I don't have faith in Bitcoin. I have conviction.

Faith, to me, is belief in the absence of evidence. When you have evidence, you no longer need faith.

I don’t have faith in archeologists. I understand that old translations and advanced forensic techniques reveal true things about the past. Ancient humans possessed our same biological drive to act in pursuit of their values, and those values can be determined by what our ancestors made, what they traded for, and what they used as currency. The adoption of agricultural societies allowed for generational stored value, and the constant need to protect stored value created an arms race for which tribe could become the largest and most powerful.

I don’t have faith in historians. I understand that empires were formed when one tribe was better organized and more numerous than their rivals. Humans evolved in the context of groups under 150 people though, and could not rely on a genetic adaptation to coordinate into civilizations. Currency was an invention as fundamental as language for allowing individuals to communicate and and cooperate in larger groups to satisfy common goals. We can induce the ubiquitous presence of gold and silver correlating with larger empires and better organization, and use that knowledge to deduce the unique properties of sound money which gold and silver best satisfy: durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability.

I don’t have faith in economics. I understand how division of labor, free markets, and the protection of private property create the conditions which allow maximum human freedom and organization, building an empire to outcompete any totalitarian state. I understand that there are no contradictions in reality, and that the insights in one domain must be integrated with those of another, so that truth can be found where they meet. And every truth I know about the world converges on Bitcoin.

I don’t have faith in Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn’t need my faith any more than gold had to be worshipped to retain its properties as a monetary metal. Instead I have conviction in the inevitability of natural selection, the efficacy of reason, the aspiration of freedom, and myself for recognizing truth when I see it.

A cult demands faith.

Bitcoin incentivizes reason.