Joseph P. Laycock, Assistant Teacher of Religious Studies, Texas State University.
Read enough about Bitcoin and you will also inevitably come across people who refer to cryptocurrency as a religion.
Bloomberg's Lorcan Roche Kelly called Bitcoin "the first authentic religion of the XNUMXst century." Bitcoin proponent Hass McCook dubbed himself "The Monk" and wrote a series of articles on Medium equating Bitcoin with a religion. There is a Church of Bitcoin, founded in XNUMX, that explicitly calls the legendary author of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, its "prophet."
In Austin, Texas, there are billboards with slogans like "Crypto Is Real" that eerily mirror the ubiquitous Jesus billboards found on Texas highways. Like many religions, Bitcoin still has dietary limitations associated with it.
The dirty secret of religion.
Does the fact that Bitcoin has prophets, evangelists, and dietary laws make it a religion or not?
As a specialist in religion, I think this is the wrong question.
The dirty secret of religious studies is that there is no universal definition of what religion is. Traditions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism do exist and have similarities, but the idea that these are all examples of religion is somewhat new.
The word "religion" as it is used today, a vague category that includes certain cultural ideas and practices related to God, God, or morality, first appeared in Europe around the 3th century. Even before that, many Europeans understood that there were only XNUMX genders of people in the world: Christians, Jews, and Gentiles.
This pattern changed after the Protestant Reformation when a long series of wars broke out between Catholics and Protestants. These became known as the "religious wars," and religion became a way of discussing differences among Christians. At the same time, the Europeans found other ethnic groups through exploration and colonialism. Certain traditions they found shared certain similarities with Christianity and were also considered religions.
Historically, non-European languages have not had a direct equivalent for the word "religion". What counts as religion has changed over the centuries, and there are always political interests at stake in determining whether or not something is a religion.
As the scholar of religion Russell McCutcheon argues: "The interesting thing to study, then, is not what religion is or isn't, but rather the process of 'doing' itself: that this manufacturing activity takes place in a courtroom or if it is an assertion made by a group about their behaviors and also institutions.
Critics point to irrationality
With that in mind, why would anyone claim that Bitcoin is a religion?
Some commentators seem to be making this claim to alienate Bitcoin investors. Emerging markets fund manager Mark Mobius, in an attempt to dampen enthusiasm for cryptocurrency, stated that "cryptocurrency is a religion, not an investment."
His statement, however, is a case of the fallacy of the false dichotomy, or else the assumption that if something is one thing, it cannot be another. There is no reason why a religion should not also be an investment, a political system or anything else.
The point of Mobius, however, is that "religion", like cryptocurrency, is irrational. This criticism of religion has existed since the Enlightenment, when Voltaire wrote: "Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense."
In this case, calling Bitcoin a "religion" suggests that bitcoin investors are enthusiastic and do not make rational decisions.
Bitcoin so good and healthy
On the other hand, certain Bitcoin advocates have leaned towards the label of religion. McCook's articles use the language of religion to highlight some aspects of Bitcoin culture and normalize them.
For example, "sat-stacking," the practice of regularly acquiring small fractions of bitcoins, sounds strange. Mas McCook calls this practice a religious ritual, and more particularly, "tithing." Many churches practice tithing, in which members make regular donations to support their church. So this comparison makes the seated stack more familiar.
While for some people religion may be associated with the irrational, it is also associated with what religious scholar Doug Cowan calls "good, ethical, and acceptable ruling." In other words, certain people often accept that if something is truly a religion, it must represent something good. People who "stack the sats" may seem strange. But people who “tithe” may seem sane and principled.
Associating Bitcoin with religion could add a hint of morality. Takoyaki technology/fake images Using religion as a framework
For students of religion, classifying something as religion can open up new perspectives.
As religious scholar JZ Smith writes, “'Religion' is not an indigenous term; it is created by academics for intellectual purposes and therefore it is up to them to define it. For Smith, classifying certain traditions or cultural institutions as religions creates a comparative framework that will hopefully lead to a new understanding. With that in mind, equating Bitcoin with a tradition like Christianity can make people realize things they haven't appreciated before.
For example, many religions were founded by attractive leaders. Appealing authority does not come from government office or tradition, but rather only from the relationship between a leader and his followers. Attractive leaders are considered by their followers to be superhuman or at least exceptional. Because this relationship is precarious, leaders often remain distant to avoid being seen as ordinary humans by their followers.
Several commentators have pointed out that the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, seems like a prophet. Nakamoto's true identity, or if Nakamoto is really a team of people, remains a mystery. But the intrigue around this character is a source of charisma with consequences for the economic value of bitcoin. Many who invest in bitcoin do so in part because they consider Nakamoto a genius and an economic maverick. In Budapest, artists have even erected a bronze sculpture in honor of Nakamoto.
A bust of Satoshi Nakamoto in Budapest, Hungary. Commons-logo.svg/Wikimedia Commons There is also a connection between Bitcoin and millenarianism, or the belief in an upcoming collective salvation for a select group of people.
In Christianity, millennial hopes involve the return of Jesus and the final judgment of the living and the dead. Certain Bitcoiners believe in an inescapable "hyperbitcoinization" in which Bitcoin will be the only valid currency. When this happens, the "Bitcoin faithful" who have invested will be vindicated, while the "non-money makers" who have shied away from crypto will lose everything.
A path to salvation
Finally, some Bitcoiners see Bitcoin not just as a way to make money, but rather as the answer to all of humanity's problems.
"Because the root cause of all our troubles is essentially money printing and the resulting misallocation of capital," McCook asserts, "the only way to save the whales is either the trees are going to be saved, or the little ones will be saved is if we simply stop the degeneration.
This attitude may be the most significant point of comparison with religious traditions. In his book "God Is Not One," religion teacher Stephen Prothero highlights the unique character of the planet's religions using a 4-point model, in which each tradition identifies a unique drawback to the human condition, proposes a solution, it proposes concrete practices to achieve the solution and examples indicated to model this path.
This model can be applied to bitcoin: the downside is fiat currency, the solution is bitcoin, and the practices are encouraging others to invest, "sat piling" and "hodling": refusing to sell bitcoin to sustain its value. Examples include Satoshi and other figures involved in the creation of blockchain technology.
So does this comparison prove that Bitcoin is a religion?
Not necessarily, because theologians, sociologists, and legal theorists have many different definitions of religion, all of which are roughly useful depending on how the definition is used.
However, this comparison can help people understand why Bitcoin has become so attractive to so many people, in a way that would not be possible if Bitcoin were treated as a purely economic phenomenon.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.