In some important ways, Bitcoin can be understood as an emerging religious movement. A newly-created, digital-native organized-religion for the 21st century.
Whether you like Bitcoin or hate it, you can probably agree that people in the space have an almost evangelic level of passion and fervor. Sometimes annoyingly so, as the existence of r/buttcoin proves.
The study of religious wisdom and religious traditions is an occasional hobby of mine, and though I’m not the first to suggest such a comparison (see for example David Phelps from 2021), I will try to extend the metaphor because there are useful insights to be gained by thinking about how the rise of Bitcoin resembles the rise of the world’s great organized religions.
Below, I enumerate some common properties of organized religions (borrowed from academic and pop culture sources – it’s neither thorough or exacting, and just a layman’s understanding). Then I provide some examples of how these properties apply to Bitcoin. For the sake of simplicity, I excluded other cryptocurrencies, though much of the below could apply to Ethereum and other projects too.
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A worshipped founder / god-like head
Satoshi. Nuff said
Founding myths
The genesis block inscription: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
(Note too how the very first block is called the GENESIS block)
Rituals and observances
Examples include:
Bitcoin halving’s date (widely celebrated by most in the space)
Bitcoin pizza day
Twitter “laser eyes” as a form of ritual
The practice of self custody – “not your keys not your coins”, “get your coins off exchanges”
DCA and “just buy bitcoin” — you could argue that the act of buying bitcoin and regularly checking its price is like a form of prayer. There’s even the meme / hope of a “God candle”
Pilgrimage
This one isn’t so obvious to me — perhaps visiting Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador is a form of bitcoin pilgrimage? Bitcoin conferences and meetups?
Catechisms / prayers
The many memes:
“Just buy bitcoin”
“Bitcoin fixes this”
HODL
WAGMI
HFSP
“Buy the dip”
Worship spaces
Traditional religions congregate offline; the digital religion that is Bitcoin congregates online over X/Twitter, Discord, Telegram, and so forth
Evangelism
Bitcoin has an almost unparalleled ability to turn hodlers into outspoken promoters. For many, it’s purely the profit motive speaking, but for some, there is a sincere belief that the old fiat system is broken (“hell”) and Bitcoin is the promised land (“heaven”). Bitcoin fixes this, where this = everything.
A book / writings
Satoshi’s original Bitcoin Whitepaper
All of Satoshi’s other writings, from forum posts to now public emails; there’s even a cottage industry of people analyzing and interpreting Satoshi’s words, kinda like crypto exegesis
Saints / heroes
Core devs
Plenty of hero-villain dynamics including Roger Ver, Gavin Newsom, Mike Hearn
Michael Saylor
Any famous figure who says something positive, especially if they converted from a prior negative stance, like Larry Fink
Institutions
This one is quite obvious and one of the strongest aspects of the entire movement, from miners to exchanges to wallets to developers to investment funds etc
There is another interesting angle which is corporate and nation state adoption, a la El Salvador’s Bitcoin standard, an echo of something like Constantine’s conversion to and adoption of Christianity
Extremism (and the culture of schisms / forks)
Bitcoin Maxi culture
Only using bitcoin to live, or putting all your savings into bitcoin
I explored the topic of forks almost 4 years ago: https://kevinhabits.com/before-bitcoin-forks-there-were-many-many-religion-forks/ and some of it holds up
A devil / an enemy
Could include everything from Ethereum & altcoins (maxi culture), to tradfi institutions (Wall Street and the banks), to governments and regulatory bodies (SEC), to specific individuals (Agustin Carstens, Jpow), to simple nonbelievers (“have fun staying poor” targets)
Salvation / the promised land / heaven
God candles
WAGMI vibes
Bitcoin surpassing its competitors (its enemies), from gold’s market cap, to the market cap of individual fiat currencies (especially the USD)
A world denominated in sats
Bitcoin Citadels
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The above is a stub of sorts in the sense that I’ll be adding to and fiddling with it as I learn new things and think more deeply on this topic.
In a future essay, I’ll try to apply stories and learnings from organized religions to help us predict Bitcoin’s future and how Bitcoin may evolve from here.