It has been suggested recently that bitcoin needs a philosophy. All money has natural ties to the culture that it was developed in. That’s why money is almost always stamped or printed with presidents, kings, and queens from the past or in some cases, the present. Even commemorative coins are stamped with an image of a location or national figure, like Amelia Earhart or Mozart. That in turn ties them in a way to the philosophy of whatever nation they come from.
Bitcoin of course is different. It has no nation that it is tied to. Nor does it have a physical form. It’s utterly intangible in that way. However, does that mean it doesn’t have a philosophy?
When Satoshi Nakamoto first invented Bitcoin and blockchain back in the early 2000s he started a revolution. Deploying a decentralized and anonymized financial system allows people to operate independently of governments and central banks. Like many revolutions it began with the idea of putting power back in the hands of the people, of letting them look after themselves.
The Bitcoin revolution differs quite a bit from other revolutions of the past though. While most revolutions at least began with the notion of securing rights for the people, all too quickly that revolution becomes something else. It often happens that the would-be revolutionaries turn the power they just won over to the government they just toppled. Or, even more common, they forget their own principles when they become the ones in charge. Instead of using their new power and freedom to secure rights for everyone, they use it to punish their enemies. So, how is bitcoin different?
Bitcoin does have a philosophy and it is that philosophy that differentiates from most revolutions. That philosophy is to encourage individuals to take responsibility for themselves and their own well-being. Bitcoin and blockchain give people the tools they need to break away from the manipulated and volatile currencies controlled by the FED and other central banks. What’s more, it is a lot harder to corrupt the Bitcoin system. That’s because it has no real leader, no centralized power structure. Because its transactions are verified by separate nodes around the globe, it can’t really be co-opted either. Its philosophy of encouraging personal responsibility remains intact regardless of what is going on in the rest of the world.
A skeptic might be thinking “yeah, that’s great, but Bitcoin is still very volatile”. That depends on your measure. When people point that out, they are usually referring to Bitcoin’s value against the US dollar. That has definitely gone up and down but it only really matters to people who are interested in getting rich by buying and selling currencies. Well, good for them but the point of Bitcoin and blockchain isn’t to get rich. It’s to make the world better by empowering individuals and giving them the tools to improve their own lives.
That’s why TARTLE uses Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency’s philosophy of encourage personal responsibility is fully compatible with our own. While we focus on empowering people by giving them control over their own data to sell or not based on what they think is best for them, Bitcoin gives people the chance to buy, sell, and trade without being tracked and taxed for everything. By putting these too different systems with similar philosophies together in our marketplace, we are doing more than just creating a new data management tool. We, TARTLE and those who join us, are joining a revolution, one that promises to change the way we look at data, money, and our own responsibility over ourselves.
What’s your data worth?
