Coming late to Bitcoin ( only this year ) it is stunning to see the deep and fully realized mythical culture and symbology grown around and in Bitcoin. Fiat money loves to have its crazed symbols, so why not us ?
Let's take a moment to scratch the surface - the mysterious Satoshi, the Genesis block, the spirit of '76, Silk Road, the Halvening, 21 million bitcoins.
Bitcoin naturally draws myths - it sprang up wild and free, stealing the control of money from the hands of government and giving it to the people. Bitcoin has created a whole new wild wild west - gargantuan hacks and thefts and losses and titanic gains, birthing moguls and thieves, outlaws and g-men, wild eyed prospectors hitting paydirt, idiots burning to death in the attic while stealing power.
The belief system of Bitcoin is a raging sea of contradictions in and of itself - various sides believe Bitcoin is the future of all money, or it is "rat poison squared," it is the Austrian economist's pipe dream of " wresting the control of money from the government," it is a Ponzi scheme, the governments will crush it, or bitcoin will crush the governments. The 51% hacking threat will kill bitcoin, or the will of the people will preserve it. New developments will kill or steal Bitcoin, or the power of the community will keep the power of the devs in check and in line with the best of all possible worlds. Some say time ( and the free market ) is proving all the positive things about Bitcoin; others say 2019 had the biggest number of major hacks, the total value of Bitcoin thefts is now over 2 billion and never invest a dime that you are not prepared to lose.
But skipping all those real world questions, let's have a look at the fun stuff. What is your favorite Bitcoin Joseph Conrad style mythological folklore wonder? Of course you have to start with Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous founder, the enlightened Bodhisattva with compassion for all of us left behind. For starters, what about the cool 980,000 bitcoins he left in his wallet ? passing that, the Genesis quote, or the other pretty cool jokes he left for us all https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3203644.0 TLDR ? here ya go - nobody rules OK, don't be stupid, in decentralized, trustless, P2P crypto we trust - not the government. Win big or stay home, patience and faith.
OK, Nick Szabo, author of the Bitgold whitepaper, is probably Satoshi. But then why did an American choose a Japanese name, and then write using British slang ? Hmm... spooky. But, y'know, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Bitcoin eats its heroes. If Satoshi was not gone, we would have to remove him, he would be a central point of failure. But if I had many billions of rapidly appreciating bearer bonds stashed, I would be looking for a smokescreen for sure.
The Genesis block - the first bitcoin block took seven days to mine -- oooooh spooky again. The public key was a quote from a Brit newspaper about a second bailout, unlike when the USA let Lehman Brothers fall. A huge reference to the inherent conflict of interest when a government controls money ( and has sterling ever really been the same ? ) Bonus points - made Satoshi look British.
1976 - the bicentennial of the American revolution, the "shots heard round the world," was a huge year for Bitcoin, ooh ooh super spooky since it did not yet exist. Number one - the grandaddy of Austrian economics, Freddie Hayek, published " Denationalization of Money." with the booming quote about how we will all be hurting until we figure out a sneaky way to pry money out of the hands of guvmints without them really noticing. Wow, shazam Freddy, who knew ? Number two - our boy Milton Friedman won him a nobel prize. Remember Milton ? (not so much, maybe, as typically left wing pro government economics profs spit on him in favor of Keynes ) but Milton famously predicted what he called "e-cash" would get the guvmint out of money. The giant number three - in 1976 Diffie & ( the spookily named ) Hellman drop the whitepaper on public key encryption - rocketing privacy forward by eliminating the need to secretly pass a key to the other side. Dunno what to say - anti-revolutionaries should watch their behinds come 2076.
21 ( million bitcoins )- let's face it, 21 is the symbol of youth, yet the threshold of full freedom and responsibility. Heavy enough ? Also, some folks say all the money in the world is around 200 trillion. So if bitcoin completely takes over, that's 10 million per bitcoin. And remember the spooky bitcoins at the bottom of the sea, the lost bitcoins. Something like three million bitcoins did not move last year, are they lost forever ? Well, let's think. People who love bitcoin are often privacy focused. Bitcoin keys are hidden on paper behind paintings, printed on metal and covered in plastic, etc etc. Lost in laptops thrown in dumps. Might it be possible that bitcoins will continue to be lost ? Hell yes.
Slik Road - sex drugs & rock and roll, killer usage case, libertarian freedom, millions made and double life sentances plus 40 years ( worse than El Chapo.) What a myth. And a spooky name long connotating the unknowns of the wide world.
The Halvening - c'mon, it sounds like it is out of a J.R.R. Tolkien book. Or the Highlander series. Magical baked in marketing hype like Haley's comet. What will it portend ? How will it end ? Spooky squared.
Of course, some of this is deliberate. Plutus, the god of wealth ( blinded as a youth so he would give money to all ) is depicted carrying a cornucopia. Was that a Schumpeterian cornucopia (the symbol of the wealth produced by capitalism freed from government described by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter ?) Anyway, Plutus now has an altcoin ( shitcoin ? ) A collection of altcoins looks like a Greco-Roman dream. Many other coins are named after second millennium figures, but let's skip that for now.
Our main main Andreas Antonopolous famously said " Satoshi is Prometheus" for taking money ( fire ) from the banks ( gods ) and giving it to man. Hey, there is no turning back baby. What is your favorite symbol ? Best story ? The hack at the end of the world, Mt. Gox the gathering ?
