This article was published in Bitcoin Magazine “The question of inscription.” Click here For your annual subscription to Bitcoin Magazine.
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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the saddest of them all? Is it the JPEG people? Or is it Laser Aid Maxis? Or is it both?
The Bitcoin ecosystem has always been ideological in nature; It's an inherent part of it. It takes a certain degree of stubbornness or dogma to get involved in something like Bitcoin early on and show the kind of conviction needed to stay on the journey. Bitcoin is almost 15 years old, and a lot of new people who are just getting into the space in the last few years don't really understand how dramatically different the whole landscape was even just five years ago.
You used to be able to insert a $50 bill into a Bitcoin ATM and get 0.25 BTC for it with nothing but a phone number, no filters or restrictions on copy numbers and no KYC attached. There have been no nation states adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. The only attempts made by the ETF were 100% guaranteed to be rejected without a chance for serious consideration or approval. Lightning was still just a vague concept and nothing had been published in the real world. You had to be at least a little dogmatic to even consider for a moment investing any significant amount of your net worth in Bitcoin; There was no real indication of its success at all other than belief in its determination. If you didn't have that, you probably wouldn't survive today. At the very least, you're going in and out the door frequently enough to end up with much less money than you would have if you stayed put.
That doctrine was essential, as without it the people who built this ecosystem into what it is today would not have had the motivation to do so. Without this doctrine, these people would not have the customers and users to build anything for in the first place. It was the foundation of everything we have around us today.
And now the inevitable happens: the foundation cracks.
Which church do you go to?
The thing about doctrine is that it often begins to crack; The growth of discontent and dissent within the existing doctrine does not die, but rather multiplies. This growth outwardly tends to reinforce existing orthodoxy within those who remain. When people in Europe began to turn ideologically away from the Catholic Church, they did not destroy it, but rather split up and created their own church with their own conflicting doctrine. There was no death and decline of the Catholic Church as it faded into insignificance; Instead, the Protestant Reformation led to the spread of many conflicting ideologies with their own doctrine existing alongside the Catholic Church.
The 16th-century Protestant Reformation is always portrayed as the first major schism from the Catholic Church, portraying life before Martin Luther as a peaceful environment of submission to the church. But this is not the historical truth. The Great Schism that led to the split between the Catholic Church and what became the Eastern Orthodox Church occurred approximately 500 years before Martin Luther's famous theses.
What was the first domino to fall in the chain reaction that led to the schism? The Pope informed churches in southern Italy that held their Masses in Greek that they must begin holding their Masses in Latin. From here, the differences multiplied. Is it permissible to use unleavened bread in the sacrament of the Eucharist? The West thought so; The East disagreed. Should priests remain celibate? The West thought they should, but the East disagreed again.
This eventually culminated in the sending of a papal envoy to Constantinople, where the head of the clergy in the East, the Ecumenical Patriarch, expressed these disagreements directly to the Pope. During the meetings in Constantinople, disagreements reached the point where the head of the envoy deprived the Patriarch, and the Patriarch excommunicated the members of the envoy. This fracture was never healed, and led to the permanent schism between the Catholic Church and what later became the Eastern Orthodox Church.
This division is not unlike the division between small barriers and large barriers that culminated in a schism of sorts at the end of the Blocksize Wars of 2017. Both Catholics and disparate Eastern believers worshiped God. They both agreed on the holy divinity of Jesus Christ. There was no disagreement or divisions over basic fundamental facts like those, just as both small and large blockers alike wanted Bitcoin to succeed and grow into a dominant economic force in the world. They simply disagreed on how to do it.
They had exactly the same goal, but differences in ideas about how to achieve it led to an irreconcilable schism that lasted six years (or over a thousand years in the case of the churches). At least they captured the prevailing orthodoxy, right? mistake. The number of Catholics today is estimated at one billion people, compared to about 200 million people who belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church. In both cases, despite the creation of a new faith that brought together a large number of religious believers, neither the Orthodox Church nor the Great Monarchs destroyed or incorporated the previously existing faith.
Breaking News at 10: When you tell someone that everything they believe about the universe around them is wrong, they dig deeper into their pre-existing beliefs.
Protestant abhorrence of indulgences
Now that we've established that Protestants were not the first to deviate from the Catholic Church, let's look at what actually happened to provoke the harsh reaction from Audi, I mean Martin Luther: Indulgences – the idea that you can only pay your debts your way to the forgiveness of your sins. A common phrase attributed to the Declaration of Indulgences often cited as one of the things that finally pushed Luther over the edge is: “As soon as the coin rings in the box, the soul springs from purgatory into heaven.” This is how Catholic priests boldly push the idea that by giving money to the church, you will automatically be absolved of your sins.
“Just follow these simple, easy steps to find your guaranteed economic salvation.” Look familiar? Just average the cost in dollars, just read this book, just follow these simple steps and you will be guaranteed to find your salvation. Just having 0.1 Bitcoin guarantees you a seat at the table as a member of the New World Order economic elite. Such promises are entirely illusory, and the similarities between this kind of proselytizing and the Catholic practice of indulgences are too stark to be denied.
Under this analogy I would say that the JPEG people represent Protestants. They are a group of Bitcoin users who are fed up with the idea that “this simple trick” is enough to guarantee one’s financial success using Bitcoin. They are particularly tired of so much energy in this space dedicated to catering to this situation and narrative. I honestly can't blame them, and I agree with some of the things they criticize and get upset about.
Not only has the dominant attitude in this area become that no one needs to really do anything for Bitcoin to succeed, but many people with this attitude actively attack, FUD, and stonewall efforts or ideas to address Bitcoin's shortcomings that could lead to its failure. . I've talked about this dynamic and the problems aggravating it many times over the years. It is not at all surprising to me to see the emergence of a new subculture and a new ideology in this space that defines itself by opposing this blind attitude to inevitable success.
Here's a cold, hard reality check: As I said before, the Protestant Reformation neither eclipsed nor erased the Catholic Church. Even with a population estimated at 800 million to 1 billion people—roughly the same size as the Catholic population—Protestants have not marginalized the Catholic Church. The Pope remains one of the most listened to and respected religious figures around the world. Catholicism is still observed throughout the world.
And the funniest part? Shortly after Martin Luther's death, the church prohibited the exchange of money for the forgiveness of a person's sins. What does this teach us? Although the main reason for Protestants to leave and form their own faith was already addressed and forbidden by the Church, they did not return. why is that? The other factor I just mentioned is that the Protestant population is about a billion people; They are not all one group or creed. Protestants continued to split and divide, forming a wide range of conflicting and contradictory doctrines over the years. They did not survive or grow into a single competitive group competing with Catholicism.
Opposition begets opposition
Does it now make sense why Catholicism has not been usurped or incorporated into new doctrines? Nothing ever grew to the size it could in reality, the pre-existing doctrine didn't just sit around the content and not change; It has developed around an opposition strong enough to incite large numbers of people to challenge it and leave it. If some aspect of the current doctrine is so objectionable and disagreeable with people that people discourage its accuracy, then the current doctrine will eventually change to recognize that. From a cold, logical point of view, it's just a matter of survival.
What about the new doctrines that were born before that period of adaptation and development? They persisted and did not simply return to their original belief after compromising their disagreement. But this opposition, this acceptance of it, and the fact that the new doctrine was actually defined to some extent by it, became aggravated. This encouraged people who had adapted to the new doctrine to oppose even that, and the cycle repeated itself. This is why there is no single “Protestant” faith. You have Lutherans, Calvanists, Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and so on. The list goes on and on.
We've seen the same thing with the big blockers. First, Bitcoin Cash holders broke away from Bitcoin. After that, Bitcoin Cash split into Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV. They both had numerous splits between them since that point. Why would anyone expect JPEG people to be any different? They also often identify themselves as “against” laser eyes. They cheer themselves on as “doing what laser eyes can't do” while patting themselves on the back for incentivizing adoption. They also seem to rely a large portion of their companions on “having laser eyes.” Their doctrine is defined almost entirely by its existence as the opposite of the Laser Eyes doctrine.
For this reason, in all likelihood, this new doctrine will not have any long-term cultural impact as it exists today. There is nothing with which it can define itself in a vacuum. Every Christian ostensibly stands on his faith in Jesus Christ, but many denominations define this faith by standing in contrast to the Catholic Church. What is that in terms of the basis of belief? What is this person really defining in terms of goals, motivations, or net productive output?
The members of JPEG claim that they are here to “make bitcoin fun again”, and to get people involved and interested in using it, and it's undeniable that there are a large number of people in this community who already live by that. But in my experience there are far more people who define themselves by their actions as simply being there to “have laser eyes.” This does not produce anything of value. This doesn't actually inspire people with vision.
Movements, creeds, cultures, any of those things that are defined only by their opposition to other movements, creeds, or cultures, lose their identity the moment the thing they exist in opposition to is defeated. To create a lasting and transformative cultural shift, there must be a foundation of identity that can exist on its own.
So what is the identity of people who do not have laser eyes? Is there even one there when you take that away?
This article was published in Bitcoin Magazine “The question of inscription.” Click here For your annual subscription to Bitcoin Magazine.
Click here to download a PDF of this article.
