Exploring Bitcoin from Quranic Enigma to Cypherpunk Revolution

Preface

This paper’s title might be misconstrued as another attempt by an overzealous Islamic scholar to attribute modern inventions to Islamic origins. However, this work eschews such missionary approaches, which have often proven fallacious and fostered intellectual complacency and unwarranted superiority complexes.

Instead, the objective is to comprehend Bitcoin, contextualize it historically, and explain its significance in human history and its profound connection to Islamic thought.

This paper is grounded in two fundamental premises. Firstly, it posits that Bitcoin stands as one of the most revolutionary socio-technological developments in history. Secondly, the article asserts that Islam, in its capacity as a religion that renews and reinvigorates the Abrahamic monotheistic message, occupies a central and pivotal role in the landscape of human technological and moral history and knowledge. These two axioms serve as the cornerstone for the article’s subsequent arguments and analysis.

While this novel perspective may not resonate with numerous Islamic and modernist thinkers, its reception is inconsequential. Major historical intertwined concepts and transformations, such as the proliferation of Islam, capitalism, or pivotal innovations like agriculture, the printing press, the Internet, or Bitcoin, operate and shape the flow of history, independent of individual opinions, preferences, or ignorance. Ultimately, the practical implications related to bitcoin will reshape our reality and will prevail, despite resistance to change or reluctance to acknowledge it.