fnew on Nostr: Imagine a company that began with no external funding of any kind, and which ...

Imagine a company that began with no external funding of any kind, and which initially made no money at all. In fact, running this company would cost money, in the form of electricity bills. It has no marketing budget, no lobbyists, no highly paid consultants, and for a very long time its product has no market value. It is subjected to relentless and irrational attacks in the media, from politicians, and from those in banking and finance who begin to suspect that its product may disintermediate or replace them.

But it endures; and its product begins to monetise in real time, even in the face of this determined resistance, and without any external assistance aside from those who begin to believe in its thesis.

Bitcoin, of course, is not a company. But it has arisen from nothing, in the face of unified attacks from across the established world, and it continues to be attacked – fruitlessly – to this day. In some senses, we can say that Bitcoin actually needs these attacks in order to prove its thesis; that it is an unstoppable monetary and messaging network that no one can kill or shut down. If it were to crumble in the face of its opposition, then it would not be fit for purpose.

Bitcoin and the mythological Hydra have much in common. Slaying the Hydra was one of the Labours of Heracles, and one of the hardest; each time he cut off a head, three more grew in its place. He was able to triumph – or so he thought – with the help of his nephew Iolaus, who assisted him in burning the stumps and preventing new heads growing back. Heracles then dipped his arrows in the Hydra’s blood, and they remained a deadly, poisonous weapon during the rest of his life.

But the Hydra had the last laugh in the end. The centaur Nessus, felled by one of those poisoned arrows, begged Heracles’ wife Deianira to soak a robe in his blood as a ‘love potion’ and to give it to Heracles if ever his love wavered. When at last she put it on him, the Hydra’s venom ignited and devoured Heracles – the creature reached back out of the past and brought down the most powerful man of the ancient world.

Governments across the world have tried to ban or kill Bitcoin. So far, all have failed.

Central and commercial bankers mock Bitcoin daily. Each day that Bitcoin survives, producing new blocks and transferring value across the globe, they look more and more foolish.

We want Bitcoin’s enemies to understand that they cannot kill it, and they cannot turn it off. It is here, with us in the world, and it cannot now be uninvented.

And with this understanding, we want them to find a way to work with Bitcoin, not against it. To understand its many benefits, and to use them for all our interests, in our financial, energy and infrastructure systems.

They do not need to fight the Hydra and don the robe of Nessus – there is another way.