, without unity no purchasing power.
Your private key - your 12 words - are worthless on their own. The same applies to the public ledger. The value derives from the combination, the connection. Only when your 12 words are entangled with the ledger - when your private key controls an UTXO - your words become a spell. Bitcoin is control.
As mentioned at the beginning, Bitcoin's identity is undefined, as there is no authority that can define an identity. Each individual must take this decision for themselves, and from the overlap of these decisions, a rough consensus is formed that crystallizes Bitcoin's identity and gives it value. Without correlation, no consensus. Without consensus, no value. Bitcoin is consensus.
The value lies in the scarcity, but there is not only one scarcity, but two. The first scarcity is for the private part, the second is for the public. Your 12 words are unique due to randomness. Without entropy no randomness. Without randomness no scarcity. Without scarcity, no security. Bitcoin is unique.
The second scarcity refers to the public part: the ledger that serves as a timeline. Every 10 minutes, a lucky winner is allowed to suggest a new piece of the past, and if everyone agrees, that one is rewarded with sats. At first, randomness decides, after that, the network. Chaos becomes order, randomness becomes undisputed history. Every private key is unique, every valid block a small miracle. Every 10 minutes. Bitcoin is probabilistic. Bitcoin is time.
It is time that determines Bitcoin's monetary policy. Politics has been surgically removed and replaced by mathematics. The political becomes apolitical, power structures become mathematical. Bitcoin is monetary mathematics.
However, mathematics alone is not enough due to the fact it lacks a connection to reality. Nakamoto referred to Bitcoin as "electronic peer-to-peer cash," and it is the electronic that brings the physical into play. Electrons flip bits, which takes time and energy. Time and energy form the basis of cryptography - if computation required neither time nor energy, all cryptography would be insecure, all code crackable, all secrets guessable. Bitcoin is physical.
However, cryptography is not Bitcoin's secret ingredient. Cryptography is old, Bitcoin is new. The secret ingredient is dynamic adaptation, which allows entanglement: of network and sats, duration and time, text and value, secret and consensus, human and machine, computation and difficulty. The difficulty is adjusted, the code is not touched. Bitcoin is dynamic.
This dynamic allows Bitcoin to entangle itself with us and our world. Both as a monetary and a moral phenomenon, because Bitcoin's code is an ethical one: you shall not counterfeit, you shall not inflate, you shall not confiscate. In short, you shall not steal.
Moral code becomes computer code, computer code becomes law. 12 Words in your head can not be stolen. Bitcoin has to be earned. The parasitic has no place in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is prosperity.
My insight, if I ever had one, was and is that Bitcoin should be considered as a whole. Not as complete, but as a shape in the philosophical sense. A shape which dissolves as soon as one examines, or, even more fatal, removes, a single part. I think that's why the biological metaphor is still my favorite. The entanglement with us brings Bitcoin to life. Technological artifact becomes living organism. Mathematics and physics are followed by game theory and economics. Bitcoin is alive.
Bitcoin represents freedom, truth, and reason. Everyone is free to use Bitcoin. It is a voluntary system, without coercion, without rulers. You have the freedom to use it for yourself. You have the freedom to not use it. You have the freedom to change it, to copy it, to make it worse, to study it. This freedom is an integral part of the system. Without that freedom, Bitcoin would not work. Bitcoin is freedom.
Bitcoin was created to tell the truth. Our task is to verify this truth. Thanks to electronics and mathematics, this can happen automatically and at lightning speed, but this inhuman speed does not change the underlying truth, which is very human. Who owns which coins? Did someone steal? Has someone tried to cheat? Did someone print money without permission? Is everyone playing by the rules you voluntarily agreed to? Are all records internally consistent? All of these questions can be answered in binary, without consulting authorities. The truth is in your Full Node, and in the data itself. Bitcoin is truth.
Although Bitcoin may seem unreasonable at first glance, it is arguably the most reasonable money mankind has ever had. Bitcoin's monetary policy is a return to rationality: stable, predictable, and limited. A limitation that inevitably transfers rationality to those who interact with Bitcoin: Individuals, companies, families, states - and, if Satoshi wishes - our civilization. Without limitation, no stability. Without stability, no sanity. Without sanity, no future. Bitcoin is sanity.
Bitcoin must be experienced. You have to participate and become part of it, entangle yourself with the beast, both figuratively and in the technical and economical sense. To understand means to relate, to establish a relationship with the already understood. Bitcoin can be understood because it allows safe standing. One must only dare to take the first step. Twelve words are the first step.
Both words and money can drive you crazy, especially when words become money. But once we have grasped something, we have understood. Terms help us to grasp things, to understand them. Without understanding, there is no grasping. Without grasping, no action.
Action is the basis, both of money and of language. We trade with our hands and negotiate with our words to avoid having to negotiate with our fists. Money scales peaceful action. Without money, no trade. Without trade, no specialization. Without specialization, no scaling. Without scaling, no civilization. Bitcoin is peace.
Money is value and measure and yardstick. We value and measure what is good. We put things on the scale, value and quantify. We do all this in order to weigh which action should be next. Equivalence means standstill, because without value and evaluation any action is impossible.
Trade is irrevocably entangled with action, like language with money. However, despite all appreciation, every value always remains only an estimation, since value is and must be subjective, otherwise trade would be impossible. Without differentiation, no exchange. Without measure, no difference. Without difference, no trade. Bitcoin is measure.
Money and language are connected at the roots, even literally entangled. Two sides of the same coin, cast from the same primordial substance, and the casting mold is morality. We talk about those things that are worth talking about. We imprint something in our minds, just as the heads of past kings were imprinted in gold. We collect things of value and valuable experiences so that we can in turn turn our experiences into effective action. What is important is what is of weight. What is most important is what is weighty. Money and weight are also entangled, as the English pound lets us know. Weights must be honest and just; "complete and right," to use the words of the Book of Moses. Without right weights, no right. Without scales, no justice. Bitcoin is scale and judge. Bitcoin is justice.
Justice requires free speech and good money. The opposite is censorship and slavery, in short: tyranny. Good and evil, good and bad. The bad is discarded, the good is kept. The good becomes goods and chattels. The most liquid good becomes money to pay for goods and settle debts. But not every debt can be paid with money. If money is not enough, judgment and faith determine how any debt must be paid. Money is not faith, but credit is. Creditors believe their debtors. Faith that the debtors are capable of paying their debt; not with confession or redemption, no, with money, because money is what counts.
Guilt and faith, redemption and salvation. We pay for our sins, cannot take liars at face value. We give attention, unlike the Spaniard who lends it, or the Englishman who pays it. Language is impregnated with money, but we were not attentive enough to protect this truth. Truth became corrupt and money became currency. True money disappeared and currency became corrupt.
With money, time disappeared and with it our attention. They really do exist, the time thieves. The gray gentlemen, the bald agents of the "time savings bank."1 We know them as central banks and fractional reserve magicians, negative interest rates and inflation. Bitcoin is the child that brings stolen time back to the people. Bitcoin is Momo.
Our banknotes are more bills than money, valid only because otherwise freedom is eliminated. Hypocritical and inconspicuous appeared as a gold substitute, now without coverage and limitation, a fiat fiasco without reference to justice or reality. "Let there be money", "let there be light"- but it won't work for long. Fiat is a lie, currency without guarantee, enforced by state power with police and military. Enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, because they like to play war and monetary policy. A diabolical plan which started in 1971. Thank you Satoshi, we thank you very much. Thanks to you and thanks to Bitcoin, we don't need it anymore. Bitcoin is salvation, a savior in need. Bitcoin is a lifeboat.
We see and hear that Bitcoin is entanglement. Also in the musical sense: "The interlocking of two phrases, where the ending of the first is also the beginning of a new phrase." Phrasis: the speaking, the expression, the display. In our petrodollar-based fiat world, this in particular shows us the value of our sats. 49:37 Bitcoin is Moscow time.2
The entanglement of Sats and Bitcoin began with a display of zero: Zero dollars, zero euros, zero cents. Only after 10 months did a Satoshi have a value, at least in the market, not just subjectively. In the end, the display will be zero again, but not because Bitcoin is worthless, rather because there will be no more dollars, no more euros, no more fiat money. 3
Bitcoin thus ends the fiat phase of this world, and we return to the origin. The display goes back to zero, as it was in the beginning when Satoshi let the first node see the light of day. What remains is money, and worth, and value, and Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin is, and Bitcoin will remain. Because it is stable, and simple, and understandable, and sensible, and reasonable. But it must begin and end with you and the entanglement with your 12 words.
This text was written at 751,372 and published originally in print for the first issue of the EINUNDZWANZIG magazine. You can buy a copy at einundzwanzig.shop
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