HUMANS ARE THE BUG, ​​NOT BITCOIN

There is something profoundly revealing in the way modern societies explain their own failures. When a system collapses, when an institution loses credibility, when a technology causes more harm than good, the search for a culprit almost always leads in the same direction. The framework is blamed. The law. The tool. The architecture. As if the problem must necessarily lie outside of humanity, located somewhere within the mechanism itself, and not in those who design, operate, and misuse it. This tendency is not innocent. It is a strategy for intellectual survival. To admit that the problem is humanity, and not the system, would be to acknowledge that the same patterns will repeat themselves indefinitely, regardless of the tools employed. It would also imply accepting a deeply uncomfortable limitation: no amount of technological improvement, institutional reform, or moral innovation will be enough to eliminate certain behaviors. They are structural. They always return.

Human history is replete with evidence of this. Institutions are rarely born corrupt. They are born with charters, rules, and stated intentions. They promise stability, justice, and protection. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, something shifts. Not a sudden collapse, but a series of small adjustments. An exception granted for practical reasons. A waiver justified by urgency. A concentration of power presented as temporary. Until the rule is nothing more than a facade, and the real system operates elsewhere, out of public view. This process is neither accidental nor exceptional. It is inherent in any structure that relies on the human capacity to respect rules that it itself has the power to modify. Where there is the possibility of adjustment, there is the temptation to abuse. Where there is temptation, abuse inevitably occurs. This is not a matter of individual morality. It is a matter of power dynamics.

Finance is the clearest example, perhaps because it concentrates technology, abstraction, and real impact on human lives. Originally conceived as a tool for coordination and anticipation, it has gradually transformed into an architecture of capture: capture of information, capture of value, capture of risk. The mechanisms have become more complex, not to serve the collective interest, but to mask the growing asymmetry between those who understand the system and those who are subject to it. Deliberately opaque products, rules written by those who benefit from them, losses collectiveized, gains privatized. None of this is the result of a technical glitch. It is all the product of perfectly rational human behavior within a permissive framework. When a small number of individuals possess the power to change the rules, they always end up adapting them to their advantage, then justifying these adaptations with sophisticated narratives.

Cryptocurrency, often presented as a radical break, has not escaped this pattern. It has simply offered a faster, more visible, more brutal version. Where traditional finance took decades to institutionalize its excesses, the crypto ecosystem has condensed them into a few years. Hypertrophied egos, charismatic founders, unrealistic promises, aggressive marketing, bought influence, empty projects propelled by grandiose narratives. The same bug, replayed with new tools. This observation is essential because it dispels a persistent illusion. The problem is not the lack of regulation, nor excessive freedom, nor the immaturity of the technology. The problem is humanity placed in a system where it can influence the rules to its own advantage. Always. Everywhere. Regardless of the era.

Faced with this recurring pattern, many nevertheless continue to search for a moral solution. More virtuous governance. Better financial education. Increased transparency. Intelligent regulation. Behind these proposals lies the same implicit belief: the idea that humans, properly guided, will eventually behave differently. History has never validated this hypothesis, but it continues to be repeated because it is reassuring. Bitcoin does not share this belief. Bitcoin is not based on the hope of collective moral improvement. It does not bet on the wisdom of crowds, nor on the virtue of elites, nor on the ethics of leaders. It starts from a more austere, but infinitely more stable, observation: human nature will not change. People will cheat if they have the opportunity. They will concentrate power if they can. They will justify their abuses with narratives, emergencies, exceptions. Always.

Bitcoin, therefore, does not seek to correct humanity. It frames it. This statement encapsulates the fundamental difference between Bitcoin and virtually all the systems that preceded it. Where others rely on trust in human intention, Bitcoin relies on structured distrust. It does not attempt to make humanity better. It simply removes the ability to violate the central rule. It does not moralize. It locks in. The rules are predefined. They are public. They are verifiable. They execute without interpretation, without arbitration, without the possibility of suspension. They recognize neither social status, nor political influence, nor economic hardship. They do not know who you are. They do not know why you act. They know only one thing: the state of the system at any given moment.

This coldness is shocking because it runs counter to the way humans have always exercised power. Human societies love exceptions. They love the possibility of intervening, correcting, and adjusting the rule in the name of a greater good. But it is precisely in this space that all abuses arise. Every exception creates a precedent. Every precedent weakens the rule. And every weakening paves the way for the next abuse.

Bitcoin closes off this space. It knows neither context, nor urgency, nor good intentions. It doesn't understand narratives. It doesn't recognize justifications. It doesn't react to fear, anger, or compassion. It applies the rule. And it lets the consequences run their course. This willful ignorance is often perceived as a lack of humanity. It is, in reality, a safeguard against human ingenuity when it is used to serve self-interest. This doesn't mean that Bitcoin prevents all abuses. It doesn't prevent greed, speculation, or the scams built on its periphery. It doesn't prevent human error. It doesn't claim to purify anything. It prevents one specific thing, and one thing only: the discretionary modification of the monetary rule by a minority.

It's not spectacular. But it's decisive. In a world where almost everything rests on the ability of a few to bend the rules to their advantage, a system that refuses to adapt becomes an anomaly. It deprives humans of their favorite tool: justification. It no longer allows them to say that something was necessary, temporary, or exceptional. It applies the rule, and that's all. Bitcoin doesn't protect people from themselves. It protects the rule from people. This distinction is fundamental, and it explains why so many critics miss the point. They criticize Bitcoin for not preventing what no system has ever prevented: deviant human behavior. But that's not its function. Its function is more modest, and therefore more robust: to provide a framework where such behavior cannot contaminate the core of the system.

Bitcoin is not a utopia. It doesn't promise a better world. It doesn't promise justice. It doesn't promise equality. It promises something far more limited, and therefore more credible: the predictable execution of a rule in a hostile environment. Where other systems collapse because they demand too much virtue, Bitcoin holds because it demands none. It doesn't wait for humanity to become better. It organizes itself as if it never will. This stance offends human pride. It rejects the promise of a morally superior future. It rejects the narrative of inevitable ethical progress. It simply states that some flaws are structural, and that it's better to work around them than to deny them. It's a disenchanted, but profoundly realistic, vision.

Bitcoin won't save humanity. It won't fix it. It won't purify it. It does something more discreet, but more lasting. It limits the damage to a specific area. It freezes a rule where humanity would always have eventually bent it. And in a world saturated with systems based on trust, this lack of trust is perhaps its most honest contribution. Humans will remain the bug. Bitcoin won't try to fix them. It will continue. Block after block.