Only hours after writing my manifesto about my first investigative thesis for my blog here, I had a conversation with Farbood Nivi, the CEO of Coinmine, a very interesting hardware/software/service solution for consumers to mine cryptocurrencies out of the box.
My thesis is that technology and religion/spirituality have always been tightly coupled and played off of each other for the entire history of humanity. I wrote in my thesis that one of the most influential technologies, writing, was originally developed because people wanted to express their inner spiritual lives with the universe at large (think cave paintings turning into linguistic characters).
Farbood took this one step further and said that there are two technological inflection points for humanity that dwarf any other when looking at it from a very high level. Language, as I have already mentioned, and one more that is vastly more important:
The microprocessor.
This technology allows us to cryptographically protect data moving from one source to the next, which is what Farbood argues is the major innovation of Bitcoin:
Before this the government with its monopoly on violence was the only actor powerful enough to secure money and the information exchange that money represents. Now the microprocessor is able to do this without the government being involved. This is huge!
Now what does this have to do with the intersection of religion and spirituality?
Well for anyone who knows someone who owns Bitcoin and is vocal about it, you can see the religious fervor in their eyes. Let me explain further (this is not what Farbood argues in our episode):
I would argue that in the age of secular humanism, nationalism, and the moving of power from the church to the state, our nation states have become religious institutions. They hold the power of life and death over their citizens (death penalty?). During World War II, citizens would give their lives for their countries.
To a secular individual in the United States, the US constitution is as close to religious scripture as it comes. In schools around the country, student pledge allegiance to the flag, not to God (although the flag is under God). Flags serve the same purpose as the major religious icons and imagery do for religions (the cross for christians).
Bitcoin is a threat to the nation-state paradigm. I believe it will help us transcend it (not necessarily overthrow it). The ones who know this and hodl Bitcoin end up becoming part of a new in-group that is almost completely decentralized in its organization (except for the centralized channels like Coinbase that regulate the flow in and out to Fiat currencies).
Bitcoin also has a messiah figure, the famed Satoshi Nakamoto. Thankfully Satoshi decided to become anonymous, making it much easier to have a decentralized religion that lasts beyond his/her life.
So we have a mythical messiah figure who created an organization with highly motivated prophets with skin in the game who proclaim loudly that the revolution is here and you will receive all the worldy resources you can imagine if you just buy and Hodl, like they have done. Sounds pretty similar to a religion to me!
There is also an aspect of doomsday in that many people who buy into Bitcoin also believe that the US government is printing money recklessly which will cause an unprecedented financial crisis in our lifetimes and rocket Bitcoin into the seat of dominant global reserve currency.
What do you think? Is Bitcoin the currency of the new geopolitical revolution which may or may not lead to a new religion? Are the people who hodl Bitcoin the priestly class who brings noobs into the ranks?
Listen to the full episode with Farbood and let us know what you think!
These will be themes of my show here so if you are interested in exploring these topics please consider subscribing here. It will be free for a few more months but eventually I will start to publish my best content exclusively for my paying subscribers so that I can continue to comment on these trends as objectively as possible.
My Interview with Farbood Nivi - CEO of Coinmine