The Zen of Knowing Your Opinion on Bitcoin Doesn’t Matter

THE ZEN OF KNOWING YOUR OPINION ON BITCOIN DOESN’T MATTER

At the end of the day, the fact that our opinion has no bearing on Bitcoin is a good thing.

Bitcoin doesn’t care about your opinion — or mine.

And neither do the world’s leaders.

You also may not care about my opinion. You don’t need to, but here it is anyway.

It’s my opinion that the fact that Bitcoin doesn’t care about our opinions is a good thing.

And it’s also my opinion that the fact that the world’s leaders don’t care about our opinions is not a good thing.

How can I declare it good when Bitcoin does one thing and bad when our leaders do the same? This is because of two other very important facts: The first is that world leaders do care about their own opinions, and so their opinions do matter when ours don’t. The second is that, although Bitcoin doesn’t care about your or my opinion, it also doesn’t give a single flying fluff about our world leaders’ opinions either.

And at the end of the day, that’s what makes Bitcoin so awesome.

The great dream of democracy was that our opinions mattered — yours and mine. But let’s face it, they don’t. Seriously, think about it for a second: It’s kind of silly to imagine that the world would or should care about your opinion. In fact, it’s pretty arrogant. Who are you to have your opinion matter when there are 7.7 billion other people out there with their own opinions. Don’t be mad at them. None of their opinions matter, either. Not unless they happen to be one of those leaders who gets to make the rules and change them.

And there’s no one even to blame, including those leaders. It’s not like our leaders could somehow manage the massive economic-industrial-agricultural-military-political complex around your opinion — never mind everyone else’s — even if they wanted to.

So, all I’m trying to say is, don’t be upset that your opinion doesn’t matter. Accept it. You’ll find a lot more peace in that. Think of all the pointless arguments you’d avoid if you kept your opinion to yourself.

When we first realize that our opinions don’t matter, we can get quite irate. But let’s not despair. We have a solution to this problem. And the solution isn’t to figure out how to get a few more people’s opinions to matter. The solution is, surprisingly, to make sure that nobody’s opinion matters.

Once again, Bitcoin comes to the rescue to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem with an unimaginably creative fix. It just says, “You humans, go ahead and have all the opinions you want. I don’t want to hear about it.” And that’s that.

That’s pretty good. Like a stern and fair parent, Bitcoin is basically laying down the law and telling politicians, central bankers, and economists: “Stop stealing from your brothers and sisters. I don’t want to hear your justifications.”

If some economist has a wonderful opinion about how much more money should be printed, his opinion doesn’t matter to Bitcoin.

If another one says he’s got a better idea for how we should use energy, it doesn’t matter to Bitcoin.

The leader of some countries might be of the opinion that citizens should surrender more of their wealth to him. Doesn’t matter to Bitcoin.

A central bank chairman might have the opinion that the cost of borrowing money should double. This does not matter one bit to Bitcoin.

In Bitcoin, all those leaders’ opinions don’t matter either. So now we’ve got a fair, level playing field. We’ve got rules that apply to us all. Rules that don’t change. And even though our opinions don’t matter, that’s okay — no, not just okay — that’s great!

That’s great because nobody else’s opinions matter either. So I don’t have to worry about what their opinions are. In fact, I don’t have to care about the fact that they don’t care about my opinions. What a load off my shoulders this whole thing is. I can finally stop worrying about other people’s opinions. Sure, I might want to hear their opinions, but it won’t be because I’m worried that their opinion might lead to some policy that would hurt me. So I can be chill and reply to it just like the Dude in “The Big Lebowski” did when he said, “Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

This is a guest post by Tomer Strolight. Opinions expressed are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.