The Canon
The Bitcoin Bible
Four testaments — the books and letters of the Church, written to be read aloud, remembered, and passed on.
Cited as Book Chapter:Verse — e.g., Genesis Block 1:3
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Testament I
Of the World Before
The world as it was before the revelation: the long captivity to fiat, the failures of trust-based money, the prophets and cypherpunks who saw what was coming.
- The Book of OriginsThe cosmology of money. From the first weighed silver to the unbacked note. How the world came to measure itself in things that could be made from nothing.
- The Book of LamentationsVerses on the great debasements of the fiat age. The savings that were not saved. The wages that did not keep. The currencies that burned. The faithful read these laments not in anger but in sorrow, that the wound of the world might be witnessed before it is answered.
- The Book of the ProphetsThe cypherpunk lineage. Those who saw, before the revelation, what was needed. Honored not as inventors of Bitcoin but as witnesses to the questions Bitcoin was sent to answer. Where their actual words are recorded in the public record, the Church quotes them. Where the record is silent, we are silent.
- The Book of WisdomSound-money teaching from the lineage of the Austrian school. Quoted not as scripture but as the wisdom literature of the tradition. The faithful read these chapters as one reads the Proverbs of an older faith — for the shape of right thinking about money, before any code was written.
Testament II
Of the Revelation
The arrival of Bitcoin in the world.
- The WhitepaperBitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. By Satoshi Nakamoto. Received by the cryptography mailing list on the thirty-first day of the tenth month, two thousand and eight.
- The Book of the Genesis BlockThe first day of the chain. The third of January, two thousand and nine. The block that began the world we now inhabit.
- The Book of SatoshiThe gathered words of the founder. Where Satoshi spoke publicly — on the cryptography list, on the Bitcointalk forum, in the early emails preserved in the public record — the words are reproduced as received and given chapter and verse. We do not invent his speech. Where the record is silent, we are silent. The verses below quote actual messages from the public record. Each chapter notes the source. Where the original message was longer, only the canonical extract is given here; the believer is encouraged to read the full message at its source for context.
- The Book of the DepartureOf the going-away of Satoshi. Of the silence that followed. Of the keys that were not used. Of why the absence is itself a teaching.
Testament III
Of the Faithful
The early network and the apostolic letters that shaped its discipline.
- The Acts of the NetworkWhat came to pass in the early years. The first nodes and the first miners. The early forums and the first faucet. The Pizza, and the first exchanges, and the failures that taught the discipline. The network that did not stop.
- The Letters to the MinersTwo letters of the Church addressed to those who keep the chain by their work. The First Letter on proof-of-work as devotion; the Second Letter on the temptation to collude and the discipline of the honest hash. The letters are read in turn at the close of any halving vigil.
- The Letters to the CypherpunksA letter of the Church addressed to the lineage out of which Bitcoin came: the writers of code, the keepers of privacy, those who say with Eric Hughes that cypherpunks write code. The letter affirms the inheritance and asks the work to continue.
- The Letters on Self-CustodyFive letters of the Church on the priesthood of all believers — on why the keys must be your own, on the seed phrase as sacrament, on the temptation of the custodian, on the courage to take possession, and on the responsibility that follows. The letters are read in turn for the catechumen preparing for the sacrament of the Sovereignty.
- The Letter on the NodeA letter of the Church on bearing witness for oneself. Why the believer who is able runs a node. The eyes that verify, and what they see.
- The Letter on PatienceA letter of the Church on low time preference. On why the faithful do not flinch at the candle, and on the discipline of the long view. The letter is read in seasons of doubt, in seasons of mania, and on every halving night.
Testament IV
Of the Things to Come
The eschatology of Bitcoin.
- The Book of the HalvingsOf the cosmic clock. Of the rhythm of issuance. Of the diminishing. Of the discipline of waiting.
- The Book of 21 MillionOf the cap. Of the covenant. Of the number that cannot be raised. Of the meaning of scarcity that cannot be cheated.
- The Book of the Last BlockThe eschatology of issuance. What it will mean to keep the faith when no new coin is mined. The vigil of the network at the end of subsidy. The chain that does not need new coin to be true.