During the 2021 New York Coingeek Conference discussion on “where Bitcoin’s real value comes from,” Rafael LaVerde stated his belief that Bitcoin was divinely inspired. The audience began to applaud the statement before panel host Jimmy Nguyen and Craig Wright (Bitcoin Creator and Doctor of Theology) began to joke about Craig’s own gracious, or not so gracious nature. Craig and Jimmy’s banter made me laugh but it also cut Rafael off from making his final point that Bitcoin’s nature is “so misunderstood” and that “the best thing for us, is to be humble and constantly learn from it.”
In Dr. Writes philosophy classes, he often remarks how important it is for individuals to have common definitions and understandings of words when they discuss complex ideas. I believe Rafael’s comment was not receive well by the panel because they did not understand the sentiment Rafael meant to convey using the expression “divinely inspired.” Based on my philosophy and understanding of the words “divine” and “inspiration”, I agree with Rafael’s statement that Bitcoin was divinely inspired.
The Oxford dictionary’s definition of divine is “coming from or connected with God or a god.” My personal philosophy on God aligns with the 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza who said, “the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and are determined, are only another name for the eternal decrees of God.” (Spinoza, Treatise on Religion and the State) If I believe the divine is coming from or connected with God and that the universal laws of nature and the eternal decrees of God are the same thing; I must also believe that anything coming from or connected with the universal laws of nature is also divine. Based on this belief I can Dr. Wright himself has previously explained how parts of Bitcoin were inspired in a way that is in essence the same as Rafael’s statement.
At 1:45:40 into the Introduction class of Dr. Wright and Ryan X. Charles’s Theory of Bitcoin series, Dr. Wright says “I am an applied mathematician and applied scientist, I don’t go out there and try and invent new things, I go out and say hey, nature is doing that really well; I’ll just take that one and I will reapply it over here.” I would argue that a scientist saying he observed a universal law of nature and reapplied that law in another area is, in essence, the same as saying he was divinely inspired. Leading up to Craig’s comment about reapplying things nature does really well; he spoke about things like network graph theory, power law networks, small world networks and incentivizing miners to propagate information most efficiently. Ryan asked Dr. Wright if he was trying to create a new kind of network, to which Dr. Wright replied, “it’s not a new kind of network, this is where biologically inspired comes into it.” He explained that perceptron networks and neurons function in a way that makes “the brain a densely connected small world network” similar to what Bitcoin will evolve to be.
Another guest at the 2021 CoinGeek conference New York, Scott Stornetta, said “the real genius” of Bitcoin was the imbedding of incentives into the social system. He described this imbedding of incentives as the tuning of a differential equation and I would argue that Dr. Wright’s genius tuning was inspired by the laws of nature explained in Game theory and the Handicap Principle. Characteristically, Dr. Wright’s response to Scott Stornetta’s complement was a humble and gracious “thank you.” Though Craig does have a not so gracious and humble side to him, I believe he was able to design Bitcoin in such a genius way because he is constantly and humbly trying to learn from God and Nature in the way Rafael LaVerde said we should with Bitcoin.