Last night I had the great pleasure of having an in-depth conversation with Jeff Booth, who I often refer to as the Eckhart Tolle of bitcoin.
Booth, soft-spoken but direct, pressed a particular point in the conversation that, although I didn't understand it at first, ended up resonating deeply with me.
He said several times “We are bitcoin” in an effort to make it clear that bitcoin will continue to work if we continue to make it work.
At first, this statement seemed antithetical to bitcoin. Technically, of course, we are not bitcoin. bitcoin is an open source protocol that allows people to transfer value securely and without permission. Additionally, bitcoin was designed in a way that actually requires less human involvement than traditional monetary and financial systems, since humans cannot alter its inflation rate and there are no middlemen involved in bitcoin transactions.
However, we are bitcoin, just as Booth said.
We are the ones who have to activate nodes to maintain the decentralized network.
We are the ones who connect the miners to help power and protect the network.
And we are the ones who educate others about bitcoin and advocate for it in the social sphere.
We are human nodes on the network, doing our part to technically keep bitcoin running and spread information about bitcoin to the world.
Without us taking responsibility as human nodes, bitcoin becomes less decentralized, less secure, and less understood.
So if you're reading this, know that you are bitcoin, a component of the most incredible system for human freedom and prosperity ever created, and savor it and act accordingly.
