Author Archives: Dan

Introduction

I don’t usually listen to Albert Mohler, but when I do, the topic is crypto.

In his episode of The Briefing on December 15th, Mohler dives into the Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) fiasco, using it as a launching pad to make comments on cryptocurrency in general. 

Al Mohler is the president of one of the largest seminaries in the world. He is a prolific Evangelical Christian leader. I have spent time with a professor who has worked closely with Mohler for years and in his opinion, Dr. Mohler is a literal genius. Mohler has digested somewhere in the neighborhood of over 20,000 books over his lifetime. His house is a literal library. The man is brilliant and his knowledge base is broad.

Even a genius, however, can get things wrong. When we evaluate Mohler’s recent episode we find several gaps in understanding when it comes the US dollar and to Bitcoin.

As a caveat, Mohler recognizes throughout this episode that he would get in trouble with the crypto bros. He admits repeatedly that when it comes to crypto, he just “doesn’t get it.” 

When it comes to crypto, he nails it. But in the process, he misses something far more important.

I hope that my humble take – that of a Christian minister who has studied Bitcoin for 2 years – will be received by him with humility. I hope that Dr. Mohler can have the same paradigm shift that I had and become an advocate for Bitcoin for the betterment of our world.

Failure to understand Bitcoin’s value proposition

Mohler is right to call out Sam Bankman Fried as the scammer that he is. Even with all the blockchain and techno-jargon, SBF is simply guilty of fraud. Mohler expresses this plainly.

Mohler speaks on value and how important it is that it is tied to something real. I couldn’t agree more. He then proposes that the US dollar is real and reliable, for two reasons:

1. Banks and commercial business institutions recognize it.
2. The US treasury stands behind it and says, “yes, that is a dollar.”

Mohler is essentially saying that a government-issued currency has value because the government says so. I disagree with Mohler. The government has the authority to make the dollar legal tender but does not impart its value.

Mohler mentions that in his library he owns a bill worth 1 million German Marks from the 1930s (during the Weimar Republic). Mohler explains that this bill is essentially worthless today, but that he bought it to use as a talking point. 

Is it not ironic that Mohler uses the German Mark as an example of what can happen when a government-issued currency hyperinflates, while at the same time emphasizing that a currency has value because of the government? What he fails to realize is that the US dollar has the same problem as the Weimar German Mark, but over a much longer time horizon.

The US dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power since 1913. In other words, the US dollar today holds the equivalent value of 4 cents from a hundred years ago. 

The problem globally is far worse. The US dollar is the strongest global currency or the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry. All other national currencies have depreciated against the dollar.

National currencies are failing in places like Argentina, Turkey, and Lebanon, all while being backed by their governments. Many of these governments have turned to coercive measures against their citizens to attempt to preserve the value of their currency. 

Here’s one of Mohler’s quotes regarding US currency:

The point is, it is the moral authority of George Washington, and to an even greater degree, the moral authority of the treasury of the government of the United States of America that stands behind the value of that currency.

The same reasons Mohler gives as to why the US dollar is valuable could have been said about his German Mark back in 1930! 

The same could be said today about the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira. The government of Lebanon continues to speak confidently about the state of their currency, even while a headline last month declared their “annual inflation rate eased to a 15-month low of 142.37 percent in November of 2022.”

Perhaps Mohler believes that the US is superior to these other nations in some way, such as in the moral fabric of their government. 

This would be ironic, considering Mohler’s show is mostly comprised of helping America retain some semblance of its moral fortitude as it declines as a nation. He should recognize that even if the US treasury has some kind of moral authority, this morality is decaying. I would postulate they have not been a shining light for justice in any recent decade (see Alex Gladsein’s exposure of the IMF and World Bank).

In addition to this, Mohler’s premise that the government can declare value does not make logical sense. 

As you look at currencies as we know them, and frankly, even as you will find them in the main in a museum, what do they represent in terms of confidence? It is going to be a government. It is going to be a state. It’s going to have somebody’s image on it.

This is a big error by Mohler. Before fiat, coins (say gold or silver) did not derive their value because of the royalties face imprinted on them. They had value because of the precious metals of which the coins were comprised!

Before coins were invented, people would use scales to weigh the amount of precious metal they had. This was cumbersome during transactions. Coinage served to help make those precious metals more verifiable and fungible.  

In other words, the imprint of a royal’s face on a coin told both the buyer and seller how much precious metal was contained within the coin, expediting transactions by eliminating the need for weighing. 

In more recent history, paper currency was issued by governments and was exchangeable for precious metals. This used to be true of the US dollar, which at one point could have been exchanged for gold. When governments leave the gold standard they are left with raw fiat, backed by nothing but naive trust in the issuer. Today, users of this currency are at the whims of their unelected FED overlords, who can change the cost of capital on a whim.

Here is the clincher: When trust in a government of the issued currency is eroded, people will seek to preserve their purchasing power by going elsewhere.

Today, with inflation running at 40-year highs, debt to GDP past the point of no return, and government spending out of control, it is no wonder so many people have ventured into crypto for the promise of finding returns. Sure, many people were duped by SBF and many other fraudulent cryptos. But they only went there because there is nowhere else they could go to preserve their purchasing power.

Inflation is theft. It robs the working class and funnels money to asset owners. As Milton Friedman famously said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

In other words, governments cause inflation through their money printing.

While Mohler espouses, “Don’t trust crypto, trust your government’s currency,” he fails to recognize that neither is a trustworthy object. 

Bitcoin enters stage left.

Bitcoin is different from fiat in that it is scarce. Unlike fiat, it is backed by energy. Unlike fiat, it is 100% transparent and auditable within minutes. And just like fiat, it is scalable through layers to enable low-cost transactions for anyone in the world. It is the internet of money.

This is why Bitcoin was invented. It is sound money in a world of monetary debasement that helps the everyday person save for the future. 

Mohler asks,

When it comes to something like cryptocurrency, who at the end of the day is standing behind that currency? There are a lot of people who have lost at least something like $8 billion who are asking that question now.

This is a great question for those who invest in FTT. It was a scam from the beginning. But this is a confusing question when it comes to Bitcoin. 

Who stands behind Bitcoin? The answer is YOU.

You and everyone else who has opted into the system. Those who run the nodes. Those who mine and secure the network. Those who buy and hold for the long term. That is who stands behind Bitcoin.

Herein lies the paradigm shift. Bitcoin is simply a protocol that people from all over the world have adopted. There is no CEO or corporate headquarters. No single person is standing behind the currency. Mohler’s question is equivalent to asking “who stands behind the internet?”

The same cannot be said about crypto. Vitalik stands behind Ethereum – can you trust him? Charles Hoskinson stands behind Cardano – can you trust him? SBF stood behind FTT and proved himself to be untrustworthy.

Bitcoin is unlike every other crypto in that it is truly decentralized and backed by energy. It does not require trust in SBF, Buterin, Hoskinson, or any other person or committee. 

Failure to separate Bitcoin and “crypto”

One of Mohler’s mistakes is that he fails to recognize the difference between Bitcoin and “crypto”. Mohler does not mention Bitcoin a single time in this episode! 

This is a problem. By not even mentioning Bitcoin as distinct, listeners to Mohler’s episode will conflate Bitcoin with “crypto”. This is infuriating, as it is Bitcoin maximalists (those who hold and propagate Bitcoin only) who have been calling out crypto for years. They predicted the collapse of Luna, Celsius, and FTX long before they happened.

Most cryptocurrencies simply exist to pump the bags of the founder and their friends. They require trust in the VCs that they won’t dump on you. They require trust in the programmers that they will one day create something of value.

[Crypto] is based upon a couple of ideas that ought to be suspicious from the beginning. One of them is that you can actually trust what is known as a blockchain or the people involved in a blockchain and the technology behind it to manage and to perpetuate value in what would be a cryptocurrency.

Herein lies Mohler’s failure. He doesn’t recognize that Bitcoin is the most transparent and trustless form of money that has ever existed.

You can trust the blockchain because it is simply a fully visible ledger. You can trust the Bitcoin protocol because it is open source and has been running unabated for 14 years despite many attempts to destroy it.

The beauty of Bitcoin is that it does not require trust in anyone – crypto does. 

Conclusion

Mohler rightly calls out crypto for not being backed by real value. I couldn’t agree more with him on this. 

Crypto is a stain on Bitcoin. It is an enemy that needs to be ousted. The Bitcoin maximalists I know have been celebrating the collapse of these alt-coins and their exchange casinos as they have felt a need for cleansing in the space for years.

While Mohler is largely correct about crypto, he is wrong about fiat and Bitcoin. 

Mohler incorrectly asserts that government-issued currency is reliable. And his failure to even mention Bitcoin in this episode is a blatant display of his lack of research. 

I am glad that Mohler has ventured into commenting on crypto, as it helps to continue the conversation and provides an opportunity for rebuttal. I hope that Dr. Mohler will see these errors as I have described above, and change his stance on Bitcoin.

I highly encourage him to add Thank God for Bitcoin and The Bitcoin Standard to his abundant library. 

A response to “The Case for Not Treating NFTs as a Scam” found in Christianity Today

I recently read an article called “The Case for Not Treating NFT’s as a Scam” in Christianity Today. 

I’ll say from the get-go that as a Bitcoiner, I approached this article with both intrigue and skepticism. To this end the article did not disappoint. Before reading my response, I would encourage you to read the article for yourself. It can be found here.

Ultimately, I believe the authors, Stephen and Patrick, have the right intentions, but the wrong application. They have the right biblical heart but are misguided.

Let’s start with what the authors get right.

First, I commend Stephen and Patrick for their desire that Christians not be late to the game in adopting and adapting to new technology. Christians were late to both the internet and the social media game. As a result, they say, 19 of the 20 top Christian Facebook sites have been created by “nefarious, foreign troll farms.”

As Christians, we do not want to be late to the game on new technology. I wholeheartedly agree with this.

Second, I love the evangelistic tone of the article. I commend the author’s desire to want to reach people for Jesus, and the openness they have toward using new technology to that end. 

Third, I commend the authors for speaking out against greed. The NFT space is rife with a get-rich-quick vibe. As Christians we are to guard ourselves from every form of greed (Luke 12:15). Their warning is clear on this point. 

They articulate how NFT’s are an emerging innovation. Musicians are releasing their new songs as NFT’s. Artists are releasing their paintings as NFT’s. Sports networks are releasing photographs of famous moments as NFT’s. All of these give the impression that this is a growing trend with no sign of stopping in the near future.

I too believe blockchain technology makes owning digital property possible. But there are many problems with NFT’s that I can summarize in 3 points:

1. All benefits from an NFT can be copied and distributed at no cost.
2. An NFT is only as secure as it’s underlying blockchain.
3. Ultimately NFT’s are a distraction to the real problem that only Bitcoin solves. 

Allow me to work through these points.

1. All benefits from an NFT can be copied and distributed at no cost. 

Digital property sounds like an enigma, simply because once something is digital, it can be copied. This blog, for example, can be copied and reposted elsewhere. Someone else can even take credit for it!

This is because all digital information can be replicated at no cost. This applies to digital art and music. Art is simply composed of pixels on a screen. The average song is about 3 MB of data in MP3 format. 

The authors give the example of borrowing a digital book from someone via an NFT. The issue is, that if I am digitally borrowing that book, then I can make a copy of it. I can screenshot it and post it on a public website that can be accessed by anyone. If this happens, then everyone can access a form of that book. They can read it and benefit from it without ever knowing it was an NFT.

Here’s the key: In order to stop me from doing this, copyright laws must be applied from outside the NFT ecosystem. Some form of rule of law, such as from a government, must intervene to prevent its reproduction. 

Pictures, music and books are all simply information. If I can see or hear it, I can digitally reproduce it at zero cost. If it’s free on the internet, the value of my ownership of it diminishes.

NFT proponents will respond by saying, “Even if everyone on Twitter changed their profile pic to a jpeg with my blockchain verified NFT crypto ape, people could still look on the blockchain and see that it belongs to me, and that is what’s important. In fact, the more it’s reproduced the better, as it brings more notoriety to me as the true owner.”

There is some concession to give here in the sense that being the true owner of a good means something. Anyone can look up images of the Mona Lisa online, or go see it in the museum, but the original art piece is still worth millions. In fact, the more digital pictures of Mona Lisa are shared, the more popular Mona Lisa becomes, and the more valuable the true picture becomes.

To this I would ask, what is the benefit of owning the Mona Lisa? When one looks at the picture, perhaps there is some form of benefit from the beauty of the painting. However, this benefit can come just as easily through a digital copy as through the orginal, maybe moreso. Perhaps a digital scanned version of the Mona Lisa can actually allow users to see the beauty of the painting better than the original.

So why own the Mona Lisa? For two reasons: for the status it brings me, and the hope of selling it for more later on. 

Don’t get me wrong, status symbols can be significant. NFT’s are a form of a Veblen good. The picture is really irrelevant. All that matters is cost. The more expensive it is, the higher the demand.

In many ways, NFT’s are the opposite of Bitcoin.

When you own Bitcoin (whether a whole or a fraction), the only person who benefits from owning it is you. Bitcoin cannot be copied. No one shows off their private Bitcoin keys in public (because knowing the private key is akin to owning it). It is a monetary good that is designed to do one thing: hold and transmit value.

Owning Bitcoin is not a status symbol. Because it is a raw monetary good, it’s unlike other status symbols that carry wealth, such as a house, or a gold necklace, or a rare car. All those things have a dual purpose. They function to broadcast how wealthy you are to others in addition to being a store of value. 

How do you extract that wealth to move it to something else you may want? You sell it. For a home, you must find a buyer who wants to live or rent out in that location. For gold jewelry, you must find a buyer who wants that specific style. For a rare car, you must find a specific buyer who values it more than you do. 

But what if the thing you were holding was actually money itself?

In this way, Bitcoin is different. It’s just money, pure and simple. 

Being money, one doesn’t need to find a special purchaser who values it more than you do. Why? Because money is the thing that everyone wants. It can be used to exchange for anything.

Money is an intermediary “good”. It’s not a product in and of itself. It’s the thing that we all want, and can never have enough of. With money, demand ALWAYS outstrips supply. 

Therefore, there will always be a market for money. In fact, money is the measure of the market itself. Because Bitcoin is the best money (and this realization is growing every day), it will always be in demand.

Let’s go back to the digital music analogy.

If I own a song as an NFT, nothing is stopping that song from being replicated on mass and everyone having access to it unless a government stops that from happening.

If I own Bitcoin, the only person who can access it is me. What value does it bring me? All the value that money provides: exchange for anything. 

This is why Michael Saylor calls money the highest form of energy that humans can channel. Because money can be used to do anything.

There is a caveat here in that Bitcoin is not yet ubiquitous, and most people who sell goods only deal in locally acceptable currencies, often under threat of violence from their government. Yet even with that threat, voluntary Bitcoin adoption is growing fast.

Money is the largest and best use case for a blockchain. It is why the technology first emerged as a form of money when Bitcoin was released by Satoshi Nakomoto in 2008. It remains the case to this day.

2. An NFT is only as secure as it’s underlying blockchain.

Furthermore, an NFT is only as good as its blockchain. The most popular marketplace for NFTs is OpenSea on the Ethereum blockchain. There are other blockchains, but we will focus on Ethereum since it is the second cryptocurrency created and the second-largest by market cap. So the question must be asked: how secure is Ethereum?

The purpose of a blockchain is to be decentralized. Being decentralized means it is beyond the control of a single person, company or even a government. One way to simply test whether something is truly decentralized, is to ask the question: how many phone calls from the president would it take to shut this down?

With Ethereum, the answer is three. Three simple phone calls could shut the whole thing down. Who would be called? Vitalik Buterin, AWS, and Infura. 

Vitalik is the outspoken founder of Ethereum. Changes made to the system have often come due to his leadership, or as some would call it, his “bully pulpit”.

Because Ethereum has such a large block size, the average person cannot run a node on their personal computer. The distribution of nodes is an indication of the security of the network. Because of this, Ethereum nodes are operated primarily by Amazon Web Services and a company called Infura. 

How about Bitcoin? How many phone calls are needed? The government would need to call well over 10,000 individuals (node operators) who are scattered around the globe. This is far more decentralized. 

Furthermore, Bitcoin is battle-proven. It has already proven it can survive a nation-state attack, as China recently banned Bitcoin mining in the country, and the hash rate recovered to all times highs in only 6 months. Users on the Bitcoin network (like me) barely noticed anything had happened. Transfers took slightly longer than normal for a bit, and that was it.

The point here is that if you are hoping to store thousands or millions of dollars in an NFT on Ethereum (or another even less decentralized network), you must be prepared for the counterparty risk of having the whole network shut down.

3. Ultimately NFT’s are a distraction to the real problem that only Bitcoin solves.

NFT proponents have lost the plot. I’ve asked people who are into both NFT’s and altcoins, “what problem in the world is this solving?” The answers that come back are slim. 

Does anyone have a need to verify the ownership of a crypto kitty? In our world that is filled with problems, does this even make the list?

Do you know what the biggest problem in the world is right now? Our money is broken.

Here’s how: 

Every person I know who is younger than 30 in my country can’t buy a home and have no hopes of ever owning one in the future. They have been priced out through asset inflation. Why? Because the money is broken. 

Venezuela is a country rich in natural resources and filled with smart people, yet the economy is in ruins and the grocery shelves are empty. Why? Because the money is broken.

With broken money, people turn to other resources in order to secure their wealth and their future. They buy up homes or they hoard food. What happens when things that we need, like shelter and food, become monetized?

In the words of Michael Saylor, “When you monetize houses, people go homeless. When you monetize food, people starve.”

On the contrary, there are no ill effects to monetizing Bitcoin. Rather, all other goods like food and shelter stay at fair valuations that people can afford. 

When money breaks, civilization breaks too.

When money is scarce, goods and services are abundant. But when money is abundant, goods and services become scarce. This is why having a scarce form of money is so important.

The vision for Bitcoin was embedded right in it’s genesis block. Upon release Satoshi Nakamoto ingrained these words, taken from The Times: Chancellor on the Brink of the second bailout for banks. 

Right at the founding of this revolution was a laser like focus: Central banks around the world are robbing people of their future through confiscating their wealth through inflation. By being a money with a fixed supply and utterly transparent monetary policy, Bitcoin solves that problem.

Bitcoin is a way to allow your work to mean something again. It is a way to stop wealth inequality. It is a way to stop government overreach. 

Bitcoin is a means to fix the money and thereby fix the world.

And you’re shilling your crypto kitty NFT.

It’s dumbfounding.

This is why I believe so strongly that Stephen and Patrick are misguided in their article. They have the right heart and they want to steer Christians toward the next trend, but they are terribly off-mission if they think NFT’s are the big solution.

Case and point: Christians should care about the global poor. 

Do Christians even know that El Salvador, through adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, just helped move their country from being 70% unbanked to 70% digitally banked in only 6 months? That’s millions of people who now have the ability to store and grow their wealth. 

Do Christians understand what it’s like to live on remittance payments and have to rely on Western Union to receive money from a relative in another country? Bitcoin saves those people a 3 hour bus-ride to the nearest physical branch, with the threat of gangs, and instead puts the money right into their phone in either BTC or USD and brings their cost of transfer down to pennies. 

Do Christians understand that people in countries with hyper-inflation are losing their life-savings, and there is nothing else in their country they can own to stop it? Bitcoin gives them a way to secure those savings. 

NFT’s are misguided. Maybe they will accomplish something someday. Maybe there is some use case out there.

But compared to the mission of fixing our money, NFT’s are an utterly useless distraction. I hope that Christian (and non) can understand this quickly and get on the right path.

Before you start looking into how NFT’s may change the world, take it back to where this all started. Learn what it is and how it is differentiated from all other cryptocurrencies and blockchains (such as through this article from Fidelity).

Get Bitcoin right first.

How do you explain something new to someone? 

I mean, something really new. Something that no one has a frame of reference for. Something that even you have no frame of reference for.

In many of my conversations with friends, it has become clear that I’m a social oddity for my enthusiasm toward Bitcoin. 

I can’t help it. The more I learn about Bitcoin the more convinced I become that it will change the world. 

Like most people, I heard about Bitcoin years ago, but it wasn’t until 2020 that I took a closer look. 13 books and hundreds of podcasts later, I’m convinced. 

It’s easy for me to see it now, but I realize that’s not the case for most people.

Why?

Bitcoin is a new thing

Because Bitcoin is new.

It breaks all the molds. Nothing like it has existed before and nothing like it will exist in the future. 

Akarsh Nalawade has an excellent article that summarizes the value proposition of Bitcoin in a nutshell. 

Here is his opening statement:

“There has never been a more secure, scarce, valuable, transportable, decentralized and networked asset in all of humanity’s history.

It’s more mobile than gold. It appreciates faster than property. Its supply is fixed unlike stocks and bonds. Its payment network is faster and cheaper than Visa.

Its user base is growing faster than the internet’s was in the 90s. Its market cap is a shade over a trillion dollars. It has an enormous potential upside. It’s already too big to fail.”

Surely if you were to hear someone tell you about this hot stock pick at a party (remember parties?) you would laugh them off. It’s too good to be true!

But, as Anthony Scaramucci says, “those who do their homework end up investing in Bitcoin.” 

The problem is that many will not invest in Bitcoin because they will not do their homework. 

They will not do their homework because they don’t understand how important it could be.

It’s a new thing. 

The dilemma of something new

As humans, we think in linear terms. We presume that the future will remain relatively similar to what we experience today.

The idea that something utterly new could come onto the scene and disrupt our way of life seems generally unrealistic. 

History, however, tells us that when new technologies come along, they can utterly re-shape how we live and interact with one another.

Consider the printing press, or the automobile, or the internet… all things that have changed who we are and how we interact with each other. No one could predict their full potential when they first emerged.

New, life-changing things are a normal part of history, and there will continue to be new things, perhaps at ever-increasing speeds as we move into the future. 

Currently, most people don’t know where to even begin when it comes to Bitcoin because we are so used to evaluating things by what we already know and use today.

It’s not like stocks, because it has a fixed supply.

It’s not like Visa, because it is a final settlement layer.

It’s not like gold, because it’s digital, not physical.

It’s not like any other information on the internet, because you can’t copy and paste it to make more.

Plus, it’s not like any other cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin doesn’t have a CEO or known founder that can use their influence to move (for example) from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

Bitcoin’s monetary policy is utterly transparent and unchangeable.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin had no ICO (Initial Coin Offering) that rewarded insiders before going to market.

The point is, Bitcoin is unlike anything humans have ever encountered before.

It emerges at this odd intersection of history, anthropology, technology, philosophy, and economics.

Nothing like it has ever existed before.

It’s a new thing.

When Christianity was a new thing

History is filled with new things that have puzzled people. 

2000 years ago, a new thing emerged onto the scene that left people dumbfounded.

The Letter to Diognetus, written in AD 180 shows how utterly strange Christians appeared when compared to their average Roman counterpart.

In the letter, the unknown author is replying to one, Diognetus, seeking to answer his questions surrounding this strange, emergent group of people.

“I hear you asking how they have the kind of affection that is cherished among them and why this new type or practice of religion has only now and so recently come into the world.”

As his response indicates, one of the reasons that people were skeptical of Christians is because their practice of religion was new. 

No one had ever heard of it before, and it seemed too strange and different than that which came before it.

You can imagine Diognetus’ confusion: “Why do the Christians only worship Jesus when there are so many different gods and objects of worship in the world. We Romans have been worshiping our gods for as long as anyone can remember… why would there be a new god now… and why is he better than all our gods?”

The author replies to these questions brilliantly, and doesn’t hold back on telling Diognetus of the perils of the current Roman worship practices toward trinkets and other manmade objects:

“Are they not all deaf? Are they not all blind? Are they not without life? Are they not destitute of feeling? Are they not incapable of motion? Are they not all liable to rot? Are they not all perishable?

You call these things gods! You serve them! You worship them! And you become exactly like them.”

The other question being answered in the letter is “how [these Christians] have the kind of affection that is cherished among them.”

The Christians of second-century Rome stood out like a sore thumb in that they had a love for one another that was uncanny among their neighbours. 

Christians were known for their selfless sacrifice. When there were plagues, it was Christians who would stay in the cities to take care of the poor and the sick. 

In fact, it was Christians who founded the first ancient hospital.

It was Christians who would rescue abandoned babies and care for them as their own.

Moreover, they were marked by “strange ethics” that bewildered the Romans.

The author says, “They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They share a common table, but not a common bed.”

Whereas Romans were generally promiscuous and greedy, Christians were known for being the opposite: chaste and hospitable.

This was a new thing.

Because of all this, Christianity drew attention. It was hated by some, and loved by others. 

Christians were persecuted ruthlessly by Roman authorities in this time period, yet they grew all the more.

But those Romans who did their research, those who leaned in and asked questions, found the source for these strange ways and discovered the riches of Christ himself. 

In a similar way today, Bitcoin is both loved and hated by many. But most people who do their research discover an earth-shaking change that is in effect.

Bitcoin will not have the same impact that Christ had on the world – not by a long shot. Christ’s power changes the one thing that nothing else can touch: the human heart and soul.

Yet Bitcoin will still bring massive changes to our society in the coming decades. Pandora’s box has been opened, and it cannot be reversed.

Lean into new things

So what is the lesson for us today?

The lesson is: Do not disregard new things. Lean into them and learn.

If you’re someone who has disregarded Christianity because of past experience or an intellectual barrier, I would encourage you to read the Bible for yourself.

Find a local church, where the Bible is taught, and learn about God from the ground up.

If you’re someone who has disregarded Bitcoin, like I once was, I would encourage you to give it a fair shot and learn from the best minds in the space before making up your mind. 

Read The Bitcoin Standard or watch some Michael Saylor Youtube videos where he summarizes Bitcoin. Read Parker Lewis’ series, Gradually then Suddenly, or Vijay Boyapati’s The Bullish Case for Bitcoin. 

When something is new and unfamiliar, face it. Don’t blindly turn away. Some things are here to stay and you’ll wish you had looked into them sooner.

Hey reader!

This blog post is a transcript from my video that you can find at the link above.

#1 – Bitcoin Incentivizes low-time preference behaviour

As a Bitcoiner, when you come to believe that Bitcoin is pretty much inevitable, and the value you’ve put into it can never be debased, you stop worrying about money.

If you’re getting into Bitcoin now, you’re not late, you’re early.

When I realized this, I stopped worrying about money, something shifted in my brain.

I started to dream. 

I asked myself, “If this is true and plays out the way I think it will, what do I want to do with my life?”

In my mind, the rat race was over. In a moment, it was gone. 

I realized that finances won’t constrain how big a family I can have, and I started to think more about adoption.

I realized I can do things I’m passionate about, and not just work for a paycheque. 

I can think about what life will look like in decades, not just in weeks or months.

To have a low-time preference is to be more concerned about the future than the present. 

It’s characterized by saving for the long run, taking care of your health, and engaging in activities that better both yourself and society. 

Contrast this to high-time preference, which means to live for the moment.

It’s characterized by living paycheck to paycheck, eating fast food, and doing things like lobbying the government for more short-term stimulus. 

As a Christian, I already have been training myself for years to think a thousand years or a million years into the future – well beyond my temporary life on earth.

Bitcoin captures an element of that.

Having a low-time preference is both more sustainable for your life, and leads to greater human flourishing.

So I love that discovering Bitcoin helped me to lower my time preference. 

#2 – Bitcoin is for both my friends and my enemies

Jesus himself said to love your enemies and to pray for those who persecute you. 

We should wish our enemies well. 

Because Bitcoin is a global and permissionless money, it means it is for you and for your enemies.

Bitcoin is both hated and loved by people on the right and the left. 

Donald Trump said last year and I quote: “I am not a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated crypto-assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”

Clearly, the Don does not like Bitcoin.

But it’s not just the Republicans.

President Joe Biden recently signed into law a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that will direct cryptocurrency exchanges to notify the IRS of all transactions.

Many in the Bitcoin and Crypto space see this as a naive or intentional attack on the asset class. 

So clearly either Biden doesn’t understand Bitcoin or is deliberately trying to discourage it in the US.

The point here is that Bitcoin is equally hated by both sides of the political spectrum.

It is also equally loved by both sides.

Bitcoin is being used by communists in Cuba to get around US sanctions. 

And Bitcoin is being used by gun-loving farmers in Texas. 

The point is, Bitcoin is like electricity, the internet, or the discovery of fire. 

Bitcoin is for everyone. Anyone can use it for good or for ill.

#3 – Bitcoin fosters an environment of a relentless search for truth

I’ll say at the get-go that I do not believe this to be true of other crypto-currencies.

It’s through learning about Bitcoin that I was ushered into this world of evaluating things from first principles.

A first principle is a basic proposition. It’s asking the question, “why” enough times until you can’t backtrack any further.

For example, if you ask about where our food comes from, you could talk about grocery stores, supply chains, animals, plants and eventually you’ll get to the sun, which causes everything to grow and supplies all the energy we need to live.

In the Bitcoin community, I have seen this idea of arguing from first principles used frequently and applied to the question of money.

Only in Bitcoin, do I hear people asking the question, “what is money?”

Everywhere else in the cryptoverse, the question is “how can I make more money.”

It’s Bitcoiners who are asking the question behind the question. 

When you start with the question, “What is money” and evaluate everything from Gold to Fiat to Bitcoin based on various benefits and barriers, you can start to learn why Bitcoin is a superior form of money.

In a postmodern world, Bitcoiners believe they have discovered a form of objective truth – an immutable and completely honest form of money.

When they contrast that to all the craziness they see in the world, they can’t help but search for truth in other areas too.

#4 – Bitcoin is relentlessly egalitarian 

The way to get ahead in our world today is to own hard assets. 

As new money gets created through inflation, hard assets appreciate in value.

But how available are these assets for the majority of people to own?

How many people can go out today and buy gold, stocks, or real estate in a stable country?

As Michael Saylor says, only 1/4 people on the planet can purchase the S&P 500 index. 

In my country, buying real estate in good locations is now impossible for most of my peers, as you need a large downpayment and a high-paying job for the bank to give you a mortgage.

You could try to buy precious metals like gold or silver, but you may need to visit a brick and mortar location or have an address to which someone can send it by mail.

What if you are homeless?

What if you don’t have a bank account?

Most people on earth are stuck paying rent and saving in cash that is melting away by the minute. 

Bitcoin is relentlessly egalitarian in that it provides most of the world’s population the opportunity to own it. 

Anyone with a smartphone (and there are over 6 billion smartphone users in the world) can go online and buy Bitcoin right now.

They can buy less than a dollar at a time if they’d like.

What if they don’t have access to an exchange? Well, hopefully, they will soon.

More and more exchanges are being developed every day. Even big banks are starting to offer Bitcoin. 

People like Jack Dorsey are working on creating a decentralized exchange to accelerate Bitcoin adoption around the world.

Bitcoin is relentlessly egalitarian.

Just like how Jesus is good for everyone and is accessible to everyone, Bitcoin strives to be that too.

#5 – Bitcoin is Freedom money

In many ways, our world is getting better and better.

In his book, Factfulness, Hans Rosling brings to mind some amazing ways in which our world is improving:

For example, in the past 20 years, the number of people globally living in extreme poverty has almost halved.

He lists many other improvements too. 

But in one area, in particular, our world is getting worse and worse.

Today more than 50% of people in our world live under the control of an authoritarian government… and that number continues to increase.

In these countries, everything from human rights to property rights to freedom of religion are under constant threat.

If you belong to a certain culture, race, religion, or identity, not only your way of life, but often your life itself is at risk.

Most of all, in these countries, any attempt to speak out against the government is detected early and punished harshly (often through AI).

As Bitcoin continues its historical run from being worth pennies in 2009 to more than 40 thousand US dollars today, it turns heads.

People, corporations, even governments now adopt it for its price appreciation

But within Bitcoin is freedom in an entirely different sense. 

Bitcoin is uncensorable, unconfiscable, and permissionless. 

So what happens is that as people move their wealth into it, they learn they can do whatever they want with it without having the government’s permission.

If a social credit system has cut them off from buying goods and services, they adopt Bitcoin as their money and buy and sell with any vendor who deals in Bitcoin.

If they live in a country where Bibles are illegal they can transact in Bitcoin and the government cannot stop the purchase.

This is what leads Jeff Booth to say, “Bitcoin defunds communism.”

And as our fiat monetary systems go deeper and deeper into debt, and Bitcoin continues to have a fixed supply of 21 million, more and more corporations, governments and individuals will adopt Bitcoin to preserve their capital. 

And here’s the thing:  as those people and those entities adopt bitcoin, they inherit the freedom properties of bitcoin and therefore, even without realizing it, provide those properties to their citizens.

Human Rights advocate, Alex Gladstein says, people get into Bitcoin for the Number Go Up technology, but the Trojan horse within Bitcoin is Freedom Go Up technology.

Note: This is a transcript from a video you can access by clicking the image above.

A few years ago I was sitting in the cafeteria at school when a friend asked me the question: If God can do anything, including forgive sins, why would he go through the trouble of sending Jesus to die for those sins. 

I’ve wondered about this for a long time.

The whole thing seemed a bit arbitrary to me.

If God can literally do anything, then why would he bother going through the lengthy process of being born, growing up, dying, rising again, and ascending back to heaven. What is the point?

If God is omnipotent, could he not simply say the word and sins would be forgiven?

—–

One of the ways Jesus’ sacrifice has been traditionally understood is to trace the history of the ancient Jewish sacrificial system.

The Jewish people were required by God to bring animals to the temple to be sacrificed on their behalf.

In part of the Abraham story, there is this moment where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to him.

Now previous to this, God had sworn to Abraham that through Isaac he was going to have more descendants than there are stars that he could count in the sky. 

Abraham, knowing this promise, proceeds to prepare the sacrifice (presuming that God would raise his son back to life afterward), and gets all the way to the point of raising the knife over Isaacs’s body.

Suddenly, at that moment a voice yells at Abraham telling him to stop and Isaac is spared. 

In his place, a ram is offered instead.

Through this God learns of Abraham’s devotion and love for him, in that he’s willing to give up even his own son for him.

This is not an arbitrary story, but functions as a prophetic reenactment that points us to the story of Jesus.

It also sets the stage for something called substitutionary atonement.

In the same way that the ram was exchanged for Isaac, so too Jesus’ death is exchanged for ours.

Yet the question still remains: if God can do anything, including forgive sins, why require this at all?

Well, let me ask you this, how familiar are you with Bitcoin’s proof of work?

Proof-of-Work speaks of the energy necessary to produce Bitcoin.

More generally speaking, “You need proof of work to embody skin in the game in the marketplace.” – Robert Breedlove

It’s analogous to the effort necessary to produce gold – which has been the dominant form of money for the last 5000 years.

Gold is so difficult to find, that even with growing technology and machines used to mine it, the inflation rate is only about 2% of the global supply.

Meaning, that if there are 100 tonnes of gold in existence today, next year there will be 102 tonnes and so on.

In a similar way, Bitcoin over time becomes exponentially harder and harder to mine until its new supply will become completely exhausted, sometime near the year 2140.

The point is, new Gold and Bitcoin can only be produced by sacrificing lots of energy.

What does this mean?

It means the supply is scarce.

This preserves its market value.

Anyone, worldwide, can expend energy and turn it into Bitcoin.

The underlying principle is that real-world sacrifice of energy ensures scarcity and therefore, ensures value.

The harder it is to produce, the more valuable it becomes.

In this way, the value is proportional to the sacrifice.

So if you own a gigantic Bitcoin mining farm, with a whole football field covered in ASICs connected to a nuclear generator, you will be compensated handsomely in the amount of Bitcoin you receive in return, because you’re sacrificing so much energy to obtain it.

If you’re just running Bitcoin mining software on an old laptop, you will be compensated far less.

Because the value is proportional to the sacrifice.

Proof-of-work is one of the greatest features of Bitcoin.

It anchors it in the physical world.

Physical energy is expended, digital value is produced.

It’s also a fair system in that it allows anyone in the world to be a part of it, you don’t need to be rich to start.

Contrast this to another, more prevalent system called Proof of Stake.

Proof of Stake has become more and more well-known with Ethereum’s plan to move away from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

In Proof of Work, a miner is rewarded for expending energy to solve the cryptographic problem, block after block.

In Proof of Stake, a user “stakes” their coin and is paid more based on how much they have.

In this system, wealth is rewarded, not work.

If you stake the most Ethereum, you get more Ethereum as payment.

Play this out over many years and you get greater and greater wealth discrepancy.

This is eerily similar to our current financial world… our “fiat” system.

In Canada, where I live, work is being rewarded less and less, and asset ownership is being rewarded more and more.

Case and point, the average home price in Canada rose more than the average Canadian made from their salary.

There was almost no immigration into Canada in 2020 due to the border being closed, so why would this be?

Think about how utterly bonkers this is.

Someone with money can simply buy an asset, hold it for a year then sell it.

They’ve contributed nothing to society by doing that.

On the other hand, we have someone who worked for a full year – like 2000 hours of work – by the sweat of their brow, solving problems and serving others.

They contributed to society, they gave value.

And they are compensated only the same amount as the other guy who bought and sold something.

It’s nuts!

Rich people know this, and they use this to the system to their advantage.

If you’re not familiar with the term, look up the Cantillon effect, which essentially explains how when someone is close to the fiat government money printer (such as many rich people who can buy assets) they can parasitically leech on the system, by being rewarded simply because they are rich.

Ultimately what we find here is this is a false reality.

It’s disconnected from the laws of nature – basic things like cause and effect.

You can’t leave the earth’s gravity without exerting a massive amount of energy.

You can’t become a master musician without expending a massive amount of effort, practicing.

In the same way, running on Proof-of-Work, Bitcoin is rooted in the laws of nature.

A difficult problem is presented, a real problem, and therefore it takes a massive amount of effort to solve it.

When a miner solves this problem, he/she contributes to securing the Bitcoin network and is rewarded with new Bitcoin as a result.

So, back to our question:  why did God send Jesus to die? Why didn’t he just snap his fingers to forgive sins?

I believe one of the ways to understand this is that by doing this, God is showing something akin to proof of work.

You see, our sin is a real problem, it’s not some fictitious thing.

You experience this in your life when someone wrongs you – like really hurts you, even maliciously attacks you.

You can’t simply say the word and move on.

You may try, but the pain and the anger will linger and fester.

And to forgive – to truly release that person and what they did against you – it requires suffering on your part – you need to swallow that most bitter pill in order to move on with your life.

Now, if you can, imagine the sins of world history.

All the lives lost, all the murder, all the lies, all the little selfish choices made time and time again that lead to the suffering of others.

There is a massive cost to be paid.

Therefore, there is a massive amount of work to be done.

For God to snap his fingers and say, it’s forgiven, is akin to pretending it never happened.

If this were the case, God would not be just.

So what does God do?

The infinite God gives the one thing that costs him something – he gives himself.

He comes down to earth and pays the price himself.

By Jesus coming to earth, God is performing what you could call the ultimate Proof of Work.

And much like Bitcoin’s proof of work is a bridge that transforms physical energy to digital energy, Christ’s physical death drops an absolute nuclear bomb of energy in the spiritual realm.

One single expenditure of infinite energy that once and for all undoes all the wrongs of the human race.

It’s been undone in the spiritual, for those who exercise trust in Jesus.

It will one day be wiped out completely.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that just as the value of Bitcoin is proportional to the expenditure of energy needed to gain it.

So Christ’s sacrifice demonstrates how much God values you and me.

His sacrifice of infinite proportion shows his love for you.

Love is more than just a feeling, love requires a measure of sacrifice for an object or person external to yourself.

It’s fundamentally putting someone else, their hopes, dreams, their well-being ahead of your own.

God did this – here, physically, in the real world.

And in doing so he demonstrated Proof of Work.

On that note, I would encourage you, if you haven’t before, to do some research on the existence of and the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. 

Even the Bible itself tells us that if this didn’t happen, then the entire Christian faith can be written off.

I would suggest looking into the works of N.T. Wright or William Lane Craig on this topic.

I hope you found this helpful.

Leave a comment or a question below.

NOTE: This article is a transcript of my first video that can be found on Youtube by clicking the image below:

There’s a story found in the old testament – both 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, where King David, ruler of Israel finds himself in hot water 

He had done something bad and God was not happy.

So God gives him an ultimatum. Because of his sin, he can choose one of 3 punishments for him and his people.

By the way, one of the themes in the old testament is this idea of “as goes the king, so go the people.” Hence why these punishments are for all of Israel, not just David.

He’s given the choice of 3 years of famine, 3 months of being attacked by his enemies, or 3 days of pestilence from God himself. 

David replies, “I am in great distress,  Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

So an angel moves through the country and kills 70,000 men.

God relents and there is this image of the angel standing with its sword outstretched toward Jerusalem, pausing and waiting for further instructions.

“David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand, a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.” – 1 Chronicles 21:16

David is given further instructions: to build an altar at the place where the angel had stopped. A plot of land belonging to a guy named Ornan the Jebusite.

When this was happening, Ornan was in the middle of doing stuff around his house, and he and his sons look up, see the angel, and totally freak out and hide.

David runs over to Ornan and asks him for help making an offering to abate God’s wrath.

Ornan is quick to offer David everything he needs to build the altar and make a sacrifice to God. All the building supplies, the wheat, the animals… everything.

But David says something significant here, and for our purposes, this is where this whole event is leading.

David says, “No, but I will buy them for the full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours, nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” – 1 Chronicles 21:24

David refuses to give God something that costs him nothing.

He knows that if he took Ornan’s offer, it would be Ornan’s sacrifice, not his.

I commend David here, 

Because as humans we are frugal by nature. We are always trying to get something for nothing.

But David, in his integrity, does the right thing. 

He chooses to sacrifice

Now…

What do you know about modern monetary theory?

Modern Monetary Theory (or MMT) states that governments can create their own money and essentially buy something for nothing

Many of you watching this video will have received perhaps thousands of dollars in stimulus money, directly from your government. This is certainly the case in the United States.

When you received that money did you ever ask the question, how did the government pay for this? 

Did Joe Biden and Congress go mow lawns on weekends to work up the capital with which to deliver you your $1200?

No.

The money was created out of nothing – ex-nihilo. 

You need money? 

*poof*

Here’s $1200. Go buy yourself some groceries.

Now, what are the implications of this?

Quick story:

When I was younger, I accompanied my dad on a business trip to Belarus.

Belarus is a poor country in Eastern Europe, still recovering from the devastating impact of the Chernobyl disaster.

While there we hired a translator. 

After 3 days of working hard to translate for us in various meetings, we paid her 3 crisp $20 bills.

I remember pulling my dad aside and asking him why we paid this woman so little for all her hard work. Only $60 for 3 days of work? That wasn’t even minimum wage where I came from! Why did we underpay her?

He looked at me and said, “No, son we overpaid her. She’s going to take those US dollars and put them into long-term savings.” 

You see, American Dollars are the holy grail of currency in our world.

The American Dollar is the most global currency and is the reserve currency of the world.

People all over the world save in US dollars because their local currency is less stable. In many countries, their currency suffers from high inflation or even hyper-inflation.

So what happens when Joe Biden or Donald Trump (it doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum they’re on) create money ex-nihilo and doll it out to American businesses and citizens?

Or let me ask it this way: is the government being generous? Are they being virtuous?

No.

And here’s why:

They are giving at someone else’s expense.

When the US government creates money “ex-nihilo”, everyone who uses the dollar gets devalued.

Poor people, like this translator in Belarus, suffer. Their money gets devalued. 

No actual value has been created by printing this money. 

Rather, the percentage ownership of the total number of dollars being held by Americans who get the stimulus has gone up, and the percentage of dollars in circulation owned by the global poor saving in American dollars has gone down.

These poor poor people!

It’s the same idea as if you had a rare Beanie Baby that you thought was worth a lot of money, only to discover that someone down the street owns a Beanie Baby making machine that can sew and stuff the identical Beanie Baby en masse.

What you own becomes less valuable, because it has lost its scarcity.

And as more US dollars enter circulation, the purchasing power of each dollar globally decreases. 

In other words, when the US prints more money and gives it out to companies, or US citizens, it’s the global poor who save in US dollars that take the hit.

No actual value is being created, 

King David said, “I will not offer something that costs me nothing.”

Now… consider God.

Imagine for a second that you are God

And when I say this I’m speaking of the Christian God

You are all-powerful. You created everything out of nothing. 

You can do anything.

You can give anything to anyone, with no cost to yourself.

Let’s imagine that you wanted to communicate one of your attributes – LOVE.

Love requires a measure of sacrifice for an object or person external to yourself.

Therefore, it would not be a sacrifice, in fact, it would be convenient for you to create an entire galaxy for someone, filled with all the riches they could ever want.

This does not demonstrate love – it just demonstrates that you simply prefer that person’s pleasure over nothing.

So I ask, how can you show love?

How could you demonstrate that you have skin in the game, that you’re willing to sacrifice for the other person’s benefit?

What would you do?

What could you possibly give that shows that person you actually love them?

The answer is there is only one thing you can give because there is only one thing that is ultimately costly to you.

It’s you.

If you were God, you would be the single most scarce “thing” in the universe simply because you are the source from which all other things exist. 

Therefore, to communicate love, you need to give yourself.

And this is what we see the God of the Bible doing.

God is the ultimate singularity, yet diverse in his essence.

The Christian God is Three-in-One, the Trinity.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The message of Christmas is that God became flesh, became human, and lived among us

God Gives Himself.

This is the term Emmanuel – God with us. 

And if you’ve read the gospel accounts, you know that Jesus came in order to die

In some ways, in which I hope to explore more in the future, this is the ultimate demonstration of proof of work

Romans 8:32 tells us:

“He (God the Father) who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

How do we know that God loves us?

How do we know that there is no limit to God’s love for us, that he will never go too far for us?

As the Apostle Paul says, “Because he didn’t spare his own Son.”

That is the proof.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year thinking about the best way to share my newfound faith in Bitcoin with others.

On the one hand, I could just live a “Bitcoin lifestyle.” Denominate my life in sats, stay humble and keep stacking. Hopefully, others will see a difference in me and ask questions.

On the other hand, I could create a pulpit for myself and implore everyone I know to get off zero. I could raise my voice and demand attention to try and get people to listen.

The underlying question is, how aggressive should I be in my proselytizing?

Ray Comfort is known for his more brash evangelism style. If you look him up on Youtube, you’ll see various videos of his confrontations. 

He and his film crew put a camera in your face and ask tough, deep, and personal questions. He pushes unrelentingly until he has you in a corner and you acknowledge that you should take Jesus more seriously. He is gracious in his tone, but unrelenting. 

Ray’s methods are thought-provoking, to say the least. He has some people come to recognize their need for Jesus on the spot, while others get mad or just feel too uncomfortable to continue the conversation. 

Whether or not you agree with Ray’s methods, I want to highlight a key finding from his evangelism. In fact, he summarizes his approach through the following metaphor:

Imagine you’re on a plane that is about to crash, but it’s not completely obvious to everyone else on the plane yet. As the plane continues to fly, smoke pouring out one of the engines, you look around and appear to be the only person concerned. 

You rush to the stewardess and ask her to warn the others. She tells you to calm down but then assures you that there are enough parachutes on the plane for everyone.

You immediately run to the parachute stockpile, grab one, and put it on. You look back across the plane and see the crowd, heads turned toward you. Some people are laughing. Some give you a confused look. Others just return to their book. 

You ask yourself, “how am I to convince people to put on a parachute too?”

Here’s the kicker, according to Ray: the only way that people can be convinced to put on a parachute is if they are convinced that the plane is going to crash. The parachute is only useful as a life-saving tool. It does not make life more comfortable. In fact, it is bulky, too snug, and makes you look funny. It’s quite an inconvenience!

Jesus, Ray says, is like that parachute. We don’t embrace Jesus to simply make our lives better, we grab him and cling on because of what he saves us from.

This is why Ray spends an uncomfortable amount of time speaking about Hell. Here is the key insight. He believes that if you spend 90% of your time convincing people of the problem, then you only have to spend 10% of your time offering the solution. 

Like a doctor diagnosing your illness, if they described your issue clearly and thoroughly, it won’t take you long to accept the medicine that fixes it. If you paint the problem well enough, people will be hungry for a solution.

I’ve wondered about this approach when trying to explain Bitcoin. Perhaps I’ve already seen it. 

In Jeff Booth’s book, The Price of Tomorrow, he talks about the dangers of our inflationary monetary system and how it is attempting to hold back technological progress. As you read on, you get the sense that our world is at a dangerous tipping point, becoming increasingly centralized and increasingly indebted. You feel like the plane is about to crash.

Only at the end of the book does Jeff mention Bitcoin as a solution and a way to escape the inevitable collapse. By this point, you can’t wait to get your hands on some. Jeff has convinced you of the problem, so you are hungry for the solution.

Perhaps this is the best approach when it comes to Bitcoin evangelism. Spend 90% of the time focused on the problem, creating an appetite for a solution. Spend 10% of the time explaining what Bitcoin is and how it solves the problem.

Perhaps this is why we see Bitcoin working so well in poorer countries, places with unstable governments and/or high inflation. They see the effects of the poison, therefore they more readily embrace the cure. 

How aggressive should we be? Maybe that depends on the context.

Maybe a close friend of yours needs a shock to their system. I’m reminded of the Rockstar Real Estate team saying Greg Foss basically jumped on a table and yelled at them about how they don’t get Bitcoin yet. The approach worked, and the Rockstar team has a heavy Bitcoin allocation now! 

But maybe there are others who are not ready for an all-out assault yet. They need you to plant seeds in their mind, point out little bits at a time and keep asking them questions. Maybe they need to hear your story of how you discovered Bitcoin and the hope that it’s brought in your life. 

For Christian readers, I hope you see the correlation to gospel sharing loud and clear. We need to be sensitive to the needs of others while also sharing passionately about the hope we have. 

One thing is for sure: we cannot stay silent about something so good. 

The Christian God is anti-fiat. Let me explain why:

In 2020 the US government printed 9 trillion dollars in the form of M2 money supply expansion. It comes in the form of stimulus cheques, QE, bailouts, etc.

The willingness of the US government to hand out such great quantities of money communicates something important: the dollar is not valuable.

Sure, we continue to use the dollar to purchase things we want and need. There is still an inherent trust in it as a reliable means of exchange, for now. But Inflation is here and it’s hitting hard.

Want to buy a house? You need to collect far more dollar bills than you needed last year. Want to drive? You need to pay way more. Want to buy groceries? Pony up! Why? Because the dollar is collapsing relative to all other goods, services, and assets. With more money in circulation, everything costs more. 

Think about this: you don’t just give away something valuable. 

If it costs you nothing to produce, then it has no value. That stimulus cheque you received is nothing more than a change in an accounting ledger.

Did Joe Biden work for that money? Did he or any other government official go mow lawns on the weekend to save up for their generous gift? Can we even say that our government is being “generous” with these hand-outs? Of course not. It was a simple accounting trick. 

It costs nothing and therefore is worth nothing.

Now, humor me for a moment as I share a piece of scripture.

In 2 Samuel 24:24, we find King David in a moment where he wants to offer something to God. He had sinned against God and wanted to return something to God as a peace offering. David finds himself at the doorway of one of his subjects, named Araunah. He decides he must stop right now and make an offering to God.

Araunah offers King David a small portion of his land, some oxen, and everything he would need to make a sacrifice on the spot. As king, David had full right to simply take these things and make his offering. However, he does the right thing: he insists that he must pay Araunah. 

But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing.” So David paid him fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen. 

Instead of offering something that actually belonged to someone else, David felt it necessary to pay a cost. If it was truly to be his sacrifice, he knew he should pay for it. Otherwise, it would be Araunah’s sacrifice, not his. 

This begs the question: who is paying the bill when the US government doles out dollars directly to its citizens? The answer is everyone else who owns US dollars. By creating dollars, the money supply is diluted, dragging down the purchasing power of dollars everywhere. 

The dollar is the global reserve currency, and people all over the world, especially in poor countries, use it as a means to save for the future. 

I recall traveling to Belarus as a kid with my dad on a business trip. We had hired a young woman to translate for our delegation and at the end of two days of work, we paid her $20 USD. I remember asking my dad why we paid her so little. He replied saying that we had given her a lot, in fact, she would probably take that $20 and put it into savings. 

It is people like this translator who are hurt by money supply growth. US monetary inflation robs the poor of the world for the sake of the citizens of the richest nation on earth.

Let me ask you a hypothetical question:

If you were God (all-powerful, all-knowing, sovereign, etc.) and wanted to communicate how much you love someone, what would you give them?

Seriously, put yourself in his shoes for a moment. As God, you can create anything, and I mean anything out of nothing. Planets, pleasures, infinite wealth you can simply create ex-nihilo. You can give people anything they want, simply by speaking it into existence. 

So what do you give when you can give anything at no cost?

Since it costs God absolutely nothing to create anything imaginable, he decided to give us the one thing that is truly costly in order to communicate his immense love:

God gives us himself.

It seems strange, but by giving us himself, God is giving us the one thing that cannot be replicated, the one thing in the universe that is truly scarce, and the one thing that is of ultimate value. 

He could have given us money, fortune, power, or anything else that we in our feeble human minds would want. Instead, God decides to take a similar stance to David. He refuses to give us something that costs him nothing, choosing rather, to give us the one thing that costs him everything. 

You may ask, but if God is omnipotent, how can anything actually cost him? How can the divine being actually pay a meaningful price? The answer is found in the suffering of Jesus.

Edward Shillito describes this in his poem, “Jesus of the Scars”:

The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;

They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;

But to our wounds, only God’s wounds can speak,

And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone. 

The Christian God is a wounded God. Jesus carries his wounds to this day.

This is true generosity. This is true sacrifice. 

There is no other religion or belief system in the world that believes anything like this, where the divine suffers on behalf of his creation. 

In this way, the Christian God refuses cheap fiat accounting tricks.

When God gave us Jesus, to live among us, to die on our behalf, to rise again, God gave us himself. 

Furthermore, when Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit to be with us, to indwell us, be our peace and give us life, God gave us himself.

When God gives a gift, he gives the best. It cost him dearly, but in so doing he communicated something significant. He communicates the incredible value that you and I have. 

Let’s contrast this with the US government. Their “sacrifice” costs them nothing. It actually comes at the expense of others! Think about what this says about what the government thinks of you. Think about how valuable they think you are when they don’t lift a finger to help you, but rather just inflate your balance sheet at other peoples’ expense.

But God is different. And here is the good news: God refuses to give you that which costs him nothing.

By giving himself to you, he communicates that you are overwhelmingly valuable. He communicates the extent to which he is willing to go to communicate his love to you.

And here’s the crazy part. If we know that God is willing to go to that extent for us, it means that he is willing to give us everything.

As the apostle Paul states in Romans 8:32:

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

Ponder this.

If we get God, then we get everything else too. 

Christian God is anti-fiat because he gives us himself. 

Let me start by saying that I am a Christian who works in full-time ministry. I am a big fan of the Gospel Coalition and a personal fan-boy of its founders, Tim Keller and Don Carson.

I have spent hundreds of hours studying Bitcoin over the past year.  

So I was intrigued when I saw that the Gospel Coalition was writing about my second favourite subject.

But, like many other Christians who understand Bitcoin, I was sorely disappointed. The article clearly demonstrates the author’s (Greg Phelan) ignorance of the most basic arguments for Bitcoin. Not only does he misconstrue Bitcoin with other cryptocurrencies, but he fails to mention the financial peril our world is in. But perhaps worst of all: he blatantly lies. 

Let’s go through some of the most dangerous and misleading quotes found in the article.

“They [Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies] will never provide a place to stay or earned income or even interest. That’s not a prediction; it’s just a fact.” 

This is a lie. 

Greg has failed to do his research on this. A simple look at Blockfi or Ledn reveals that you can earn interest on your Bitcoin. I personally know people who earn interest on their Bitcoin. Greg has lied to you. Click the links and verify for yourself.

I could pause here and speak of the dangers of lying, but I’m going to give Greg the benefit of the doubt. He probably just doesn’t know about these two institutions, even though they are household names in the Bitcoin space – especially Blockfi. This is the equivalent of me not knowing what Goldman Sachs is, and proceeding to say that you cannot and never will earn interest on your US dollar. 

I must add this too: I have a big problem with the phrase “they will never.” Be very wary of prophets who claim things with 100% certainty. They only need to be wrong once in order to be completely discounted.

Bitcoin is a nascent asset. It’s completely new and Greg is comparing it to things that already exist, like dividend stocks, real estate, or other pre-existing assets. To claim that it will never provide a place to stay, earn income, or interest, ever, is a bold but naive statement. 

By the way, a house was bought in my area for Bitcoin this year. That’s a place to stay, is it not?

“The number of Bitcoin transactions slowed down starting in 2012 and hasn’t increased at all since 2017. But the price has soared since then.”

Here’s the 5 year chart:

The number of transactions has been relatively consistent over the past 5 years with some peaks and troughs. One of the reasons for the more recent dip is the Bitcoin lightning network, which was launched in early 2018, but is now coming into common use. It functions as a second layer on top of Bitcoin (think of paper money, being backed by gold), which greatly reduces the need for on-chain transactions.

In El Salvador right now, you can use the Bitcoin Lightning network to buy McDonald’s, groceries, motorcycles… anything! Lightning enables small transactions with next to zero fees, turning Bitcoin into an excellent daily-use currency.

“Bitcoin would have to displace global currencies like the dollar and the euro to have equivalent liquidity value.”

Greg has utterly failed to understand the value proposition of Bitcoin. If Greg had done any research, he would have realized that people call Bitcoin Gold 2.0. Gold has been the bedrock of money for 5000 years, due to its incredible monetary properties. What are those monetary properties? 

Durability: It lasts for a long time.

Portability: It is easy to travel with.

Fungibility: One coin/ounce/dollar bill is the same value as any other one.

Verifiability: One coin/ounce/dollar bill can be easily verified as being what it claims to be.

Divisibility: It can be divided down into the smallest fractions.

Scarce: It cannot be replicated or easily produced.

In The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, Vijay Boyapati ranks Bitcoin, Gold, and Fiat according to these and other monetary properties, rating each from A+ to F.

Bitcoin is the best of these categories, making it the best form of money the world has ever seen. It is this good not because of its ability to provide shelter, look shiny, or to be used in jewelry, but because it has the best monetary properties. It is the best at being money. Bitcoin does not have to replace the US dollar or the Euro, but if they want to be viable in years to come, they will need to be backed by the best form of money: Bitcoin. 

“Investing in Bitcoin means betting on getting out before the bubble bursts.”

This is wrong.

Sure, there are some people who buy Bitcoin, hoping to get out after a price jump. This is what all Altcoin buyers are doing. But in Bitcoin, there are far better reasons to buy and hodl for the long term. 

Investing in Bitcoin means you believe that sound money is important, and thus inherently valuable. 

Investing in Bitcoin comes from a willingness to take responsibility for your money and your future, rather than leaving it in the hands of the government or other authorities (this is called counterparty risk). 

Investing in Bitcoin means you understand the times. You understand the danger of an ever-increasing inflationary system and you’re opting out into a better system, one that will hold your purchasing power over time. Trading Fiat for Bitcoin is the same as getting out of Confederate dollars in 1865 and into the money of the future.

Investing in Bitcoin means your eyes have been opened to the moral catastrophe that is our monetary system. You understand that inflation is theft, is killing the middle class, causing untold damage to our social fabric, and is accelerating the global wealth gap. 

Bitcoin is not gambling or speculation, Greg. We have just seen something you haven’t seen yet.

“With real assets, you earn a return because you put money at risk and it is put to productive use.”

Bitcoin is a real asset. Why? Because people use it as a real asset. Enough said.

“Christians should be excited to invest in ways that serve the common good.”

I agree with Greg here. That’s why I advocate for Bitcoin and believe it is every Christian leader’s responsibility to understand it. I believe wholeheartedly that spreading Bitcoin will help the common good. 

By being the most honest and incorruptible form of money ever seen, Bitcoin represents hope for the unbanked, poor, and marginalized of the world. It allows anyone with internet access the opportunity to own an asset more valuable than gold or real estate, that cannot be easily confiscated.

“Given the choice between investing in a bubble that enables illicit black-market transactions, or investing in real assets that one hopes serve the common good—the choice should be obvious for Christians.“

Finally, Greg concludes his attack by throwing in a little gem from Bitcoin’s past, speaking of how it “enables illicit black-market transactions.” It sounds as if Greg has done some research, at least enough to know about the late Silk Road. The Silk Road was the Amazon of the dark web and it used Bitcoin as payment. It was shut down by authorities 8 years ago. Criminals are always on the cutting edge of technology, and this was no exception. However, the currency of choice among criminals remains USD cash. Do you believe the USD illicit’s black-market transactions too, Greg? Because it does.  

Now, Bitcoin is not merely a US phenomenon. Let’s think beyond governments with good legal systems. Do you think Greg understands that 53% of the world’s population lives under authoritarian regimes and ruthless dictators?

Since Greg believes we need government oversight in our daily transactions, perhaps he is also a fan of the Chinese Social Credit system which has perfected the ability to monitor and stop the purchase of illegal goods. In that system, authorities are able to quickly stop transactions of illicit black-market purchases like Bibles or pro-democracy books. They can quickly shut someone off from society if they speak out or do something improper, like attend an unsanctioned worship service.

Maybe Greg would support that too?

Or maybe Greg is wrong and it is actually very important for our world to have a decentralized and permissionless money. 

Before I close, let me point out the one thing that bugs me most about this article. Sure, Greg lied. Sure, he was ignorant. But this one I can’t let go of. 

One of Greg’s headings says, “Christian Response,” in big, fat, bold letters.

Oh heavens! The audacity to state with such certainty that this is the Christian response to Bitcoin! The very notion that Greg and TGC have ascended to the throne room of our God, have spoken with the Almighty, have seen the truth, and have stamped it with papal authority: Bitcoin is Gambling – this is the Christian Response!

Is it a Christian response to lie to your readers, Greg?

Is it a Christian response to speak so strongly of things without confronting a single contrary argument?

Is it a Christian response to write off perhaps the world’s greatest tool to help mankind right now as “gambling”?

Shame on you Greg. And shame on you TGC for publicizing false information. You need to change your ways.

Thankfully Christ is merciful. He’s forgiven my sins and he will forgive yours.

But please… do your research, then go and sin no more. 

• 

A few weeks ago I sat down with a friend for a beer. Although we have a lot of things in common, belief in Bitcoin is not one of them. As conversation progressed onto the topic, he warned me profusely of Bitcoin’s dangers. He proceeded to bring up one form of FUD after another. It went something like this:

• “Bitcoin will be killed by the government!” 
• “It will collapse due to Tether regulation.”
• “The SHA-256 algorithm will be hacked.”
• “Quantum computing will enable a 51% attack!”
• “Bitcoin will be outcompeted by other cryptocurrencies!”
• “Bitcoin is too old and slow!”
• “It is irresponsible of you to hold too large an investment in one thing… diversify!”
• And of course, “Bitcoin is terrible for the environment!”

He moved through each of these arguments at such a rapid pace that I could barely get a word in edgewise. He left the conversation convinced that he had single-handedly dismantled Bitcoin. I’m sure he slept like a baby that night having put it out of his mind. 

This was obviously frustrating for me. This is not a good way to have a conversation. On the one hand, I left annoyed, wishing I could had come up with the perfect come-back zinger. On the other hand, I care about my friend and I’m saddened to see that he will miss what I believe is the opportunity of a lifetime. 

Strangely, as I replayed the conversation in my mind, I kept having deja-vu. I felt as if I had had this conversation before… but it wasn’t about Bitcoin.

Talking with “non-believers”

This conversation with my friend made me recall other similar conversations I’ve had about Christianity. I’ve had many conversations over the years with people who do not hold the same beliefs as I do. Some of those conversations are respectful and civil, but others reminded me of my talk with my friend. What was so similar? Something I call “machine gunning”.

When you “machine gun” someone, you make multiple arguments at once without allowing the other person to respond. Once you’ve made your first point, you make your second, then your third and so on. It’s a classic debate strategy. If you don’t allow room for the other person to refute your arguments you appear to be right. 

There are many classic arguments that opponents use against Christianity, such as:

• Science has disproved God
• The Bible is just a myth
• If God is all good and all powerful then why do bad things happen to good people?
• How could a loving God send people to Hell?
• How can Christianity claim to be true when there are so many other religions
• Christianity has a history of being harmful
• Christianity is unhelpful and irrelevant

There have been several times when I have been discussing one of these topics, when the other person quickly switches to another argument, derailing the conversation. 

What fascinated me the most is that before my recent conversation with my friend, I had thought “machine gunning” was a unique strategy used by opponents to Christianity. But there I was having a conversation with a fellow Christian, and he was “machine gunning” me on Bitcoin! 

I realized that we are all prone to use such techniques. The problem arises when we elevate our own reputation above a conviction to search for truth. Most of us would rather appear to be right than to actually be right, if it means looking foolish for conceding a point.

I will show you a more excellent way

In order to pursue truth, we need to show love to the other person, which means listening well in a posture of humility. This is Rule #9 from Jordan Peterson: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t. (12 Rules for Life)

We need to fight against our innate bias. A great way to do this is to enter into an imaginative exercise with the other person. Encourage them to imagine with you that you are right and paint a picture of the possible implications. Allow them to do the same, but from their perspective.

Let’s try it! Imagine with me that Bitcoin is true, and by that I mean that it is actually the future of money. What does a world that has adopted a Bitcoin standard look like? What does it bring? Here are a few potential things:

• Convenience – Anyone with an internet connection can send any amount of money to anyone instantly at nearly no cost.
• Prosperity – Our work is more meaningful since our purchasing power increases over time, instead of being debased through inflation.
• Equality – Anyone with an internet connection can opt in early, securing wealth for generations to come. Bitcoin doesn’t discriminate. Period.
• Honesty – The principle of sowing and reaping is honoured (whereas a debt base system attempts to reap before sowing).
• Freedom – Totalitarian regimes are starved as citizens build wealth that cannot be stolen from them. Those in dangerous areas flee with their wealth memorized in a passphrase or on a usb to jurisdictions that uphold more human rights. Jurisdictions known for human flourishing attract the most people and wealth.
• Peace – War is disincentivized as property becomes nearly impossible to confiscate (see Can Bitcoin bring World Peace?).

Now, before moving into all the reasons as to why Bitcoin may fail, can we just pause for a moment and ask the question: don’t you want this? How could anyone not want these values to permeate throughout our troubled world? 

Now let’s exchange Bitcoin with Christianity. Imagine with me that Christianity is true, and by that I mean that Jesus actually rose from the dead (note: Christianity’s plausibility wholly hangs on this event being true in human history). 

If Jesus physically rose from the dead this has some serious implications for us:

• Hope – There is life beyond death and it’s available to anyone (John 3:16).
• Peace – There is peace between us and God available to anyone (Romans 5:1).
• Security – Even if we lose everything we own, those who trust Jesus will have treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:20).
• Freedom – God cleans our conscience from guilt and shame (Hebrews 10:22). He removes all of our sin from us (1 John 1:9).
• Purpose – Jesus invites us to join us in his mission of bringing restoration to a broken world through his power (Act 3:19).

Much more can be said here, but I can imagine some pushback. “Christianity has been tried before and failed,” or “you’re just cherry picking the positive elements and forgetting about the regressive and harsh things the Bible says.” These are fair points. But I would argue that the points I’ve made are real. Check out the scriptures and see for yourself. Therefore, other arguments must be made with these principles in mind. 

Just as if you were to ignore Bitcoin, there are even more serious implications to ignoring Jesus’ message. Therefore, I would ask you to pause and consider these implications before jumping into pushback. I would also recommend finding a group of people who will explore these ideas with you. Go to a local church, or find an online Alpha group.

Summary

Ultimately we are our own worst enemy when it comes to searching for the truth. Love of our own reputation can easily get in our way. 

The message is this: have the courtesy and humility to treat other people the way you want to be treated. Consider that they may have something to say that you don’t know yet. As a result, we will have better mutual understanding, and in the process, you just may learn something that will change your life.