If Bitcoin fails, I will be forced into the most preposterous position of all: belief in something else. And that, I confess, is an impossibility, for everything else is either the rickety scaffolding of a failing empire or the tinkering of men who mistake their own bureaucratic brilliance for divine intervention.

If Bitcoin fails to maintain its sacred, node-driven decentralization, then we are not merely back to square one—we are back to the Tower of Babel, where every man must once again barter in the dialect of his captors.

For it is not merely that Bitcoin is the best hope—it is the only thing that is not hopeless. Everything else is mere theater: fiat is fraud, altcoins are alchemy, and central banking is that most absurd of superstitions, the belief that printing wealth can make men richer.

So if Bitcoin falls, then there is only one option left: to laugh at the absurdity of civilization, to drink deep from the goblet of irony, and to play the world’s most wretched game—the fiat casino—where the dice are loaded, the house always wins, and the chips are nothing more than elaborate promises from liars.

But I do not think Bitcoin will fail. No, I think it will stand—not because men are wise, but because they are foolish enough to try everything else first.