·Scott Dedels · blog · 3 min read
The Dao of Bitcoin: Towards a Cosmology of Energy Money
For money to have meaning it needs to have a relationship to energy. The energy used to produce money becomes a physical representation of the time required to earn it. When money requires no energy to produce, it has no relationship to time.
Everything is connected by energy. Everything, except our modern fiat money.
For money to have meaning it needs to have a relationship to energy. The energy used to produce money becomes a physical representation of the time required to earn it. When money requires no energy to produce, it has no relationship to time.
The energy is the value of the time. With gold, it’s the time required to extract it from the earth. We earn money by transforming our time into stored monetary energy. We trade our time for money. Money stores our time. In the fiat money world, we are all transforming our time into something that has no ties to energy. It cannot store it. In failing to store your energy, fiat money steals your time.
It doesn’t only steal your time. Theft is imposed on all of us. We are forced to interact with each other using money that steals time from all of us. When money can’t store energy we all need to find other ways to protect our time. Our time is finite and we understand it is precious. Threatened with the theft of our time, we all fend for ourselves. Fear of the loss of time keeps us separate from one another.
What would a world look like where society runs on money connected to energy? Where all of our time is safe and we exchange energy for energy? How would we interact? When your time and energy are safe you can deprioritize your immediate needs. Energy money promotes harmony. Exchanging energy for energy means an expectation of a fair exchange. People will expect quality in return for their energy. Energy money promotes cooperation. When money is connected to energy humanity can interact with the world using a monetary measurement tied to reality.
Daoists have understood the interconnectedness of all things through energy for millennia. In Daoism the term is Qi, or life force. This energy emanates from the Dao. It is a universal force responsible for all creation. It ties us all together. It is a perpetual giving machine of endless abundance.
Bitcoin is energy money. It requires both electrical and human energy to produce. We know how much energy goes into Bitcoin, and because we know much there is of it, we know exactly how much time it is worth. We know how much time it takes to create every new block. When we interact with each other using Bitcoin, we are connecting with energy.
Daoism offers a new way to make sense of the energetic principle that backs Bitcoin. It is a spiritual counterpart for the economic and scientific arguments of why Bitcoin is unstoppable. It can provide us a new way to make sense of the world and a uniform understanding of energy. Energy money gives us a new paradigm for communicating value. One that is rooted in cooperation, harmony, and reality.
What happens to our species as the collective understanding of money, transforms how we think about the world? A reconnection to energy. A species level spiritual awakening. The Dao of Bitcoin seeks to connect the logical and spiritual and show the reader how energy money paves the path toward an enlightened society rooted in the natural order of all things, oneness.
