Bitcoin at $7000 and our 4 gifts

Bitcoin just broke $7000. All of us who got in early are happy, but really, it’s a celebration of human innovation, ingenuity and ability to innovate on a mass scale. It’s a resounding proof than when we apply our 4 most important god given gifts we can create, fix, and achieve everything.

The first two gifts are creativity & sense of purpose. Those two gifts are exponentially amplified with the third gift, the ability to communicate. There are other species that can communicate as a group, but humans are not limited to the protocols they’ve given to by pure genetics. We are unique in our ability to create new communication protocols. We are a species that has the ability to bring about the most complex communication protocols, from human language, alphabet, print, phones, and the internet. The more we improve our protocols, the better we are able to connect and arrange into groups. The internet facilitates the connectivity that allows us to arrange into supergroups that are able to experience creativity and sense of purpose across time and space with exponential powers.

This brings us to the fourth gift, morality. Morality is our sense of alignment with what’s right. Technology in it as itself is empty. It could be our greatest detriment, bringing us to death by ecocide, which is like suicide, but on a planetary scale — destruction of the natural environment, our home, our host, gaya, earth. Technology is also the reason — arguably the only reason — to remain an optimist.

Technology combined with a sense of what’s right can free us from our wasteful way of life which contaminates air, water, soil and spirit. With right technology, we can create electric vehicles, solar power, and now also decentralised communication protocols that can saves us from the tyranny of manipulative centralised powers. Decentralisation is key, because centralisation can be very dangerous.

Centralised systems, where all the power sits on the top, are easy to manipulate. They can be controlled by individuals who are not aligned with what’s right. The current internet is a step in the right direction, but it is still flawed, it is not fully decentralised, and so governments and corporations can still manipulate the type and flow of information.

Bitcoin is a decentralised communication protocol built for the transfer of value. It is crucial, because until recently we had to ask permission from a bank, from a regulator, from a sovereign ruler, just to be able to hold and transact with our own money. The strong cryptographic and decentralised nature of Bitcoin changes that. This is a true evolution of us as a species.

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution…What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party
-Satoshi Nakamoto, The Bitcoin White Paper, 2009

I am a great believer in decentralisation and my next article will explore how Bitcoin is decentzlied across four different levels. Four levels of decentralisation are the driving force that make it so robust, allowing it so survive and grow, seemingly against all odds. Follow here on Medium to catch more.