I agree that it’s way more than a tech invention, but I’m not sure I agree that’s it’s an element or a discovery.

Pragmatically, it behaves like an element, which is absolutely insane and fascinating. It’s pure information, but can theoretically be completely erased if all nodes were destroyed. That’s about as likely as the entire internet being destroyed (if not less likely). But from a purely logical pov, it can’t be an element in the literal sense.

If it’s a discovery and not an invention, I’m not sure what constitutes as an invention… Bitcoin is simple an arrangement of information and communication that can be used as money. Which, again, is massively groundbreaking. But couldn’t you technically say every invention is a discovery of a specific arrangement of information? Think about the lightbulb - electricity certainly wasn’t invented, and the lightbulb is a specific arrangement of components to harness it. The fact that it could be harness in that way was already a true fact, and you could say Edison “discovered” it. Maybe that’s the correct way to think about it! Maybe invention and discovery are the same thing! Similar to the assertion in this video that “knowing” and “owning” are one in the same.

But if “invention” is to have independent meaning, bitcoin was certainly invented. I don’t think that takes away from its profoundness. It’s a set a rules that leverage hashing and public key encryption. It was a brilliant idea built on other brilliant ideas.

There’s really nothing like it, which is why calling it digital gold and comparing to the printing press are complicated statements.

This is a great video! It provokes a lot of important thoughts.