BITCOIN IS NOT A PROMISE
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Bitcoin didn't arrive in the world as a promise. It never said it would make people rich, save the middle class, liberate nations, or overthrow states. It didn't promise a better future, or even a different one. It appeared silently, in a dark corner of the internet, as a technical, almost dry text published by someone who then vanished. From the outset, there was no slogan, no grandiose political manifesto, no detailed utopian vision. There was only a protocol, simple rules, an implacable logic, and an implicit proposition that wasn't a promise but a test: here is a monetary system that works without requiring you to believe in anything. It's up to you what you do with it.
Perhaps this is where the fundamental misunderstanding begins. We live in a world saturated with promises. States promise stability and protection, even as they accumulate debt and crises. Banks promise security while taking systemic risks that no one truly understands. Tech companies promise connectivity, seamlessness, and simplicity, while capturing attention, data, and sometimes freedom. Ideologies promise meaning, justice, and a bright future, leaving behind moral and social ruin. Everything, absolutely everything, is presented today as a promise. Bitcoin, however, promises nothing. It calculates, it validates, it records, it continues.
It is precisely this lack of promise that makes it unbearable for many. When someone arrives on the Bitcoin scene in 2025, they arrive laden with expectations. They want an answer to inflation, protection against collapse, revenge against a system perceived as unjust, sometimes even a form of personal redemption. They project their anxieties, hopes, and anger onto Bitcoin. They want Bitcoin to do something for them. And very quickly, they discover that Bitcoin does nothing for anyone. It works, or it doesn't, but it doesn't adapt to your desires. It has no empathy. It doesn't know you.
Bitcoin doesn't know if you're rich or poor, honest or corrupt, courageous or cowardly. It doesn't know if you're a model citizen or a dissident. It doesn't know if you use your private keys wisely or foolishly lose them. It won't judge you, but it won't forgive you either. This absolute coldness is jarring in a world where everything is designed to adapt, to seduce, to retain. Bitcoin isn't trying to please you. It's imposing a reality.
This reality is simple, but brutal. There is no customer service. There is no "undo" button. There is no recourse when you make a mistake. The responsibility is total, and it is individual. Many then discover that what they were looking for was not a currency, but a psychological refuge. They wanted a system that would protect them from their own choices, correct their errors, and reassure them in the face of uncertainty. Bitcoin does the exact opposite. It throws you back on yourself. It forces you to understand, to learn, to take responsibility.
It is at this point that some turn away. They accuse Bitcoin of being too complicated, too slow, too energy-intensive, too radical. In reality, they criticize it for not keeping a promise it never made. They wanted a turnkey solution, a technological miracle that erases the consequences of the past without requiring any inner transformation. Bitcoin doesn't play that game. It doesn't erase anything. It records.
Others, on the contrary, understand something deeper. They realize that Bitcoin is not a tool for comfort, but a tool for truth. It reveals the true nature of money, the intimate relationship between time, energy, and value. It shows that scarcity is not an opinion, but a physical constraint. It reminds us that trust cannot be decreed, only verified. These people then stop asking Bitcoin what it can give them, and begin to ask what it demands of them.
This shift is fundamental. As long as Bitcoin is perceived as a promise, it remains fragile, vulnerable to disappointment, narrative bubbles, and ideological co-optation. As soon as it is understood as a neutral infrastructure, it becomes virtually indestructible. An infrastructure doesn't need to be loved. It needs to work. No one asks an internet protocol to be moral, inspiring, or just. It is asked to route data packets without discrimination. Bitcoin does exactly the same thing with value.
This is also why mass adoption is a deeply ambiguous concept. Many imagine adoption as a kind of moral victory, as if the world must one day acknowledge that Bitcoin was right all along. But Bitcoin doesn't need to be right. It doesn't need everyone to use it. It doesn't even need you to like it. It simply needs enough people to freely choose to use it, block after block, for it to continue to exist. Adoption is not a triumph; it's a consequence.
When financial institutions, funds, states, or corporations appropriate Bitcoin, many see it as a betrayal. They speak of dilution, co-optation, and corruption of its original spirit. Again, they project a moral promise onto a system that has none. Bitcoin never promised to be used solely by idealistic cypherpunks or virtuous individuals. It was designed to be resilient, not morally pure. Its purity is not ideological; it is technical. As long as the rules remain unchanged, as long as the consensus mechanism remains intact, and as long as validation remains distributed, Bitcoin remains Bitcoin, regardless of who uses it.
This indifference is unsettling, but it's also liberating. It means that Bitcoin doesn't require you to belong to a community, a narrative, or an identity. You can be a maximalist or a skeptic, a trader or a hodler, an anarchist or a civil servant—it doesn't matter to the protocol. What matters are cryptographic signatures, valid blocks, and adherence to the rules. Everything else is human noise.
Perhaps this is why Bitcoin acts as such a powerful psychological revealer. Some become obsessed, almost possessed by Bitcoin, not because it promises them anything, but because it confronts them with questions they had always avoided. What is value, really? What is ownership when it is guaranteed by no one but oneself? What is freedom when it implies the real possibility of error and loss? What is responsibility when there is no longer any authority to blame?
Bitcoin doesn't answer these questions. It poses them, and leaves you alone with them. This solitude is unbearable for some, and profoundly transformative for others. It forces you out of your monetary infancy, out of that unconscious expectation that a higher power will always come to fix the damage. With Bitcoin, there is no benevolent parent, only clear rules and the passage of time.
In this sense, Bitcoin is not a promise of freedom, but a test of maturity. It does not make you sovereign by decree. It gives you the possibility of being so, provided you accept the cost. This cost is not only financial or technical, it is psychological. It involves accepting uncertainty, irreversibility, and the sometimes frustrating slowness of a system that prioritizes robustness over speed.
This is where many fail. They mistake Bitcoin for a saving grace, and when it doesn't deliver quickly enough, they turn away. They forget that Bitcoin was never intended to save anyone. It's an option, not an obligation. A possible way out, not a promise of happiness. Those who remain are often those who have understood that true change lies not in price, nor in media hype, but in the personal relationship each individual has with the concept of value.
In 2025, owning Bitcoin doesn't mean belonging to a camp or an enlightened elite. It means accepting to live with a tool that will offer you no favors. It means choosing a system that doesn't adapt to your weaknesses, but rather exposes them. It means preferring an uncomfortable truth to a comforting illusion.
Bitcoin is not a promise of the future. It is a constant, almost indifferent presence, continuing to produce blocks while narratives crumble, currencies devalue, and ideologies come and go. It doesn't say "everything will be alright." It simply says "these are the rules." It's up to you to decide if you want to live by them.
Perhaps this is why Bitcoin will survive, whatever form its adoption takes. Because it doesn't depend on emotional attachment, collective faith, or even widespread understanding. It depends on something much simpler and more solid: the tireless repetition of a freely chosen consensus. Block after block, without promises, without speeches, without consolation.
And in a world saturated with empty promises, perhaps it is this silence that is the most revolutionary.
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