This book is about the promise of the Bitcoin blockchain to use “bit” and “coin” to merge digitality and physicality onto an authenticity layer in the next generation Internet, a new global data network, to save digital humanity from rapid deterioration.
The book has two volumes. Volume I covers philosophy, history, system architecture, and applications, while Volume II covers science, economics, law, ethics, misconceptions, and controversies. The two volumes can be read separately, but the reader will benefit from reading both.
The book starts with a broad philosophical perspective of the universe. This outlines some key thoughts and arguments which, though they may at first appear out of place in a technology book, will define some important ideas about truth, science, and information which are reflected in both the spiritual world and in our everyday physical world, which includes contemporary technologies.
I see the universe as having both a physical layer and a spiritual layer, with humanity interfacing between the two layers. The Bible calls the physical layer the visible and the spiritual layer the invisible (Colossians 1:15-16). As will become clear as we progress through the book, I believe that there are certain elements of the Bible which are particularly relevant for our modern world and which explain the predicaments we find ourselves in. One of these is the dual layers of existence.
As the interface between the physical and the spiritual, mankind was given by the Creator the ability to know and experience both the visible and the invisible.
While this book focuses on the knowledge and experience of the visible rather than the invisible, it is written with the view that the two are inseparable. The visible is but a shadow of the invisible, and the human knowledge and experience of the visible are meant to be parables of the invisible to manifest either truth or untruth. In other words, all of the issues we are experiencing today have their origin in the invisible, the spiritual realm. Outside of this context, the human knowledge and experience of the visible have no eternal meaning.
All human knowledge and experience of the visible relate to either energy or information, or both. The entire physical universe is fundamentally made of energy and information and nothing else. They are, therefore, also particularly relevant to understanding the functioning of our world – which is, after all, part of the wider universe. Thus, I will also spend some time discussing these concepts and their relevance for modern technology in the book. I will mainly focus on the information aspect here, as this is directly applicable to blockchain, leaving the energy aspect to a future project.
From this dual discussion of philosophy and science, it will become clear that there are troubles caused by the emergence of “digital humanity” which are linked to the merging of physicality and digitality. The solution to these issues will be an “authenticity layer” (or truth layer) which will allow humanity to progress without falling foul of problems of truly biblical proportions.
Why was this book written?
I am publishing a conviction. Saying this might cause much cynical sneering, but this book is written for the truth and the betterment of humanity.
I have done years of research, studies, and business consulting, all in the course of my professional work and personal interest, not for the purpose of writing a book. But in the end, the book became inevitable. It carries the deep substance of an important subject, which I regard as one of the most critical matters to humanity in the present time and the age to come. The matter became a personal burden laid upon my heart and shoulders so heavy that I am compelled to discharge it before I can continue the other pursuits in my life.
The underlying matter is simply this: the world is at a critical point of pivoting either toward an unstoppable and unmitigated degenerative “digital humanity” or a creative, yet protective “digital humanity.” It is up to us to make a difference.
A deciding factor will be which of the two different kinds of next-generation Internet we choose to move forward with.
The choices:
- A techno-feudalistic Internet that is increasingly controlled by centralized platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and WeChat on which the true ownership of both data/information and economic/social values are deceptively and cleverly transferred from their natural owners to “digital landlords” who are data collectors and manipulators.
- A transparent peer-to-peer communal Internet that has decentralized data, decentralized value, and decentralized social and economic participation of natural owners and participants liberated and incentivized to uphold truth.
More and more people are waking up to the second alternative, some even aspiring to it, thanks to powerful thinkers and communicators such as George Gilder (the author of Life after Google).
Unfortunately, not only has a decade of the “decentralization movement” failed to produce any meaningful result, but it also actively misled the world into intoxicating crypto frenzies and the illusion of a fake Web3 characterized by fake decentralization. The world is worse off with intoxication and fakery. This will be covered in detail in the chapter “The Cancerous Crypto” and the chapter “Web3, NFT and DeFi are a Sham Without a Blockchain Scalable at Layer-1” of Volume II.
How did it go so wrong?
It wasn’t because the technology doesn’t exist to enable the next generation of the Internet.
Quite dramatically, the opposite is true. About fifteen years ago, the Bitcoin blockchain was created at the right time precisely to enable the much-needed New Internet revolution.
But the world has largely missed it. Not only did people fail to understand the actual invention of Bitcoin and its creator, but the mainstream has been wholly misled, which has caused a multi-trillion-dollar crypto anomaly full of scams, purely greed-driven schemes, and utter ignorance, precisely the opposite of what the creator of Bitcoin intended.
No technology or inventor in human history has ever been more gravely misunderstood, misconstrued, misapplied, and mistreated than Bitcoin and its inventor have been.
Whether there is a divine intention in this earthly story, we cannot be sure, but it is a rather striking parable of the universe and its relationship with the Creator. It may have more profound moral lessons to learn than the story of a technology and its inventor.
The whole scene only makes sense when philosophically understood at a biblical depth and scale. Human history is, by design, an adversarial trial to test any true value first before it is allowed to succeed.
It is, then, fate.
But that makes those who know the truth even more responsible for holding up the truth, not less.
Hence this book, as a part of my own effort in earnest.
An eternal perspective
The eternal Heavenlies alone are the ultimate hope; temporal earthly things such as good technology are but a part of the earth that devours the floods from the Dragon’s mouth (Revelation 12:16).
Therefore, this book paints a picture of the redemption of Bitcoin, not the redemption by Bitcoin. As important as it is at this stage of human history marked by endangered digital humanity, Bitcoin does not and cannot promise salvation to the world (claiming otherwise would be idolatry), but only helps to establish a human reality with a protective sphere of truth. It gives people at least some means to rely upon when passing through earthly circumstances filled with untruth, without having to bear the mark of the beast upon their right hand or their forehead (Revelation 13:16). It is not salvation. It is humanity, better preserved for the ultimate salvation in the end.