Qualitative and quantitative parallels between Bitcoin and Protestantism.

“To foresee the future, one must know the past, for the events of this world have at all times links with the times that preceded them. Created by men animated by the same passions, these events must necessarily have the same results.” Niccolo Machiavelli, 1517.

In 2019 Tuur Demeester draws a parallel between the Protestant Reformation and the rise of Bitcoin. ^[1]. This parallelism, from a theoretical point of view, makes sense. During the Renaissance, a technological innovation – the Gutenberg printing press – made it possible to challenge the monopoly of a central authority: the papacy’s monopoly of faith. A part of the population under the authority of this central power decided to do without it. The Bible was printed and read directly by the faithful. Today, a similar phenomenon is taking place. A technological innovation, the Internet, makes it possible to challenge the monopoly of a central authority: the monetary monopoly of the central banks. A part of the population – the Bitcoiners – decides to bypass the authority of this power. They create their own currency and manage transactions themselves.

Knowing that today the economy and the market have become gods by their omnipotence in our lives, the powers granted to clerics (economists…) are immense, such as the power to impose their masses (speeches on TV sets…) or to denounce heresies (Bitcoin in particular…). Since 2020, central bankers (Lagarde, Powell, etc.) dream of becoming the popes of the economy and the market by taking control in an almost Soviet way (quantitative easingThe heretics are the Bitcoiners. The heretics are the Bitcoiners, who, like a Protestant nebula, are of the most varied, but have in common that they question this neo-popularity of central banks.

This article will be limited to Bitcoin as the other tokens, both economically and politically, are too diverse.

Geographic correlation

Note: The location of the Bitcoin nodes as shown in. bitnodes.io ^[2] can be misleading. A node operating from one country may be hosted on a server in another. In addition, some node operators deliberately mask their true location with an IP located abroad. However, it is reasonable to assume that these practices remain sufficiently marginal that they do not invalidate the overall analysis. In addition, other networks with similar philosophies are distributed in the same way. ^[3].

Tuur Demeester’s intuition is proving to be empirically validated in the sense that the current data confirm his intuition, as illustrated below:

The geographical correlation in Protestantism and Bitcoin nodes splits Europe in two:

– Northern countries (Protestant, “frugal” …).

– Southern countries (Catholic, “chicharros”…).

If Demeester hypothesized that the Protestant Reformation is close in its foundations to the emergence of Bitcoin, the correlation between historically Protestant and Catholic countries lends credence to the hypothesis. Of course, in the 21st century it is not about Protestantism in the first degree (after the temple you buy Bitcoin…) but about.anthropology Protestant (Norwegian or Germanic of the “frugal” of Europe…).

Note: France is an exception because centralization around Paris took place between the 17th and 19th centuries. On the other hand, the “Huguenot belt” is similar to the nodes of southern France (enlarging the map of nodes). Finally the work of Emmanuel Todd ^[5] on family systems in France explains this distribution of nodes in France (family stem).

Why a node? If owning (with private key) a fraction of Bitcoin is within everyone’s reach, mining Bitcoin is since 2015 a job in itself. Between these two extremes, owning your own Bitcoin node (a copy of the blockchain) is within the reach of most of the population (via Bitcoin Kernel on pc or Umbrella at Raspberry pi) while requiring some personal involvement.

Thus, the Bitcoin node indicates that its owner is involved in the network, and this is true for a broad base of the population, making it a relevant indicator of interest in Bitcoin for a given population. Assuming that the price per kWh is 20 cents, the performance of a node. Raspberry pi with a maximum of 15 W for the whole year costs 26.25 euros. [(15/1000)x0,20x24x365 = 26,25 €]so it’s not a question of money….

This correlation is even observable in a country that historically has had territories whose anthropologies The Walloons/Flemish are very close to the Catholic/Protestant duality, as illustrated in Belgium below:

Although the Flemings are not predominantly Protestant like their Dutch neighbors, their anthropology is very similar in its relation to individuality and responsibility.

Note: Given that atheism is de facto majority in Europe, a direct first-degree link between Protestantism and Bitcoin is irrelevant. However, there are anthropologies that are “tendentiously” Catholic or Protestant. Moreover, Jansenist Catholics were very close to Protestant anthropology, which is one of the reasons why this tendency was frowned upon in Catholicism. Broadly speaking, “Protestant anthropology” is liberal and decentralized, while “Catholic anthropology” is administrative and centralized.

All that has been said above is also valid for. Monero nodes ^[6].

To more finely measure the involvement per country in the Bitcoin network it is essential to calculate the number of inhabitants per node (like GDP/capita), below are the results at the international level:

Table 1: Bitcoin node density at the international level.

Not surprisingly, the countries with the highest density of nodes per capita are of predominantly Protestant “anthropology”. Germany (4th) is in a special situation, as the majority of its inhabitants are Catholic and not Protestant (27% vs. 25% according to the 2010 census). However, Germany is Luther’s country and his ideas have spread much more there. Moreover, Germany is one of the “frugal” countries of the EU and, of course, of the European Union.anthropology Protestant.

Switzerland (Calvinist), in sixth place, is even more concerned about Bitcoin, since one of its main economic resources comes from international finance and it cannot afford to “miss the train”…. This reason is also valid for Luxembourg.

As for Lithuania, since it was particularly affected by the 2008 inflation (12.8%), the desire for more monetary control may be an explanation.

As Hong Kong and Singapore are cities with a similar economic model (commercial port and financial center at strategic points in Asia), they rank respectively 5th and 10th in node density per capita. Again, anthropological similarities (which spill over to economics) are correlated with participation in the Bitcoin network.

The very Catholic Czech Republic is twelfth, which can be explained by the influence of Unitarianism (cf. Figure 1), as the unitary doctrine ^[7] Is very close to Lutheranism or Calvinism in its individual approach to religion. ^[8]. In fact, here too, it is much more a question ofanthropology of the Protestant type than of religion stricto-sensu.

On the other hand, Romania, having been influenced during the reformation by the Hussite current ^[9] (freedom of preaching, vows of poverty…), a doctrine less in line with what characterizes Bitcoin.

As for Norway (Protestant), it still has a lot of oil….

Note: The number of nodes has been queried several times between September 2021 and January 2022. There is no error with respect to South Korea, 19% of its population is Protestant….

Overall, the conclusion to be drawn from these data and correlations is that populations with special affinity for Bitcoin exhibit the following anthropological characteristics:

– Individual and autonomous management of their savings.

– Financial risk tolerance

– A limited taste for central powers

– A liberal view of economics (Austrian economics, Hayek…).

As for possible contingent characteristics, they are as follows:

– A financial industry to be maintained (Singapore, Switzerland and Luxembourg).

– A lack of monetary sovereignty (Lithuania, Ireland, Czech Republic…).

Note: China and India are the countries with the lowest node density per capita, you know why?

And digital in general

Digital technology, in general, produces dualities of centralization/decentralization and shuffles the issues of sending or receiving information. A outsider can, for example, upend the political environment of his country by using the internet as a transmission channel instead of traditional TV channels, as Trump did with Twitter in 2016. On another note, in France, Médiapart was able to propose, thanks to digital technology, a new type of economic model for the press, which has inspired many others (le Média, Blast, TV libertés, l’institut des libertés…).

At the time of the Reformation, the Church (or the local lord) could censor writings deemed to promote Protestantism, with penalties ranging from confiscation of the writings to excommunication and death. Today, the traditional media speak little and/or poorly of the Internet (but tend to adapt), and censorship can occur on the Internet (example: Avia law in 2020).

One of the main contemporary criticisms of the “mainstream” press (newspapers, television…) is that it is too concentrated and controlled (in France, some even speak of an oligarchy controlling the media). In the case of Bitcoin, the use of censorship and its sanctions are less strong because the diffusion of the ideas of the Bitcoin community compared to that of mainstream thinking remains anecdotal.

More generally, with digital technology, modern “heresies” are formed from the point of view of the more traditional centralized broadcasters and receivers (television, radio…). If Christianity has known many heresies from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, one of them has been particularly widespread, Protestantism.

Why Protestantism then? Two elements of the answer:

– Earlier heresies had not known Gutenberg’s printing press, so their spread was limited.

– The main claims of the Reformation were simple and more permissive than in Catholicism (read the Bible oneself, possibility of individual spiritual life…), which allowed greater accessibility and diversity (Calvinists, Quakers, Anabaptists…).

Note: It would be possible to nuance all this historically and theologically (Protestantism is rich and complex), but this would not necessarily be relevant.

The parallel between the assertion of a central power and the reaction to it is as follows:

Table 2: Parallelism of the allegations in a central power and the reaction it generates between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries and the present day (twentieth and twentieth centuries).

Observation: Today, the cheapening of information transmission and reception (the Internet) has made it easier to find and create information at the individual level, resulting in a more peer-to-peer society than in the past (where it was more centralized). “Power” and “central banking” are not necessarily the same, but they share a common “central” character. Anti-globalization activists criticized the G8 for “centralizing” international leaders, or the “big multinationals” for being too “central” in the world economy. If these discourses seem to today Protestant pamphlets against Papists were cartoonish (and even comical), and could be so much so (they described culinary or sexual orgies in a Vatican of solid gold…)…. ^[10].

In this comparison, Bitcoin may be just one key piece of a broader “digital reform” (or “digital heresy”). Here the tool may be entangled with the claims (is the Internet the tool or the cause?), but it should not be forgotten that until the 17th century things were blurred and the separation between Catholics and Protestants was not evident ^[11].

Bitcoin in the world of ideas

The Bitcoin network is a carrier of new ideas, in fact if Satoshi Nakamoto does not talk about ideology or politics in his white paper (except perhaps when it comes to banking the unbanked) on the other hand the fundamental principles of Bitcoin are ideas in themselves:

– Decentralized network with no barriers to entry for its development (programmers), maintenance (mining and node) or use (holding bitcoins), where any censorship of the network (blocked transaction) requires the approval of the majority of miners.

– Pseudonymity straddling transaction transparency and user privacy (mixed transactions or on the Lightning network have altered this).

– Ownership without titles linked to the state, only the knowledge of the private key guarantees the ownership of bitcoins. In a way it is analogous to owning gold that has been hidden, this ownership is linked to knowledge of where it is hidden.

– A token issuance limit (21 million) that only the consensus of any network maintenance stakeholder (miners and node holders) could change, so in practice it is impossible to increase the issuance limit. While from a monetary point of view this policy is “metallist” in the sense that it is a finite value standard (formerly gold), this policy is also used as an ecological argument because it implies that the resource is finite.

Beyond these foundational ideas, Bitcoin has inspired contemporary thinkers, the best known example being that of antifragility (Nassim Nicolas Taleb) applied to Bitcoin which implies that the Bitcoin network reinforces itself (computer code, hardware…) as “shocks” occur (regulation, hacking…). It is even possible to draw a parallel between the evolution of ideas at the time of the Protestant Reformation and the evolution of our industrialized societies with digital technology. Bitcoin crystallizes these evolutions and this is perhaps related to the almost sacred character of money.

Observation: From the Babylonians through Napoleon to the present day, money has always been a matter of power.

In general, Bitcoin accelerates and/or amplifies digital-related developments reminiscent of the Protestant Reformation in the economic sphere:

Table 3: Parallel economic developments between the 16th and 19th centuries and the present day (20th and 21st centuries).

Whether it is the bitcoiners of today or the protesters of the past, it is always about the abuse of central power and individual responsibility. If these events today affect the economy and not spirituality, it has to do with the fact that the economy is almost sacred (at least in the West) and affects all aspects of our lives, increasingly to the exclusion of others.

As for the industrial part:

Table 4: Parallel industrial evolution between the 16th and 19th centuries and recent times (20th and 21st centuries).

If Luther’s reform demands were initially simple from a political point of view, the consequences went much further (Wars of Religion, United Provinces, Treaty of Westphalia…). A more accurate way of looking at it is that Luther was only the trigger for deeper changes. Today, could Bitcoin be the trigger for deeper changes?

Finally, the ideological part:

Table 5: Parallel ideological evolution between the. 16th and 19th centuries and recent period (20th and 21st centuries).

At the time of the reform	Today	Comment
Some transformations in the course of the Protestant Reformation departed radically from Luther’s fundamentals (Bible reading, individual relationship with God…). Benjamin Franklin was a Protestant of Puritanism (tinged with Calvinism) and his writings on thrift (mixed with moral writings) are far from Luther’s theses. Similarly, with Adam Smith’s duty to be selfish. [13, 14 et 15].	Between cypherpunk pioneers, nebulous libertarianism, pure (alleged) speculators and concerned savers, the motivations behind Bitcoin are vast [16]… The Bitcoin sphere is already in full mutation, including some currents away from the original spirit, it seems that it is even possible to deposit bitcoins in banks in Germany, ie. [17]…	The “betrayal of the original spirit” is not new, and we could also speak of it for Catholicism, communism and even contemporary capitalism fueled by money printing. With the Bitcoin everything moves faster, changes are faster and could make it face possible contradictions sooner. In this sense, the speed of Bitcoin’s development is not necessarily an advantage.
In “The Pilgrim’s Journey. (The pilgrim’s progress from this world to the next). by John Bunyan, an important work of Protestant literature published in 1678 in England, the hero, dressed as a knight, is portrayed melioratively in certain passages (valley of humiliation, fair of vanities…). On the other hand, the satire “Don Quixote”, published between 1605 and 1615 in Spain, offers a pejorative and ridiculous image of the knight as a relic of the past that is out of its time. If in the Catholic world (in Spain in this case) the figure of the knight was ridiculed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, on the other hand, in the Protestant world, until the end of the seventeenth century, the figure of the knight was still seen in a very positive light.	In the neo-Protestant world of Bitcoin, the entrepreneur is still viewed positively, while among the neo-Catholics of central banking, money printing has tarnished their shield a bit….	In the 20th century, in the Protestant world, the prospects of a “gentleman” (in the sense of Bunyan’s book) flourish, while among Catholics one wonders what they are for. The same is true of economics, with disruptive entrepreneurship on the one hand. (Ledger, ACINQ…), on the other hand the bullshit entrepreneurshipThe “connected crap” of the fiat world whose usefulness we can question. PS: In France we have Captain Fracasse (a nobleman turned strolling comedian…) but this time the reasons are more economic and social than religious… I leave it to you to deduce who are the “neo-Fracasse”…

Until recently, Bitcoiners were still seen by some economic commentators as a sect of fanatics, but (as since the beginning of humanity) they are nothing more than a new group of humans who diverge in opinions and practices.

When a social group engaged in a developing activity (the entrepreneurs of the 17th century or the Bitcoiners of today) finds an ethic that shapes life and provides deep motivations, it receives an extraordinary boost when this ethic leads to a lifestyle that gives economic activity its maximum meaning and effectiveness: then the group in question tends to become a social class…. But what will the maximalist Bitcoiners achieve?

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Notes and references :

^[1] French translation of the Adamant Research report, by Tuur Demeester.

^[2] (access from September 2021 to January 2022)

^[3] Here and there are maps of the spatial distributions of Monero nodes, Tor nodes, Helium routers, and Prusa 3D printers. Does this kind of spatial distribution look familiar? It’s the old Rhineland space.

^[4] Wikipedia:

^[5] Emmanuel Todd “The origin of family systems”.

^[6] Constant inflation cryptocurrency (1%) offering untraceable (or very difficult to trace) transactions. Distribution of Monero nodes :

^[7] Unitary 1:

^[8] Unitaries 2:

^[9] The Hussite Church:

^[10] Protestant propaganda :
– Taylor, Philip M. (2002). “Munitions of the mind : a history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present day”. New York: Manchester University Press.
– Bainton, Roland H. (1952). The Reformation of the sixteenth century.. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
–

^[11] On the term “Protestant”:

^[12] About the term.Facebook listing:
– https://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2012/05/24/entree-en-bourse-de-facebook-les-raisons-d-un-fiasco_1706425_651865.html
–

^[13] Max Weber “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”.

^[14] Benjamin Franklin:

^[15] Adam Smith “The Wealth of a Nation.

^[16] The ideological divisions of the Bitcoin Revolution, Lionel Jeannerat.

^[17] Bundesrat authorizes banks to sell and hold bitcoins.

^[18] Translation: “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from spoliation by inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to outlaw the holding of it, as was done with gold….. The financial policy of the welfare state demands that there is no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the miserable secret of welfare state rhetoric against gold. Deficit spending is nothing more than a ploy to hide the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It presents itself as a protector of property rights. – Alan Greenspan, Gold and economic freedom.

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About the author

Thomas Mang, a former PhD student at CEA Grenoble, has been a photonics engineer since 2017. Passionate about digital technologies (3D printing, Bitcoin), he is interested in them not through the prism of “hard sciences” but of human sciences: history or anthropology.