WHY WE SHOULD NO LONGER “TRUST”
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Imagine. You have the winning lottery ticket. Not a small win, not a sum to be squandered in a weekend, but the absolute jackpot, the one that propels you into another life. 250 million euros. In your hands, a rectangle of paper that captures your children's future, the promise of everything you've ever wanted. And then, the accident. An operation, a temporary coma, an emergency that forces you to give that ticket to someone else. Your best friend, your brother, your spouse, it doesn't matter. At that precise moment, you understand what trust is: putting your most precious possession into the hands of a third party, hoping they won't betray you.
The problem is that our entire society operates this way. Every day, we entrust our lottery tickets, our salaries, our savings, our transactions, our data to trusted third parties. Banks, insurers, governments, platforms. We do it almost mechanically, because it's the natural order of things, because we've been taught that it's the only way to guarantee security. And every day, we forget that this gesture is not neutral: it contains the risk of betrayal, the risk of misappropriation, the risk of abuse.
Trust is a convenient illusion. It's sold to us as a social glue, but it's only a mask for an imbalance. In the world of fiat money, we have no choice but to entrust. Our bank deposits aren't really ours; they're a promise of restitution as long as the bank wants it, as long as the state doesn't decide otherwise, as long as a crisis doesn't trigger capital controls. Our money is a lottery ticket we've given to a third party in the hope that they'll return it when the time comes. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they can't. Sometimes they won't.
History is saturated with these moments when trust has shifted. The 1930s and the bank runs, when panicked crowds rushed to the teller machines to withdraw what, in theory, already belonged to them. Cyprus in 2013, where bank deposits were frozen and cut by political decision. Argentina, Venezuela, Lebanon: so many examples where the promise of restitution evaporated overnight. And each time, the institutions invoked necessity, urgency, the common good. The trusted third party chose for you, in the name of stability. You had nothing to say, only to suffer.
Bitcoin was born from this observation: as long as we trust, we do not possess. As long as we hand over our keys, our assets, our rights to a third party, we remain dependent on their good faith. And good faith is a rare, fragile, and perishable resource. Satoshi Nakamoto understood that the only way to solve the problem was not to find better third parties, but to eliminate the third party. Build a system where trust is no longer necessary, where the rule is written into the protocol, where verification replaces belief.
It's a silent revolution. Bitcoin is often referred to as a speculative asset, a digital gold, but its most radical promise lies elsewhere: the ability to hold without entrusting. “Not your keys, not your coins.” This phrase has become a mantra, a rule of hygiene, a brutal reminder: if your bitcoins are on a platform, they are not yours. You entrusted them, like your lottery ticket entrusted to a friend. Maybe they'll return them to you, maybe they'll disappear with them. Maybe a judge will decide you no longer have a right to them. Maybe a bug, a bankruptcy, a hack will swallow them up. The promise is not possession.
The extra third isn't just the bank. It's all the structures that have interposed themselves between the individual and value. Every bank card, every transfer, every direct debit is a delegation. Every time, we entrust. Even our salaries aren't paid directly; they pass through channels, accounts, and mechanisms over which we have no control. If tomorrow an authority decides that you are "non-compliant," it can block it. Not by attacking you directly, but by closing the third parties to whom you have entrusted your keys.
One might think this risk is abstract, that it only concerns dictatorships or countries in crisis. But the signs are accumulating. Accounts frozen for political reasons, donations blocked because they don't please, transactions refused because they don't fit the boxes. The trusted third party gradually becomes the controlling third party. The initial trust turns into surveillance. The promise becomes a condition.
Bitcoin eliminates this third party. Radically. The private key is the fault line. If you own it, you are sovereign. If you don't, you are a tenant. It's as simple as that. And this simplicity is incredibly violent for the established order. It removes the monopoly on custody from the state and the banks. It makes possible, on an individual level, what seemed reserved for the powerful: to own without asking permission, to transfer without depending on a third party, to store without an intermediary.
But this freedom comes at a price: responsibility. Holding your keys means accepting that you won't be able to call customer support if you lose them. It means accepting that individual error can be costly. Many shy away from this risk. They prefer to trust, because trusting is more comfortable. But this comfort is a trap: it recreates exactly the dependency that Bitcoin wanted to abolish. The trusted third party returns through the back door, in the form of centralized exchanges, custodial solutions, and "Bitcoin" cards that are actually just IOUs. And each time, history repeats itself: hacks, bankruptcies, hijackings. FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, Mt. Gox. The names change, the story remains. The extra third party always ends up betraying.
Why then do we continue to entrust? Because we have been educated to do so. Our entire monetary culture is based on the idea that an intermediary is necessary. Our salaries go through the bank, our payments through Visa, our contracts through a notary, our property titles through an official registry. We have learned to believe that without these third parties, there is no guarantee. Bitcoin breaks this conditioning. It does not remove the guarantee, it displaces it. The guarantee is no longer the good faith of a third party, it is the transparency of the protocol.
The extra third is also the one that infantilizes us. The one that tells us, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything.” But this “everything” includes your autonomy, your choices, your room for maneuver. To entrust is to renounce. Bitcoin doesn’t want you to renounce. It wants your maturity. That’s why it’s tough. That’s why it demands learning, making mistakes, starting over. It doesn’t offer the crutch of delegation. It offers the raw power of ownership.
History may remember that Bitcoin was not just a currency, but a philosophical lesson: it taught us that trust is a luxury we can no longer afford. That every time we entrust, we give away more than assets: we give away our freedom. And that a system without third parties is not a utopia, but a reality that ticks by, block after block. The extra third party was never necessary. It was only practical. And like any overly convenient practice, it ended up becoming a servitude. The future will not belong to those who entrust, but to those who verify. To those who hold their own keys. To those who refuse the entrusted note, and who choose to keep it in their hands, whatever the cost.
Bitcoin hasn't abolished trust. It's redistributed it. No longer vertical, imposed from above, but horizontal, shared among peers. And in this world, a third party is finally too much.
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