Books are among the cornerstones of Bitcoin education. They introduce newcomers and show how multilayered and profound the subject of Bitcoin is. This statement is true for almost all books, with one major exception: Softwar by Jason P. Lowery.

When a projected Bitcoin logo shone on the ECB building in Frankfurt late in the evening at the end of March, the central bank’s employees had long since gone to bed. They missed a special moment that didn’t make it into the mainstream media, but went viral on Twitter. It was a startling moment. But not a revolution. The gatekeepers didn’t notice any intruders.

Bitcoin is mystical, transforms energy into money, creates its own time calculation, encrypts and decrypts information, and contains symbolism. Some of this is reminiscent of the obscure secret doctrine of alchemy, which has been practiced for several thousand years in various places around the world.

The level of contempt that Bitcoin attracts is unparalleled and cannot be explained rationally. Bitcoin seems to embody a primal human fear of innovation. Where that comes from and how humanity has dealt with it over the past 2000 years is the subject of this article. 

The discussion of whether Bitcoin is right-wing or left-wing has been circulating on social media for quite some time. And it's unsurprisingly controversial. Some Bitcoiners are instantly rejecting because it seems absurd. Isn't Bitcoin simply a technology that treats everyone the same? Doesn't it just work? But that's not the whole story.

This framing is about showing why Bitcoin is much more than a singular and disruptive technology. After all, Nakamoto's "peer-to-peer cash system" doesn't simply exist and is consequently used by many. It is almost the other way around: only the cooperation of all participants results in the secure, neutral and decentralized money system. 

The comparison of money and language is not new, neither in relation to Bitcoin nor to money in general. As early as the 17th century, the English philosopher John Locke noted that the manipulation of silver coins he observed was accompanied by a collapse of the public vocabulary. For him, words were “coins of intellectual exchange.”

Some of Bitcoin’s properties sound abstract. It’s all about digital ownership, censorship resistance, decentralization, and more. But the deeper you dig into the Bitcoin rabbit hole, the more you realize that Nakamoto even implemented some of what are actually mutually exclusive properties.

Bitcoiners are among the few people who make a cult out of spending as little money as possible in our current consumer culture. With memes like "Stacking Sats," "Hodl," or "BTFD" ("buy the fucking dip"), they not only intelligently overcome the emotions of the market. But, there's much more to it: It's the rebirth of a savings culture.

The purpose of this article is to show why #Bitcoin represents the first and only economic measurement system of humankind. The particular challenges it overcame are similar to those presented themselves in length measurement history. This is why the development of the metric system is a fascinating analogy.