BITCOIN FACING THE NEED FOR ILLUSION

Bitcoin is less disturbing because of what it challenges than because of what it refuses to provide. It doesn't directly attack the system, denounce it, sabotage it, or replace it. It offers no spectacular counter-narrative, no promise of immediate emancipation, no reassuring collective vision. And it is precisely this absence that creates the unease. Bitcoin doesn't destroy the prevailing illusions. It simply ceases to perpetuate them.

Modern societies rest on a fragile yet effective architecture of stabilizing narratives. These economic, political, social, and technological narratives are not intended to be entirely true, but are coherent enough to allow everyone to keep moving forward without dwelling too long on the absurdity of certain mechanisms. Money plays a central role in this architecture. It is not merely a tool for exchange or measurement. It is a condensed narrative, an implicit pact, a silent promise of continuity.

What Bitcoin does is not challenge this pact by force. It refuses to participate in it. It doesn't say the narrative is false. It simply functions without it. And this indifference acts like a crack. Because as long as narratives are shared, even imperfectly, they hold together. What truly weakens them is not criticism, but the possibility that they might no longer be necessary.

The need for illusions is not a moral failing. It is a deep-seated psychological condition. Individuals need to believe that the world is more or less coherent, that institutions know what they are doing, that fundamental rules can be adjusted to avert the worst. These beliefs are not always conscious. They are internalized, disseminated, and reproduced through everyday actions, technical discourse, and decisions presented as rational.

Bitcoin doesn't claim these beliefs are absurd. It simply demonstrates that a system can exist without them. And this silent demonstration is unbearable for a social order founded on the constant need for reassurance. Bitcoin doesn't attack the system. It attacks its need to be believed.

The traditional monetary system functions as a narrative buffer. It absorbs shocks, spreads out losses, transforms crises into technical adjustments, and presents each intervention as a controlled response to an exceptional situation. This mechanism is not only economic; it is psychological. It allows individuals to continue believing that someone, somewhere, is in control. Bitcoin removes this charade. It does not deny the existence of crises. It does not correct them. It does not promise that they will be managed. It continues to produce blocks, indifferent to speeches, announcements, and emergencies. This mechanical continuity, disconnected from the human need for meaning and reassurance, acts as a brutal revealer.

What's troubling isn't Bitcoin's instability. It's that it doesn't try to appear stable. It's not that it's risky. It's that it doesn't claim to eliminate risk. It refuses to play the symbolic role that modern currency has gradually assumed: that of a collective emotional guarantor. In a world saturated with communication, explanations, and continuous narratives, Bitcoin is silent. It tells no story. It interprets nothing. It justifies nothing. And this silence is experienced as an aggression. Not because it's hostile, but because it leaves a void where individuals expect reassuring words.

Bitcoin doesn't guarantee everything will be fine. Nor does it guarantee everything will go wrong. It says nothing. It simply operates according to rules that don't adapt to circumstances. This rigidity, often presented as a technical advantage, is above all a symbolic rupture. It deprives the social system of the ability to tell itself it's always in control.

Collective illusions are not mere lies. They are survival mechanisms. They allow us to maintain a form of cohesion despite growing tensions, visible inequalities, and structural contradictions. Challenging them directly provokes violent resistance. Bitcoin bypasses this resistance by not directly confronting it. It simply lets the illusions collide with something that doesn't need it.

This shock is psychologically difficult to process. Many are trying to reintegrate Bitcoin into an existing narrative, portraying it as a new safe-haven asset, a financial innovation, a payment technology, or an instrument of national sovereignty. All these attempts have one thing in common: they seek to reintroduce reassuring meaning where Bitcoin introduces apparent nonsense.

But Bitcoin resists these attempts. It doesn't prevent anyone from projecting a narrative onto it. It simply continues to function independently of these projections. And it is this independence that ultimately exhausts the narratives. Because none of them manages to establish itself permanently without being contradicted by the reality of the protocol.

Bitcoin isn't unsettling because it's revolutionary. It's unsettling because it's indifferent to revolution. It doesn't promise a better world. It doesn't offer a smooth transition. It doesn't operate within a political timeframe. It introduces a different kind of time, disconnected from the human need to hope, to believe, to project oneself collectively.

This discrepancy creates a constant tension. A tension between the need for narratives and the existence of a system that functions without them. This tension is not resolved by rejection. It is often resolved by rationalization, minimization, and caricature. Bitcoin is presented alternately as a bubble, a scam, a speculative toy, a threat, or, conversely, as a miracle solution. These opposing positions share the common goal of trying to reintegrate Bitcoin into a familiar narrative framework.

But Bitcoin cannot be permanently confined within these frameworks. It doesn't need to be loved, understood, or massively adopted. It simply exists. And this existence alone is enough to weaken a system based on symbolic adherence. The need for illusions is particularly evident in times of uncertainty. When reference points become blurred, when promises pile up without being kept, when adjustments become permanent, the temptation is great to reinforce narratives, to make them more convincing, more technical, more sophisticated. Bitcoin acts out of step with the times. It reinforces nothing. It doesn't respond to anxiety. It allows it to emerge.

This exposure of anxiety is unbearable for a social order built on its concealment. Bitcoin doesn't attack the system. It reveals its constant need to tell itself a story in order to continue functioning. What is profoundly disturbing, therefore, is not the technology. It is the lack of consolation. Bitcoin doesn't offer an alternative narrative. It doesn't tell us how to live better. It doesn't promise to mend social divisions. It doesn't claim to offer universal monetary justice. It simply establishes a framework in which the rules remain unchanged, in order to reassure us.

This stance is radical in a world where almost everything is negotiable, adjustable, and contextualized. Bitcoin rejects this narrative flexibility. And this rejection acts like a mirror. It reflects back to societies the image of their dependence on stabilizing illusions. Many prefer to attack Bitcoin rather than confront this mirror, labeling it a danger, a criminal tool, a systemic threat. These accusations target not so much the protocol itself as what it reveals: the fragility of the narratives upon which collective trust rests.

Bitcoin doesn't force anyone to abandon their illusions. It simply reveals that these illusions aren't necessary for a monetary system to function. And this possibility is profoundly destabilizing. Faced with Bitcoin, the system doesn't feel attacked. It feels stripped bare. Deprived of its central narrative role. Reduced to its mechanisms. And this reduction is experienced as symbolic violence. Bitcoin is unsettling because it doesn't play the game. Because it doesn't reassure. Because it promises nothing. Because it doesn't tell a story. And in a world that needs stories to survive, this absence is unbearable.

It's no coincidence that the debates surrounding Bitcoin are so emotionally charged. They aren't really about the currency, the technology, or the economics. They're about the loss of a psychological comfort: the belief that the system knows where it's going. Bitcoin doesn't tell you where to go. It simply shows that some paths have never been as solid as we thought. And this revelation is enough to provoke rejection. This isn't an ideological clash. It's a clash between a fundamental human need for stabilizing illusions and the existence of a system that produces none. Bitcoin doesn't try to convince. It exposes. And in this exposure, everyone is free to look... or look away.