THE REAL BITCOIN SCANDAL IS THAT IT DOESN'T LIE

We live in a world that functions only because it lies well. Not always blatantly, not necessarily maliciously, but consistently enough for the lie to become a structural element, an invisible glue without which nothing would truly hold together. Modern societies don't need truth; they need stable narratives. Narratives capable of absorbing shocks, smoothing over injustices, masking inconsistencies, and explaining the inexplicable without ever challenging the overall structure. The lie is not a flaw in the system. It is its lifeblood.

We have learned to live surrounded by vague promises, manipulated figures, and reassuring rhetoric. We are told about growth when it's debt, stability when it's control, and security when it's surveillance. We are told about inclusion when it's dependency, and modernity when it's planned obsolescence. And it works, not because we fully believe it, but because we accept not looking too closely. The social lie is effective precisely because it is vague enough to avoid direct refutation.

In this landscape saturated with narratives, Bitcoin arrives as a radically alien object. Not because it is revolutionary in the romantic sense of the word, but because it categorically refuses to play the game of useful deception. Bitcoin promises nothing. It sells no desirable future. It offers no collective redemption. It does not claim to repair humanity or improve society. It doesn't even pretend to care about justice, fairness, or morality. It simply exists, functions, and continues, block after block, independently of everything we project onto it.

This is where the scandal lies. Not in criminal activities, not in speculation, not in media hype. The scandal is much deeper, more subtle, more disturbing. Bitcoin doesn't lie. It doesn't soften anything. It doesn't explain anything. It doesn't disguise reality to make it bearable. It exposes it in its coldest nakedness. And in a world built on the constant performance of trust, this complete absence of narrative is experienced as an attack.

Every traditional monetary system rests on a central fiction. Money only has value because we collectively choose to believe in it. This belief is maintained by institutions, symbols, discourses, and rituals. It is reinforced by authorities who explain, justify, correct, and intervene. When something malfunctions, we speak of an exceptional crisis, a temporary adjustment, or a cyclical situation. The lie is never presented as such. It is shrouded in technocratic language opaque enough to discourage any serious questioning.

Bitcoin rejects this logic. It doesn't claim that the currency is stable. It doesn't claim that the supply is adjustable according to current needs. It doesn't claim that the authority will intervene in case of problems. It lays out its rules from the outset and doesn't change them to ease tensions. Scarcity is non-negotiable. Validation rules are inflexible. Time is not compressible. The protocol doesn't care about your personal circumstances, your social status, or your moral intentions. It enforces. Period.

This indifference is deeply shocking for societies accustomed to confusing governance with paternalism. We have been conditioned to expect systems to protect us from our own mistakes, to cushion the blows, to redistribute responsibilities. Bitcoin does none of this. It doesn't protect. It doesn't excuse. It doesn't correct. It observes. It records. It makes visible what, until now, was hidden behind layers of discourse.

Inflation, for example, is one of the most thoroughly perpetuated lies of the modern world. It's spoken of as an abstract, almost natural phenomenon, a kind of unpredictable economic weather. We carefully avoid naming it for what it truly is: a silent and continuous drain on purchasing power, an organized dilution of savings, a discreet transfer of value. Bitcoin doesn't comment on inflation. It doesn't denounce it. It simply shows what a strictly limited supply implies in a world where everything else can be created infinitely. The contrast is stark. And this starkness is perceived as an accusation.

The same logic applies to confiscation. In traditional systems, confiscation is always presented as a justified exception. It's about fighting crime, preserving stability, protecting the public interest. Bitcoin doesn't challenge these arguments. It doesn't offer any. It simply makes confiscation technically difficult, sometimes impossible. This simple fact is experienced as subversion, not because confiscation is immoral, but because it deprives authorities of the power to explain why they do it.

Bitcoin eliminates the need for belief. It eliminates the need to trust a central authority to say what is true, what is right, what is acceptable. It replaces institutional faith with mechanical verification. And this deeply clashes with a culture built on delegating responsibility. Believing is comfortable. Verifying is demanding. Social lies allow us to remain passive. Cold truth demands personal involvement.

This mechanism explains why so much discourse surrounding Bitcoin desperately tries to re-enchant it. There's an attempt to attribute moral values, humanist intentions, and political goals to it. People talk about saving the poor, liberating the oppressed, and redressing historical injustices. Not because these narratives are inherently false, but because they serve to make Bitcoin compatible with our need for meaning. They allow us to transform an indifferent protocol into a defensible cause. They reintroduce a comforting lie where none existed before.

Even among Bitcoin users, this temptation is ever-present. Many feel uneasy about its complete lack of compassion. They try to explain it, soften it, humanize it. They want to believe that Bitcoin is on the right side of history, that it is morally superior, that it rewards the righteous and punishes the corrupt. This projection is understandable. It's human. But it is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of the protocol.

Bitcoin does not reward virtue. It rewards compliance with the rules. It does not punish wrongdoing. It invalidates incorrect transactions. The distinction is crucial. It is uncomfortable. It forces us to abandon the idea that technology could solve problems inherent to human nature. Bitcoin is not a judge. It is a witness. It is precisely this role of witness that makes it unbearable for many players in the current system. A witness does not lie, but it does not console either. It does not provide context. It does not relativize. It simply exists and continues to record what happens. In a world where truth is constantly negotiated, adjusted, rewritten, this persistence is perceived as a threat.

The media, too, contribute to this rejection. Bitcoin is almost always discussed through the lens of price, scandals, personalities, and excesses. We hear about bubbles, crashes, quick fortunes, and spectacular losses. We hear about charismatic figures, billionaires, and fraudsters. We hear about everything except what constitutes the very essence of Bitcoin: its rules, its consensus mechanism, and its immutability. Not out of sheer ignorance, but because the code is boring. And boredom is incompatible with the media narrative.

Code doesn't lie, but it doesn't tell a story either. It doesn't lend itself to simplifications, binary oppositions, or narrative arcs. There are no heroes in a hash function. There are no culprits in a consensus rule. There's no scandal in the correct execution of a protocol. For a media system based on emotion, this lack of narrative material is problematic. It forces attention to shift toward everything surrounding Bitcoin, rather than toward what it actually is.

This shift is revealing. It shows how dependent we have become on narrative lies to make sense of our surroundings. A system that operates without discourse, without justification, without promise, confronts us with our own discomfort. It forces us to recognize that much of what we accept rests less on facts than on well-told stories. Bitcoin is not cruel. It is honest. And this honesty is radical. It doesn't seek to be agreeable. It doesn't seek to convince. It doesn't even seek to be understood. It exists independently of our approval. It will continue to function whether we like it or not, whether we understand it or not. This autonomy is perhaps the most difficult thing for societies accustomed to controlling everything, explaining everything, and regulating everything to accept.

The real Bitcoin scandal, therefore, is not what it enables, but what it reveals. It reveals the extent of the structural lie in which we live. It reveals our dependence on the fiction of trust. It reveals our difficulty in accepting a system that treats us neither as children nor as citizens, but simply as participants responsible for our own choices.

Bitcoin doesn't promise a better world. It doesn't even promise a different world. It promises one thing, implicitly, by its very existence: that the rules won't change to save you. That no one will rewrite history for you. That reality won't be manipulated to make it more bearable.

And that's why he's so disturbing. Because he doesn't lie. Because he's never lied. Because he has no reason to start. And because he will continue, block after block, to operate in a world that prefers illusions to the naked truth.