If someone told us that, what would we say? At least that that person is crazy. But if we had had that conversation in 1994, we would surely think a little more about why he doesn’t believe on the internet. I do not believe that the earth is the center of the solar system! I don’t think the world is round! I don’t think steam or machines are going to change history! I want faster horses!

I believe in bitcoin! they tell us now and we reflect on it because we don’t understand.

This week the believing congregation is gathered in Miami at bitcoin Conference 2022 and all I saw is a horde of 25,000 people shouting I believe in bitcoin! And it gives me more doubts than certainties. What is bitcoin? I ask myself again, inquisitive and curious.

‘Bitcoin warriors’ lay down your arms. Calm down. We are not in a holy war. There is no one to beat and less to destroy. Cryptocurrencies are not a religion, or a sect. Finances are not the salvation or the economic Messiah. Money is nothing more than a means, an instrument that is used for something else. Some of you need to end intellectual onanism and stop navel gazing. Take a deep breath and lower your heart rate and hormones. The world is not an MMA Octagon, and you are not Connor McGregor. Yes, I know you are a millionaire or maybe a billionaire. And? That’s it? Is that the badge you throw on the table as a mark of your success? For that I congratulate you, but I feel sorry for you because you have a full wallet and an empty soul.

The chosen enemy of the applause and speakers is the legacy system, CBDCs, inflation, financial insecurity, and the personal surveillance of centralized systems aided by large corporations, among others. It seems to me that there are too many enemies and too many flanks to guard if we are at war. All those adversaries are part of a Ponzi scheme called ‘The fiat currency trap’ or ‘The power of the legacy system’. Meanwhile the disbelievers in crypto, the dissidents on the front lines, the hordes of the status quo say that this is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.

I see this before my eyes and a prologue comes to mind:

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Internet, where we lay our scene,

From ancient legacy system grudge break to new decentralized mutiny,

Where institutional loses makes peoples wallets clean.

From forth the fatal currencies of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed fans risk their savings.

The fearful passage of their invest-marked worship,

And the continuance of their governmental rage,

Which, but their margin’s end, naught could remove,

Is now the thirteen years’ traffic of our stage.

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

What is bitcoin?

I am often asked by friends, family and acquaintances. Bitcoin is not truth, hope or freedom for humanity. We must end this religious and fanatical discourse. Cryptocurrencies do not have to be an irrational leap of faith. And that is happening at the bitcoin conference in Miami 2022. Blind disciples of a fictitious god chant monotonous and homogeneous mantras that have no logic or rationality. That’s what faith in bitcoin has come to. So much blind fanaticism makes me afraid, very afraid!

They announced today that Prospera’s jurisdiction in Honduras in addition to El Salvador will have bitcoin as legal currency. Madeira in Portugal will not have personal taxes and institutional taxes will be considerably lowered. Mexico wants to have bitcoin as legal tender. El Salvador, what an irony that the first Nation State with bitcoin as legal tender has that name.

Tech developers are cockroaches chased by huge state elephants. For now, they march one by one, China, Kazakhstan, Russia, etc., but soon it will be a herd of elephants that will trample many cockroaches. How many? We do not know. But we will hear lots of politicians singing ‘La Cucaracha’.

Yes, but what is bitcoin?! According to Satoshi, according to…, according to…

At the end of the day, it is nothing more (or less) than the monetary expression of a great technological innovation, blockchain. It is one more innovation of the hundreds that the history of man on earth has known. Neither the most spectacular, nor the one with the greatest global impact, nor the most revolutionary. Yes, it is one of the last ones and that is why it draws our attention. Hey, let’s calm down a bit and lower the anxiety. Bitcoin does not have to be an act of faith or a religion to evangelize the non-believers of the world about. The movement needs more and more followers until it reaches 8 billion human beings. That is the only way to ensure the future of this private, decentralized and unregulated monetary system that is a non-sovereign value safeguard, a hedge against inflation.

Blockchain technological developments go faster than states, or it is the same as saying that cockroaches move faster than elephants (they say Peter Drucker said that). The more that join, the more my current position will be worth. That seems to be the most authentic and genuine feeling that mobilizes bitcoin ‘hodlers’.