Bitcoin from a Stoic PerspectiveBitcoin from a Stoic Perspective

Table of ContentsTable of Contents

• Thesis
• Introduction
• The Three Categories of Stoicism
• Logos
• Logic and Physics
• Entropy and Order
• Homeostasis
• Bitcoin and Ethics
• The Dichotomy of Control
• The Four Stoic Virtues
  • Wisdom
  • Justice
  • Courage
  • Temperance
• Memento Mori
• Premeditatio Malorum
• Amor Fati
• Resilience
• Stoicism, Praxeology, Libertarianism and Anarchism
• Cosmopolitanism
• Bitcoin as Virtue and as Preferred Indifferent
  • Bitcoin as Virtue
  • Bitcoin as a Stoic Indifferent
• Conclusion
• About the Author

ThesisThesis

Bitcoin (a 21st century digital currency), and Stoicism (an ancient strain of philosophy which dates back thousands of years) surprisingly - or perhaps unsurprisingly - have a lot in common. What unifies these two subjects is not only an underlying ethos of work, discipline and self-responsibility, but also reliance on the laws of nature to provide the framework on top of which we can realize - both in the sense of understanding and manifesting - reality.

IntroductionIntroduction

If you have read my book A Stoic Resurrection, you may wonder why I spend a large portion of the book discussing economics and more specifically, the digital currency called Bitcoin. When putting the book together, I was quite aware of how the inclusion of Bitcoin could either attract or alienate readers, but I also couldn't leave it out. Why? Well, mainly because of how I put it in the book: "Money is an extremely philosophical topic as it's one of those things that coordinates human action on a large scale." But why Bitcoin? Well, this is because the core ideas behind Bitcoin and behind Stoicism run parallel, and are complementary to each other.

Bitcoin is the first monetary system that embodies the Stoic principles: self-sovereignty, incorruptibility, accountability, alignment with natural law, and the primacy of action over speech. It is not merely a financial technology; it is a practical embodiment of Stoic principles. Its architecture encodes those principles into its base layer, rewarding discipline, rationality, and virtue while punishing deception, impulsiveness, and vice.

The Three Categories of StoicismThe Three Categories of Stoicism

There are three main categories of Stoicism: logic, physics, and ethics.

It is not strictly hierarchical, given the interdependence of all elements, but generally logic and physics are the precursors to ethics. Ethics is the telos, the ultimate aim.

First, let's have a look at one of the most important and, dare I say, infinitely meaningful concepts.

LogosLogos

Logos (Greek: λόγος) is an ancient Greek concept, representing the underlying principle of the universe. It signifies the inherent structure, intelligence, and underlying logic that makes the cosmos coherent. It is also the etymological origin of logic. A simplistic definition of logos is "word," though this is superficial. For as the Bible puts it: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" in the Gospel of John, and as Tao Te Ching Verse 1 states: "The tao that can be told, is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named, is not the eternal Name."

The idea of the logos being the divine guiding principle, and logic, is emblematic of how Stoics viewed God: as an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent force, as the essence, source, both the cause and effect of everything. For the Stoics, logos was not only divinity, nor only rationality, but the structuring principle woven into the fabric of nature - the metaphysical counterpart to Bitcoin's mathematical constraints. Hence, the Stoic maxim: "live in accordance with nature," which can also be interpreted: "live in accordance with God, the highest good," which also means to live according to the Way, or the Tao, as the taoists would put it, and to fulfill one's own destiny.

"Every living organism is fulfilled when it follows the right path for its own nature."
— Marcus Aurelius

Logic and PhysicsLogic and Physics

Bitcoin at its very essence is pure code. In other words, it's pure logic, based on the very foundation of reality itself. The issuance of Bitcoin is done through the Proof of Work mechanism, the rules of which are outlined and represented in the code, which is then, in turn, based in physics through how the mining process works.

Mining is done with specialized hardware, which do enormous computational work, and consume a lot of electricity while doing so, in order to find the next block, i.e., mine bitcoin. While working in their own self-interest, they are also securing the network, and ensuring that old transactions are not overwritten. The hardware and the electricity are the physical inputs, which provide the essential structure of the network on top of the code. A parallel with nature itself - it is constrained by the laws of physics, it follows the logos, the logic, the will of God. It is also constantly in a cycle of life, death and rebirth. In other words - it's constantly consuming and producing at the same time. And this logic and predictability, which is inherent to the whole ecosystem, is what allows us to predict certain things and to be able to provide for ourselves in the process. Bitcoin, like nature, cannot be negotiated with. It does not bend to persuasion, emotion, or authority. It responds only to action, to energy - just as the Stoics taught that the universe responds only to causes, not wishes.

"The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime."
— Satoshi Nakamoto

There is a thermodynamic reality baked into the Proof of Work mechanism - energy cannot be faked, it cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only be transmuted from one form to another. Capital or money in this sense also cannot be faked - it cannot be created without an input of work, time or energy. In this sense, it is starkly opposed to the mechanics of the fiat monetary system, where money can be printed out of thin air or loaned into existence. As a sidenote, the "loaning into existence" problem will remain in a Bitcoin-based system, but the opportunity cost of Bitcoin's appreciation, the risk of trusting someone else with your bitcoin and the lack of artificial "safeguards" such as the possibility of bail-outs, or bail-ins, would likely result in a much more prudent loans market with higher interest rates, curtailing the amount of loans being given out compared to the old fiat system.

Entropy and OrderEntropy and Order

The logos contains in itself an indefinite amount of entropy, which is also mimicked in the mining process. The energy that goes into the mining process, enters the system as electricity and is transformed into computational power (order) and heat (entropy). Again, there is a parallel with thermodynamics: processes that decrease entropy locally (generate hashing power) require input of energy (electricity) and export entropy elsewhere (heat). Or, you could look at it from another angle: you are converting ordered energy (electricity, time, and effort) into randomness (hashes). Proof-of-Work is an entropy machine itself, as the mining process is basically just a game of guessing the right numbers. It's often referred to as "solving complex math puzzles," but that framing is misleading. It is brute-forcing entropy within set constraints. Running a large mining farm does not guarantee that you will ever mine a Bitcoin block. Conversely, several blocks have been mined by the small, so-called "lottery miners" which have very low computational power in comparison (and use a very small amount of energy) such as the Bitaxe. In theory, one can mine bitcoin by just completing mathematical calculations with a pen and paper. However, calculating each hash would take hours or days of meticulous manual work. And then (if the block hasn't already been found by an actual miner, i.e. a machine designed for that specific task, which it more than likely has, since blocks are mined, on average, in every 10 minutes) you would find that the hash is almost certainly invalid. And you would have to try again, and again, and again. Even outdated models of Bitcoin miners make trillions of such guesses in a second. The randomness of the mining process reflects Stoic resolve from the perspective that there's much that is not under our control. The odds are forever in favor of entropy and of chaos, victory is never guaranteed, yet, we act anyway, and we expect nothing. We act in the good faith that the virtue of the action itself is enough.

HomeostasisHomeostasis

The Stoic view of the Universe is that it's an interconnected, singular organism, where harmony and balance are maintained through adaptation, creation and evolution. Of course, "everything is one" is not a maxim that's unique to the Stoics. What it manifests as, though, is a sort of a cosmic homeostasis, a self-regulating equilibrium of the Cosmos, wherein the logos governs all things, providing the ultimate balance and order in a fluctuating world.

"The world is a living organism, an infinite living being, which contains all living beings within it."
— Marcus Aurelius

Homeostasis is "any self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are optimal for survival. If homeostasis is successful, life continues; if unsuccessful, disaster or death ensues" as per Britannica, and is present in living systems - such as thermoregulation in mammals, where feedback loops (like sweating or shivering) maintain consistent internal conditions despite external fluctuations. In nature, homeostasis sustains life by countering entropy through adaptive responses. To "live in accordance with nature" means, then, also to participate in the process of homeostasis and remain agile and adaptable.

Another way of looking at it is this: a person is a ship on a sea. A virtuous, steadfast and strong person is a large ship, whereas an insecure, volatile and impressionable person is a small ship. When the sea is calm and smooth, so are both of the ships. When the sea rages and roars, however, the large ship retains its stability, barely even sways in the stormy sea, while the small ship rocks, is tossed around erratically by the whims of the ocean, struggling to maintain its course and threatening to overturn with each hit of a wave. In this example, the first person maintains their Stoic resolve, their equanimity, their homeostasis; while the second does not, and thus by losing their composure, they may easily lose control of their very lives and give in to either vices and deceit, or to depression, nihilism and powerlessness.

"The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight."
— Joseph Campbell

Ethics is what can emerge after we understand the logic (or the logos), and the physics (or the laws of nature). So you have to understand yourself and the world around you first, you have to study its rules and to be able to understand and interpret them, before you can make proper judgements as to what a virtuous, or an ethical life should be.

Bitcoin and EthicsBitcoin and Ethics

So Bitcoin is closely related to logic and physics, you might say, but what about ethics? Where's the connection between money and ethics? Bitcoin is a trust-minimized system, meaning that participants do not need to trust any central authority, intermediary, or counterparty in order for the system to function correctly and securely. Bitcoiners also say: "don't trust, verify." One might argue that a life without trust appears antithetical to virtue. However, this is not the case. In an environment where trust is scarce by design, the value of reputation between the individual participants becomes paramount. Without a middleman or central authority to resolve disputes, credibility must be earned rather than assumed. Hence, the system incentivizes becoming trustworthy. How do you earn trust? By being virtuous: by consistency of conduct, by sticking to your word, by delivering what you promise. Ultimately, through proof of work: acta non verba - actions, not words. That is ethics in practice. Bitcoin does not eliminate trust; it removes the need for blind trust in institutions and replaces it with verifiable action.

"If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures."
— Musonius Rufus

In addition, when Bitcoin rises in value and goods and services become more affordable to the person living on a Bitcoin standard, they can afford more - they don't have to sell their souls doing jobs they hate in order to get by, they can start new businesses, contribute to open source projects, support or pursue artistic endeavours, and experiment with novel ideas in different areas of life, without having to worry whether it pays off financially or not. In other words, they can extend their wealth and knowledge further and further outside of themselves - the money is merely a tool for doing so.

"Money has not yet made anyone rich."
— Seneca

The Dichotomy of ControlThe Dichotomy of Control

One of the fundamental ideas behind the Stoic philosophy is the dichotomy of control: there are things we can control and things we can't. Wisdom is being able to differentiate between the two. In a similar vein, we cannot control Bitcoin as a system, but we can control if and how we interact with it. It is also about the power of perception, of how things are not inherently good or bad, but the judgement comes from how we perceive them. If you can extract value, wisdom, or strength from hardships and misfortune, then you win. You will have lost something, but you are always losing something anyway. Our most valuable asset - time - is ticking away relentlessly second by second. There's always an opportunity cost to any action (and inaction), and if you're a real Stoic and a sage, then you are not attached to it anyway, for you are aware of the impermanence of everything and know that whatever you lost was bound to be gone anyway, and you let it go, without attachment. That is exactly what Satoshi did as well. He let go of his control of both the Bitcoin network and the bitcoin, the units of currency, that he held personally. I believe he understood that this enormous sacrifice had to be made in order for the project to survive and become a success, and perhaps in order for himself and his family members to survive, as well.

"Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy."
— Epictetus

Dichotomy of control is also the basis for radical responsibility: determining what we can or cannot control is the first step. The second consists of staying undisturbed, dispassionate, and abstaining from judging it in the latter case; and accepting and taking full ownership of these things in the former.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference."
— The Serenity Prayer

The Four Stoic VirtuesThe Four Stoic Virtues

Virtue is the only true good, according to the Stoics. It begins with self-examination - what the Greeks captured in the Socratic maxim "know thyself." First, one must be familiar with the material they are working with. From there, one can start cultivating their character to bring about the inner stability that is required for a warrior, a saint and a sage.

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."
— Marcus Aurelius

External circumstances may be as they are, whether one is an emperor like Marcus Aurelius or a slave like Epictetus, but what is in each and every person's domain of influence is themselves; their thoughts, words and actions. This is composure. This is equanimity. The Stoics called it apatheia - freedom from destructive passions. Another Greek expression for it is ataraxia - calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet. And like the concept of an omnipresent, ever-pervasive God is not unique to the Stoics, neither is the will or the requirement to become the master of oneself, in pursuit of the eternal truth. The requirement for internal calmness and unwavering trust in the order of the Universe is repeated again and again throughout different philosophical and religious texts.

"No man is free who is not master of himself."
— Epictetus

In the Bhagavad Gita, it is said: "Be steadfast in the performance of your duty, abandoning attachment to success and failure. Such equanimity is called Yoga." Equanimity - Upekkhā - is one of the Four Brahmavihāras in Buddhism, as Buddha himself said during the Fire Sermon: "Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge." And in the Bible, Jesus says: "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" in Mark 4:40, and: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" in John 14:27. Or as Paul the Apostle writes: "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want" in Philippians 4:11-12.

"The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it."
— Marcus Aurelius

Ultimately, our experience of reality is shaped by how we perceive it, and all of us have the command over ourselves to modify our perceptions, not to mention the actions we take based upon those perceptions. The ultimate aim, or telos, would be to live rationally, in harmony with the cosmic order, through virtuous human action. This is what produces eudaimonia - not happiness, as it is sometimes somewhat mistakenly translated, but flourishing. The telos can further be broken down into what are called the four cardinal Stoic virtues: Wisdom, Justice, Courage, and Temperance.

WisdomWisdom

Wisdom in Bitcoin is expressed on many levels. On the protocol level, it is the code itself and its implementation, which allows for it to spread in a balanced manner, ensuring both security of individual coins as well as the decentralization of the network itself. Verification of transactions and minting of new coins is based in math. The "invention" itself is not really an invention, but rather an ordering and matching of several technologies and discoveries made before. From a personal perspective, understanding Bitcoin requires studying economics, history, technology, cryptography, and psychology, among other disciplines. Since there is no working predecessor to Bitcoin, grasping even the possibility of such a currency to exist, is outside of the mental framework of a large percentage of the population.

"The utility of the exchanges made possible by Bitcoin will far exceed the cost of electricity used. Therefore, not having Bitcoin would be the net waste."
— Satoshi Nakamoto

JusticeJustice

Justice is expressed in fungibility (all coins are the same in the eyes of the timechain), Proof of Work (those who do the work, reap the benefits), and radical inclusivity as everyone and anyone can interact with the Bitcoin protocol, if they decide to do so. No addresses, people or countries can be banned, sanctioned or penalized. Going a step further, what Bitcoin does in the long run is that it removes the Central Banks' legally assumed right to counterfeit money, as well as wealthy nations' monetary superiority over smaller ones, including the United States' exorbitant privilege. It can equalize the economic playing field of countries competing with each other, as well as among workers competing across countries, because a unified monetary standard will mean that on average, salaries and wages will start to converge towards a global equilibrium.

CourageCourage

As of writing this, Bitcoin is still a nascent asset with a short history, many naysayers and high intrinsic volatility. Not many people see it as a viable investment and even less see it as a currency. With such a cultural and economic backdrop, being a "bitcoiner" is mentally taxing and can evoke both fear of missing out as well as fear of losing certainty, of losing a set of predispositions that have been with us since the day we were born. Bitcoin transactions are also irreversible - if you accidentally send money to a wrong address, or a business rips you off, there is no way to reverse the transaction or claim a chargeback. The user must know and trust who they are sending the money to (hence the increased value of trust as alluded to before). In addition, bitcoiners continually remind new participants in the system of the axiom: not your keys, not your coins. Bitcoin can be held on an exchange (or a bank), but that defeats one of the main purposes of this type of money: being ungovernable, uncensorable, and most importantly, being in charge of your own capital, or being your own bank, as we like to say. If you don't have your private keys, then you are effectively not holding your coins - at best you are holding IOUs (or basically, same as fiat money). However, holding your own keys comes with a lot of responsibility - which is, in a world full of guardrails, regulators and law enforcement agencies - an absolutely terrifying thought for many people.

"Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of the P2P network to check for double-spending."
— Satoshi Nakamoto

TemperanceTemperance

Temperance is directly expressed in one of the most important features of Bitcoin - the 21 million supply cap. It refuses the urge to bend space-time in order to accommodate for past mistakes. It refuses even the option to take unsolicited loans from future generations in order to pay for the lavishness, stupidity and excesses of today. The monetary base cannot be expanded past the 21 million cap, which means that economies will reach their natural state of deflation where everything becomes gradually cheaper as we get better and better at producing them. Such dynamics make long-term planning, also called low time preference, a viable and necessary mindset, once again. Volatile, but upward-trending purchasing power of bitcoin means one should practice delayed gratification and patience in managing their money and investments. Bitcoin tends to harshly penalize greed, leverage, and conspicuous consumption. Stoic self-restraint is one of the keys to successfully embracing the emergent Bitcoin standard.

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."
— Epictetus

Memento MoriMemento Mori

At this exact moment, you have the most wealth you will ever have again - in terms of time. One of the most important reminders the Stoics gave to themselves was that of the finitude of life. The Latin phrase Memento Mori - remember you must die - has become a newfound motto for many modern Stoics as well. Even though the idea of reminding ourselves of our own mortality may seem morbid at first glance, Stoics did not use this in order to justify nihilism or cynicism. Instead, the notion is meant to hint at the value of time due to its scarcity, as well as the ephemeral nature of life itself - for we never know when it shall end.

"You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think."
— Marcus Aurelius

Bitcoin, like life, is finite. The 21 million hard cap mirrors mortality - scarcity creates meaning and value. If we were all immortal, time would be of no essence, there would be no incentive to do much at all - we would always have time to do it later. Self-indulgence, comfort and hedonism would become our gods because time has no value when it is endlessly abundant.

"Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing."
— Seneca

Likewise, if the money supply is infinitely elastic, like in the case of fiat money, then the value of it can be eroded, and hedonism and high time preference re-introduced into the collective consciousness, which manifests not only in the creation of non-durable goods and bread and circuses, but also in non-durable mindsets - fixated only on the fulfillment of current needs and desires, devaluing the pursuit of difficult, long-term aims that can take an undeterminable amount of time, money and effort to complete. Stoics reject short-term gratification in favor of long-term virtue; Bitcoin encourages low time preference through its deflationary nature.

"Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power."
— Marcus Aurelius

Premeditatio MalorumPremeditatio Malorum

Premeditatio malorum means the premeditation of evils. Also called negative visualization and illustrated in the proverb "hope for the best, prepare for the worst." Again, we can tie this in with other previously discussed aspects of Stoicism - like our mortality and the fact that we never know exactly how much time we have left.

"Let each thing you would do, say or intend be like that of a dying person."
— Marcus Aurelius

Worse than having a misfortune happen is having a misfortune happen and not being ready for it. There will be times in life where entropy hits us hard, where even our most noble, virtuous and kind-hearted pursuits either seemingly bear no fruit at all, or worse yet, manage to backfire. Thinking through, visualizing and planning for all the different ways things can go wrong, in our perception, gives us the mental fortitude to endure those things once they actually happen.

"If an evil has been pondered beforehand, the blow is gentle when it comes."
— Seneca

You have to be ready for an 80% drop in the Bitcoin exchange rate. Because chances are, sooner or later, it will happen. The same goes for the death of a loved one. Going even further: you have to be ready and willing to fail in order to achieve anything. Because if you really want to become a sage or get to the top at whatever your field is, you are going to fail along the way. That's why I love one of the greatest modern Stoics - I'm sure many will disagree with me on this one, but I'm talking about David Goggins. He says explicitly that he "taught himself how to fail" before he even started thinking about winning. He knew that there will be many failures and setbacks along the way. So he prepared himself for it. Because as he also said: "No one teaches you how to fail," and "if you sit in failure for too long, you're done." Let go of the externals. Let go of trying to control the outcome and the environment around you. The only things that matter are that you are present, wherever you are; that you are you, whatever you do; and that you always strive to do your best, knowing full well it may not be enough.

Amor FatiAmor Fati

Amor Fati is a Stoic maxim, which means love of fate. This is directly related to the dichotomy of control - with the things we cannot change or influence, we have to let go of the innate need to control, justify, explain or sometimes, to even try to understand. The full interconnectedness of the cosmos cannot be fully grasped from our limited human perspective. The key is to learn to trust and love the Divine plan of the logos. In a world where uncertainty and change are the only constants and technology can affect human-to-human affairs globally and almost instantly, this is not an easy task. Stoics stress the necessity of both having faith in God or logos, as well as a radical acceptance of the unfolding of reality as the best way it could unfold.

"Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?"
— Marcus Aurelius

On the Bitcoin timechain, transactions are irreversible. Sending money to a wrong address, falling prey to a scam or making impulsive decisions cannot be undone without the explicit cooperation of the receiver. Even if the counterparty is willing to pay you back, traces of both your ignorance as well as the counterparty’s mercy will forever be etched into the immutable timechain. The ledger records transactions in a permanent and unalterable manner. This demands acceptance of recorded reality as final and true. There is no “undo” button in life nor in Bitcoin. The only viable option is to accept reality as it is, not discarding the past, but also not dwelling on it or clutching onto it, and continue with life, using that as a foundation for all present and future actions. This parallels the Stoic practice of aligning one's will with the unchangeable unfolding of events, transforming what might otherwise be regrets, bitterness, and despair, into equanimity and rational conduct.

This principle extends beyond individual transactions to the broader rules governing the protocol. The people, institutions and countries that choose the Bitcoin standard, have to accept certain rules encoded into its design, such as the 21 million supply cap (no bailouts for the banks, or for anyone else for that matter), the supply schedule with the issuance halving every four years (a highly profitable Bitcoin miner today may be completely unprofitable in a few years’ time), the volatility of the exchange rate (don’t borrow fiat money against your bitcoin), the randomness of the mining process (a big mining farm never guarantees that you will find any blocks at all), and the very fact that if you lose your keys, you lose access to your own money. One has to have a high level of acceptance of fate, no, love of fate, if one wants to operate as a fully self-sovereign bitcoiner, especially at this stage of its evolution, where success is far from guaranteed, and life is sure to give you a sucker-punch (or two). The Stoic, once knocked down, just shrugs, gets back up and smiles. He may be down, but not out.

ResilienceResilience

One of the key aspects of Stoicism is cultivating resilience. It ties into earlier chapters on the Dichotomy of Control, Memento Mori, Premeditatio Malorum and Amor Fati. All of these axioms and practices share the goal of building mental fortitude, so that we can be equanimous towards whatever life throws at us, as well as maximally prepared for the hardships that are sure to come.

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."
— Seneca

The Stoics understood that discomfort, obstacles, failures and setbacks are excellent teachers, if we only dare to learn, or in other words, if we only dare to face those challenges with a calm mind, courage and determination. Bitcoin also has survived countless attacks, forks, bans, internal drama, political ostracization and ideological turmoil. As of February 2026, Bitcoin has been declared dead more than 460 times. However, the network still runs. The monetary units have value, nodes are online, and miners continue hashing. Each time something "breaks" it, and it continues operating, is proof for everyone to see that it simply does not die. As those false obituaries pile up, it becomes more abundantly clear to everyone that betting against Bitcoin is not the smart thing to do. "Everything is good for Bitcoin" is the saying within the Bitcoin community, echoing Nietzsche's "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," and it seems to hold true. Every day that Bitcoin doesn't die, makes it less probable that it dies tomorrow. As its death becomes less and less probable, the chance of it becoming the universal monetary standard becomes more probable.

"Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do."
— Seneca

Bitcoin's code has been meticulously combed through and analyzed by top coders, hackers and cryptography experts around the globe, in the hope of finding vulnerabilities or exploits. In the early days of Bitcoin, in 2010, a catastrophic bug was found in the code, which allowed for the creation of 184 billion bitcoin as opposed to the original 21 million hard cap. Since the network was still very nascent, the bug was able to be corrected and patched in a matter of hours, although a rollback of the ledger, known as a hard fork, had to be conducted. A similar bug was found much later, in 2018, which would have also led to an attacker being able to inflate the digital currency. This time, no inflation occurred and no rollback was needed, as a fix was deployed before exploitation. Bitcoin today is arguably the most adversarially tested software system on Earth, with trillions in incentives to break it - but no one seems to be capable of doing so. Much like the Stoic practitioner, Bitcoin does not deny the possibility of failure; it prepares for it. It uses adversity to build resilience, views obstacles as challenges, and wastes no time arguing about what a good money should be. It is one.

Stoicism, Praxeology, Libertarianism and AnarchismStoicism, Praxeology, Libertarianism and Anarchism

The study of human action - praxeology - is a practical bottom-up approach to economics and societal order. It begins with a foundational axiom: humans act purposefully in order to improve their situation. From there, we can deduce the importance of free-market economics, private property and individual rights. What makes Stoicism and praxeology complementary to each other is the necessity of individual responsibility and the value of actions over posturing.

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
— Marcus Aurelius

Bitcoin as a network and an innovation fosters both individual liberty and the other side of that coin: individual responsibility. If the State is minimal or non-existent, along with the supposed safety nets it provides, then families are more reliant on their own abilities to act, provide, and endure. "With great power comes great responsibility," as the saying goes. In Bitcoin terms: your keys, your responsibility.

Both Stoicism and praxeology encourage individual autonomy - a stance mirrored in libertarian and anarchist thought. While Stoicism is strictly not a political doctrine, its insistence on responsibility at the level of the individual corresponds naturally with libertarian and anarchist critiques of coercive power. This alignment helps explain why adherents of these ideologies are often predisposed to support the core principles underlying the digital currency.

Bitcoin is the separation of money and state, and once free from coercion, can become the unification of money and truth - in other words, the true free market signal of the real value of goods and services. Or at least as "real" as value can be, since all value is subjective. A simple example of the subjectivity of value is: imagine you are alone, stranded on a desolate island. You have no food and no water, and you are about to die because of it. But you have an ounce of gold. How much is that gold worth when there is no one to trade it with, and when it makes absolutely no difference to your chances of survival?

"I don't believe we shall ever have good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take them violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something they can't stop."
— Friedrich A. Hayek

The very words anarchism and libertarianism have an underlying hint of "lawlessness," the "rule of power" and a tilt towards chaos and violence in how the majority of people understand these concepts today. This is a flawed and one-sided conception, mostly implanted with the intention to convince us of the necessity of the State - much like "who is going to build the roads?"

However, the alternative to the State is not chaos; it is spontaneous order. This is a concept deeply aligned with the Stoic view of the logos - the belief that the universe possesses an inherent, self-regulating structure that does not require micromanagement to function. Just as a forest ecosystem maintains homeostasis without a central planner, and the Bitcoin network processes billions in value without a CEO or a board of directors, demonstrating that complex coordination does not require centralized control, so too can human society organize itself through shared rules and voluntary participation. The anarchist view is that human society possesses the capacity for self-organization, and not only that, but that self-organization is a more powerful, just and efficient form of socio-economic arrangement compared to a coerced one. Systems built on voluntary exchange tend to align responsibility with consequence, whereas coercive systems often separate decision-making power from accountability.

Properly understood, anarchism does not mean the absence of rules; it means rules without rulers. It is the application of the Bitcoin ethos to societal governance: it proposes that order can emerge from voluntary cooperation, contractual agreements, and decentralized mechanisms of coordination rather than from imposed hierarchy.

An important part of anarchist and libertarian viewpoints is the non-aggression principle. It postulates that no violent acts shall be conducted towards another human being or their property, except for in self-defense. Bitcoin, as a non-physical asset that can be secured at relatively low cost, can make acts of violence or coercion less profitable since it cannot be easily stolen or confiscated. If a large share of economic value exists in a form that is difficult to confiscate and inexpensive to secure, the economic return on violent expropriation declines. While violence may not disappear, its payoff structure changes. Hard money does not make war impossible, but it does make it fiscally explicit. When states cannot externalize the cost of war through monetary expansion, they must extract it directly from their populations via taxation or by borrowing, making the true price of conflict harder to conceal.

Furthermore, as the economy tends towards its long-term default state of deflation, all physical goods and services will start falling in price (in bitcoin terms), further reinforcing the mechanism and lowering the potential payoff of violent acts. Why is deflation the natural state? Simply because in a world of increasing productivity and a fixed money supply, technological advancements allow us to create and produce more with less. In an environment where purchasing power increases rather than decays, incentives shift toward saving, long-term planning, and capital preservation rather than short-term extraction. This is why many bitcoiners believe that Bitcoin actually has the capacity and potential to end or at least meaningfully reduce the amount of calamity and destruction that accompanies large-scale wars worldwide, simply by moving a large percentage of the perceived monetary value of things on-chain, where it can be protected at very small costs, lowering the overall economic viability of violence.

"It's very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I'm better with code than with words though."
— Satoshi Nakamoto

What unites these ideologies is the primacy of action over proclamation - lived conviction rather than ideological declaration. The core principle behind the mechanics of the Bitcoin network: Proof of Work. Actions speak louder than words. Put your money where your mouth is. Don't trust, verify.

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."
— Epictetus

CosmopolitanismCosmopolitanism

A Stoic is a universal man, a cosmopolitan. Wherever he is, he is at home; wherever he is, he treats others as equals. Bitcoin is also cosmopolitan. It is a global network, available for access to anyone with an Internet connection. It asks for no ID, name, number, gender, race, or nationality. It treats everyone the same, with no prejudice. Bitcoin is to money what cosmopolitanism is to ethics: a universal standard beyond tribe, nation, or authority.

"I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land."
— Seneca

Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, is said to have envisioned a society in which all people lived according to reason, without law courts, temples, or currencies divided by city-states, in his now-lost book Republic. It hardly needs reiteration how well this aligns with the ethos of both anarchism and the idea of a single, decentralized world currency.

"My city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome; but so far as I am a human being, it is the world."
— Marcus Aurelius

Think globally, act locally is a principle with roots traceable at least as far back as the Stoics, if not earlier. The idea is that one should have their culture, heritage, identity and role that they play in the here and now, on the local scene, while keeping in mind that this specific situation is merely a part of the larger whole. Bitcoin echoes this by not removing agency from the individuals, communities and nation states, but by imposing a set of universal rules that one has to abide by when partaking in economic activities and trade.

"What brings no benefit to the hive brings none to the bee."
— Marcus Aurelius

Many ancient Stoics lived in exile. Those circumstances made them realize the fact that home as a concept is sort of an illusion. It is not a geographical place, or a nation state, but rather a state of mind. One carries reason, and the Divine within, wherever they go, and that cannot be outlawed, banned, or displaced by any outside "authority." Bitcoin is wealth as knowledge, for one can carry it "in their heads" simply by remembering their 12 or 24 seed words. As such, Bitcoin offers an unprecedented level of freedom to exiles, refugees, immigrants and dissidents to carry their material wealth with them, in a non-material form, wherever they go (or are forced to go).

Bitcoin as Virtue and as Preferred IndifferentBitcoin as Virtue and as Preferred Indifferent

Talking about Bitcoin can be difficult because it is not merely a currency but an entire monetary architecture compressed into software. It has taken all aspects of money, such as issuance, storage, transfer, verification, and unit of account, made them digital, merged into lines of code and then spread out in a decentralized and ever-expanding network, resulting in a mycelium-like distributed consciousness. Depending on the angle from which we examine it, we arrive at different conclusions about its ethical and philosophical significance.

Bitcoin can be understood on three levels: as a protocol, a network and a currency. Depending on which level you are looking at it from, it can then be characterized both as a virtue and as a "preferred indifferent" from a Stoic lens. "Indifferents" as a whole is a category of external factors that mostly lie outside of our control. To a larger or lesser degree, these include our health, wealth, environment, and the circumstances we find ourselves in. The only thing that is not indifferent, in Stoic ethics, is virtue, which pertains to how you respond and react to those externalities.

Indifferents are then broken down into two - preferred and dispreferred indifferents. Preferred indifferents are things that are natural, advantageous, and what satiate our human needs and desires - good food, good company, healthy body, beautiful art, warm climate, wealth, and so on. These things are not what make us as human beings, or give value to our characters, but rather pleasant extras to the lives we live. More importantly, preferred indifferents can often be utilized as a source of virtue - you can share food with others, you can inspire others to take better care of themselves or to create new things, you can offer shelter to a friend in need, etc. Dispreferred indifferents are the opposite - they are what generally make life harder for us - poverty, loneliness, health problems, arid climate, and so on.

"There is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter is contrary to it. So long as they are rated by this standard, there is a great gulf between; but when it comes to a question of the virtue involved, the virtue in each case is the same, whether it comes through joy or through sorrow."
— Seneca

As stated, the issue is not what these externalities are - for a Stoic does not regard them as inherently good or bad - but how we judge them and in how we choose to act within the circumstances presented to us.

"Time may take your good looks, misfortune may take your wealth, an accident may take your loved ones and external conditions may take your health, but you will always have philosophy, you will always have your personality - your personal reality."
— my personal journal, 12 January 2026; revised 12 February 2026

Bitcoin as VirtueBitcoin as Virtue

Bitcoin as a concept, a protocol, and a network - written with a capital B - embodies the Stoic virtues of justice and impartiality in its architecture. Because it is an indifferent monetary network in and of itself: it is a unified neutral ledger of transactions; it is morally and politically impartial; it cannot be inflated nor censored nor argued with - it is a record of truth as it is. Bitcoin as a system of rules is ethical by design.

"The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust."
— Satoshi Nakamoto

While Satoshi's comment is relevant and on-point, it is not only fiat currencies that have suffered from inflation and debasement - in other words, loss of purchasing power by corrupting the money supply. There were two ways how the value of a money, which was physically based on a precious metal commodity - and thus not a fiat currency per se - could be eroded. Coin clipping is the practice of shaving or cutting precious metal (gold or silver) from the edges of coins to accumulate and melt down for profit while spending the reduced coin at face value. This was usually carried out by unscrupulous merchants and fraudsters, whereas debasement was an activity conducted by the State in full accordance with its laws. In the Roman Empire, the silver content of the denarius declined dramatically over roughly three centuries as a result of debasement. From about 95–98% purity in the early Empire (1st century AD), it fell to under 5% by the mid-3rd century during the Crisis of the Third Century.

The corruption of money by those in power is an ancient problem, and Bitcoin fixes it elegantly by subordinating everyone participating in the system to a set of fixed rules, enforced by mathematics - logic; logos.

Bitcoin as a Stoic IndifferentBitcoin as a Stoic Indifferent

The monetary units of account present in the network - bitcoin, written with a lowercase b - on the other hand, are a preferred Stoic indifferent: having it is not good or bad by itself, but it can be used virtuously. Everything is a potential tool for virtue, and monetary wealth can be a powerful one at that.

"Materials are indifferent; but the use of them is not."
— Epictetus

The Stoics repeatedly warn us against clutching for externals, against identifying ourselves with what we possess. The transitory nature of time is what gives, and eventually takes everything from us, in any case. As I put it in one of my journal entries - a privilege is also a burden - owning a large estate means also that you are in charge of it, you are the steward of that material energy. That's a position of power, but it's also a position of responsibility.

ConclusionConclusion

The Stoics maintained that in order to live a good life, one must live virtuously - in harmony with nature, both one's own and the world's. They rejected reliance on outcomes, external judgments, and possessions, for we arrive in this world with nothing and leave with nothing. What unfolds in between follows the currents of fate - but how we conduct ourselves within those currents is ours.

Bitcoin and Stoicism, separated by millennia, converge on a shared intuition: that reality operates according to natural laws, and that virtue emerges from action, aligned with the logos. Both recognize that constraints are not the enemy of freedom, but its precondition. A game without rules is not a game at all. Mastery emerges not from abolishing limits, but from understanding and working within them. This framework mirrors reality - we are all bound by the laws of nature, and the key to a good life lies in accepting and working with these laws, not in trying to override them.

The Stoics recognized that living in accordance with nature - with the logos - was the path to eudaimonia. Bitcoin demonstrates that a monetary system aligned with the laws of thermodynamics, mathematics, and human nature can foster both individual sovereignty and collective well-being. It enforces a system governed by transparent, immutable rules rather than discretion. It does not depend on trust in institutions, governments, or even its creator. Instead, it asks us to verify its validity - and something far more radical and fundamental: to trust ourselves. It makes a clear distinction between intention and action. Stoicism is not a system of metaphysics, but rather a set of guidelines for life lived in the real world. Similarly, Bitcoin does not care about what you think or what you say. It only cares about how you act.

The journey of a bitcoiner, in many ways, mirrors the discipline of a Stoic. It requires courage to withstand volatility and uncertainty; wisdom to understand a radically different monetary paradigm; justice in interacting within a system without arbiters; and temperance in resisting leverage and short-term excess. The protocol does not guarantee virtue - but it consistently rewards those who act with foresight and responsibility.

Perhaps most profoundly, both Bitcoin and Stoicism remind us of finitude. The 21 million cap is a structural acknowledgment of scarcity. Scarcity creates trade-offs; trade-offs create meaning. In a world of expanding money supply, instant gratification and shrinking attention spans, fixed limits reintroduce consciousness and consequence. Consciousness of our role in the unfolding of the logos, and of where we are investing our most precious assets: time and energy, and consequence as we reap what we sow.

Bitcoin is structure; Stoicism is orientation. Neither is salvation, but both, through discipline, may help us forge a way towards it. Resilience emerges where orientation, discipline and structure meet.

Bitcoin, then, is not merely a technology or an asset class. It is an invitation to live differently - to align our economic reality with natural law, to take ownership of our choices and their consequences, and to build a future on a foundation of truth rather than the shifting sands of political expediency. In a world shaped by incentives, a monetary system governed by rules rather than rulers naturally harmonizes with a philosophy that prizes discipline over desire and reason over impulse. In this sense, Bitcoin may be the closest we have to a Stoic monetary system: resistant to corruption, impartial, and ubiquitous. It asks nothing of us but honesty, and it offers nothing but the freedom to be responsible for ourselves.

"Ye shall know them by their fruits."
— Matthew 7:16

About the AuthorAbout the Author

I am Kontext
LOVER, WRITER, FREEDOM FIGHTER
But above all,
A NOBODY

You can find me in da club online: kontext.ee

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This information can be freely copied, modified, built upon and redistributed as long as proper credit is given. I do not think copyright laws are useful for us anymore at a time when we are moving towards (digital) abundance. Digital scarcity only makes sense in digital money, not information. That being said, if you found that this text provided value for yourself or your loved ones, feel free to support me on my path by zapping this post or sending me some bitcoin directly:

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