Bitcoiners are obsessed with fixing the money. If pressed as to why, they'll probably give you this slogan: fix the money, fix the world.
The slogan isn’t quite right. The world is messed up in many ways. Though unjust and unwise monetary institutions play some role throughout — funding war, exasperating financial crises, extending wealth inequality, and more — they are not the root of all evil.
But there is, in the neighborhood, another slogan that is closer to the truth: if you don't fix the money, you won't fix the world.
Fixing the money is no panacea. But it's a necessary start.
This has always been the bitcoin way: build slowly, paying special attention to bitcoin's potential as a money for all. Payments (think here of the Lightning network) and savings (on-chain holding) come first — and only later, other functionality. Apps, wallets, hardware and software, all are bent towards one goal: making bitcoin a better money, and one useful for all.
Bitcoin’s solid monetary foundations don’t just include its payments infrastructure – wallets, Lightning, and so on. They also include its fair founding, its busy miners who protect the network from fraudulent double-spending, and its unwavering monetary policy that gives users assurances about future issuance.
A better money, useful for all, predictable and unwavering – this mission can sound boring. In fact it is anything but. Money is the foundation. A firm foundation makes for pleasing buildings that will last. What's built atop a shaky foundation, by contrast, is itself prone to failure – or results that frustrate the ambitions of its creators.
Alternative cryptocurrency networks often take a different approach. Instead of building up a base monetary layer, with wide distribution, steady policy, and a fair founding, they build fast. They add functionality, allowing for layer upon layer of financial complexity — token trading, leverage, options, and more. But all of these protocols are built atop shifting foundations — monetary policies subject to sharp and unpredictable change, consensus layers subject to capture by the token-rich, and insider allocations of protocol tokens that distort incentives and governance. Alternative approaches don’t seem to aim at fixing the money, in other words. Their efforts are directed, instead, at crafting new layers built atop the money.
For the impatient, colorful rotating towers and turrets built atop alternative foundations beckon. But sturdy foundations have their own attraction too, even when the buildings atop them are a little less flashy. For those interested in changing the world for the better, bitcoin’s fix the money first approach is the way to go.
