Fortifying Bitcoin’s Weakest Attack Surface: The Social
Disclaimer: The first paragraph is a bit choppy and meandering but I wanted to contextualize my thought process. The rest is a little better!
Disclaimer 2: This comes from the perspective of an ancap who sees Bitcoin as the path to anarchy.
I’ve been reading a lot about progressivism, specifically from Rothbard and Yarvin. I know that sentence makes it sound like this is going to be really obnoxious, but I just need you to know where my head was at.They talk a lot about progressivism’s roots in American Protestantism and how it’s essentially a secular religion. And so from that perspective I was thinking about how to compete with it (and of course I’ve got Vin Armani’s “fighting magic with magic” in my head). So then I wanted to turn libertarianism into a religion for the purposes of spreading it to normies but I wasn’t really sure where to start or how to adapt it in the same way.
At the same time I was listening to the Lex Friedman interview with Nic Carter where they were discussing that a vital part of Bitcoin’s continued success is its “internet immune system” that fights off FUDD and misinfo. So this got me thinking about how you would actually get people to remain that voraciously committed to those values over a period of generations.
And thus I made the connection. What social structure preserves a set of values over generations? Religion. Bitcoin already essentially has libertarian values so it would serve both purposes — of spreading the ideas of liberty to more people, and to protect the values of Bitcoin for generations. It also happens to have a mysterious creator who bestowed upon us his perfect creation and then disappeared and sacrificed his one million Bitcoin so that we may live on in decentralization.
So I want to formalize Bitcoin as a religion. I know Guy Swann has read a piece about Bitcoin as a religion on Bitcoin Audible but it didn’t really capture everything I wanted it to. It was more of a fun or interesting observation about Bitcoin’s religious characteristics than a sincere embrace of the religiosity. So I want to take a step back and really establish a set of rituals, holidays, and practices.
Now the most difficult part, the part where religions get really messy and why I’ve been so turned off to them in the past, is the power structure. I look at Christianity almost very similar to the way America has played out. The sacred text lays out a bunch of great values that if everyone followed along things would be great but the centralized power in control of it (e.g. the Catholic Church) will use it and twist it and “re-interpret” it to gain more power and do whatever they want.
So this then presents my ultimate problem: how do you decentralize a religion such that a specific set of values are consistently maintained yet no one person nor group of people can change those values without full consensus. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t have enough “faith” in BTC s ability to properly incentivize the social to follow along with it and we don’t need to do anything at all. Or perhaps the formalization of Bitcoin’s religion is merely its natural progression. If this is the case I think it is important for us to ensure that such a religion reflects the same decentralization it preaches so that we may ensure Bitcoin is secured from every attack vector — even the social.
My initial thoughts as to the problem
The holidays, traditions, and values of Bitcoin have already organically developed, we simply need to put them into writing and really treat them and think of them as such. We need to be involving our families, creating traditions for our children, and making an effort to preserve Bitcoin’s core values. However, I believe that the power structure is the first problem we must solve before anything gets put into writing.
Through just some quick research, the first example I could find that seemed interesting was the Quakers. At a Quaker meeting, anyone may speak when they feel compelled by God and no one may directly respond or aim to debate or rebut. In some cases there may be a clerk that calls on people to keep it organized but there isn’t a central authority declaring “God’s truth” like a priest.
This makes me think that perhaps the solution is to do nothing; or more accurately to actively resist any particular organizational structure as a core value. As the tradition is developed and Bitcoin’s values come up against difficult problems, we may look to the decentralized consensus of those writers and thinkers that have organically developed respect within the community. Who knows, this may be a foundational text in Bitcoin’s written tradition, we’re only 12 years in to the protocol itself.
Feedback is genuinely appreciated. I want to continue to develop this idea going forward, so I could really use ideas from others who see its potential. I think formalizing rituals and holidays will be very important going forward as it forces those who aren’t necessarily readers of theory or philosophy to still remain engaged with the core values and beliefs. It also provides something that can be spread and passed down that communicates the values without having to give someone a 20 hour podcast curriculum.
