Well, hard money does, at any rate, and Bitcoin jettisons all the grossness and potential exploitation of digging deep in the dirt. It's like clean, hard money. Reingeld.
There is some religious emotion triggered by elegant math and sound, universal measures. I feel it, myself. Seems profound, somehow. Which makes sense, if you think of God as a Builder or even a Carpenter.
"What money would Jesus use?", is the question, for me.
I think the reason is that Bitcoin is transcending physics and math, is obviously bigger than oneself, and in a similar "realness" space as some of the entities religion talks about, while at the same time being "easy" to understand for the rational/scientific mind.
It is a doorway to the transcendental.
Hmmm. Yes. Thinking about it gives me the same feeling, as astronomy. A certain vastness.
Bitcoin managed to introduce the “arrow of time” into the cyberspace realm, something which we need as conscious beings of action, - the notion of the future - to plan, predict and ascribe anything of value within this space. It’s this ‘future’ along with its incontrovertible past that now makes this space ‘real’.
I obviously agree! https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoin-is-time/
We have an answer to that! "Show me a coin" Jesus was ok using the government currency for worldy affairs. He just didn't seem to think worldy affairs were the important thing.
I am pretty sure Jesus would only care about Bitcoin insofar as we could use it in service to the kingdom of God. Can you use it to "go sell all you have and give the money to the poor"? Or what would he think of stacking sats? "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
"🎵 I left my heart in 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa 🎶"
I don't know. I think He'd also be concerned in how the money we use is produced and if it were used as an economic weapon to steal from the poor and give to the rich.
And credit-based money seems particularly nefarious.
I don't disagree, but I also don't think any monetary system can claim God's endorsement. It is all just a tool. No currency can correct intention. You can still use Bitcoin as a weapon. Bitcoin can still become an idol. It does not point to God (anymore than anything else), it is just a thing. A thing ontologically lower than rocks.
Technically, it can't be much lower than rocks, since it exists in the form of modified rocks.
And the modification is a new form of mathematics and data distribution and a universal clock. That makes Bitcoin more than mere money, at the same time that adding those functions enhances its usefulness as money.
If technology can be an art form, then Bitcoin is beautiful art. And art, like science, can be divinely inspired. If we can observe that the use of Bitcoin can lead to less wickedness and more virtue, then that should give us pause. I don't know if we can see that, yet, but it does seem to tend that way. Fiat use, especially, seems corrupting. Like there's a curse hafted to it.
Although, some people are just greedy and Bitcoin doesn't cure that. Unfortunately.
Currency allows us to transmute one resource into another. The aim of Bitcoin is whatever useful thing we can obtain with it. Rocks have their own value. Though I have to admit that I don't know if they have value apart from being useful or beautiful to rational souls. If not I guess there isn't much difference to Bitcoin. Any real philosophers in the house?
We're the philosophers, silly. It comes along with the catechism.
Hmm, I thought we were the silly philosophers. I've been backwards to be known before.
Bitcoin isn't only a currency, tho. It's also a store of value and a measure of cost/energy. It's true money.
And something being useful or beautiful is a lot of value. We can use useful things to do good works and beauty inspires hope and motivates laborers.
If you can use this modified rock, we call Bitcoin, to feed the poor and heal the sick more efficiently, than with unmodified rocks or letters of credit, then that seems morally significant.
And even if you just gave Bitcoin directly to the poor, it would rise in purchasing power, if they didn't immediately spend it all. That means that a poor person could regularly spend a small portion of it, to subsist off of, and never run out of money. It's charity that keeps on giving.
Bizarre, if you think about it. But important.
Imagine what that means for something like a hospital or missionaries.
I'm assuming the opposite: Money is always an artefact of some inefficiency or error within the human society, and we should try to avoid exacerbating that by using money that is _in itself_ highly corrupt.
You can always cause more harm, by using worse tools. The tools should be as neutral, as possible.
In this case, The Denarius was owned by Ceaser, it was effectively Ceaser's property lent out to the people as a medium of exchange.
Such as The Federal Reserve Notes belong to The Federal Reserve whereas Old U.S. Notes belonged to The United States hence effectively The People.
Possession of property is endowed with a seal, or mark as proof.
While in material affairs it may not be deemed so but in the affairs of Laws, and The Spiritual it is such.
It was also a physical coin and not a letter of bondage. Trading other people's indebtedness just seems nasty.
