Our manifesto
We know the problem. Central and commercial banks constantly create fiat currency out of thin air to enrich themselves and the Wall Street elites around them at the expense of everyday people who buy less and less with each paycheck.
We know that fiat currency stakeholders are incentivized not to change. Bitcoin’s success means that it will render fiat currency worthless - and that means central banks, governments, and a lot of powerful corporations can no longer benefit from unlimited money creation. As a result, they have an incentive to spread disengenuous information about bitcoin and the vital role of its energy use.
We know the bitcoin community is overwhelmingly motivated by a sense of progress, fairness, and good intentions. Many advocates are vocal about addressing false narratives about bitcoin’s energy use. The dream of so many Bitcoiners is within reach - but only if the industry gets serious about spreading factual information and helping people understand why bitcoin is the only thing that can fix the money and break fiat currency's dominance.
We know sound money requires energy to work. Fiat currencies are extremely easy to produce. It only requires adding digits in a central database. Gold functioned as sound money for thousands of years because its production required energy and therefore couldn’t be inflated. Similarly, the requirement to use energy to mine bitcoin guarantees its scarcity.
We know the bitcoin protocol can only be changed by its users. Unlike central banks or Ethereum, bitcoin isn’t controlled by a small group of people - it’s controlled by all of its users. They are distributed all around the world - with estimates ranging anywhere from 16,000 to 100,000 nodes. Developers improve the software, however, they can't force any changes the users don't to want to adopt, since users choose what version of the software they run. Unlike Ethereum, backwards compatibility is a core premise of bitcoin development. It guarantees each user's freedom to reject an upgrade and protects the protocol's consensus mechanism.
We know that bitcoins’ energy use is not a “waste”. Bitcoin doesn't just waste energy. Proof of Work creates an unchangeable transaction history. The nodes of the network by default only trust the version of that history that has the most work (computation) behind it. This removes the requirement to trust an external source of truth. Because Proof of Work requires energy, it's rooted in pure physics and no one can falsify or cheat it. Bitcoin’s unique properties help refugees keep their hard-earned money when fleeing to safer countries, it helps families send money overseas without paying exorbitant remittance fees, and it helps everyday people protect their savings against inflation and confiscation. Just like the energy use of computers, refrigerators, and air conditioners isn’t a waste, neither is bitcoin's.
We call on leaders in tech and finance to check their financial privilege and stop misrepresenting bitcoin and the crucial role of its energy use.
