Jesus Would Have Loved Bitcoin
When I started trading bitcoin, I was reminded of the biblical episode in which Jesus makes a whip, flips over tables, and drives money changers out of the temple courtyard. Why did Jesus use violence instead of reason? And why was he angry in the first place?
Money in the time of Jesus
In the time of Jesus, money was metal coins, made of gold, silver, copper. In the area in which Jesus preached, Roman coins were most popular. Older Greek coins and other foreign coins imported by travellers were also in circulation.
The most common Roman coin was the denarius, which was worth about one day’s wage for a common labourer. First minted in 269 BC, its had a purity of 99% silver. As years went by, new Denarii were minted that contained silver alloyed with copper. Around the time of Jesus, most denarii were about 80% silver.
The phenomenon of decreasing purity of money is Gresham’s Law. It’s affected all coins throughout history: from the silver denarius to the gold florin to the copper penny. The Antoninianus, which was originally silver, morphed into brass in less than 30 years!
At times, there may have been an exact exchange rate between Roman and Greek coins. In practice, money traders and merchants would examine and weigh each coin and assign them value according to what the market would bear.
Jesus and Money
During major holy days, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims would travel to Jerusalem so they could worship at the Second Temple.
The temple authorities in Jerusalem only accepted one type of coin for temple tax: the Greek-style Tyrian shekel. A number of reasons contributed to this decision:
- Shekels were made of finer silver
- Shekels did not have the idolatrous images of Roman coins
- Jewish authorities had permission from Roman authorities to mint new shekels, in the Greek style
In order to serve pilgrims who wanted to enter the temple, a money market emerged in the courtyard of the temple, where Roman coins could be traded for Shekels. During holy days there would have been a large flow of Roman coins into the courtyard, and of shekels into the temple. In order to maintain an inventory of shekels, money traders would have needed to re-trade with the treasurer of the temple.
If the temple treasurer restricted the flow of shekels back into the courtyard, there would have been a shekel shortage. Traders would have faced the choice of going out of business or raising prices. For this reason, it is entirely possible that pilgrims were paying two silver coins to buy one silver coin!
To an moral thinking like Jesus, the money trading must have looked absurd, wrong, and like organized crime. That this was happening in the courtyard of the holiest place in the land would make any holy man furious.
“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.“It is written,” he said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” ” Matthew 21:12–13
The proximate cause of the absurd exchange rates was the refusal of temple authorities to accept Roman coins. However, the temple authorities were neither breaking any law nor stealing. They were merely protecting their own coffers against an impure money.
The root cause of the absurd exchange rates was the nature of silver itself. Silver can be mixed with copper and accurately assaying the purity of a coin is extremely difficult. (An acid test can give a very rough estimate.)
Bitcoin cannot be diluted; it is always 100% pure. It’s also digital and programmable, but other than that it is very much like the gold that Mary and Joseph received upon Jesus’s birth. For these reasons I believe Jesus would have loved bitcoin…
Although that is not to say he would have endorsed accumulating it, for:
“Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 19:23
