Ali Mitchell knows how to write, even if he does so too rarely.
With Bitcoinica, he offers us a charming little dictionary of Bitcoin that I found quite captivating, and it quickly becomes clear why. By turning the symbol “₿” 90 degrees like a pair of glasses, he places it not before the royal sun, as my friend Adli once did to give the Bitcoin pluribus impar conference an appropriate hieroglyph, but rather before the head of an elephant. Logical, since an elephant never forgets.
This elephant, simple yet profound, only appears to fit the role because it is perched on the body of a headless figure, with a freshly broken chain in hand, ready to debate. In truth, it comes to liberate and enchant the reader.
What is this short dictionary about (26 letters in our alphabet, 26 entries, including the enigmatic Ki or the amusing Qu’en-dira-t-on)? It reminds us, as Satoshi himself did, how incredibly difficult it is to describe this thing to the general public. Of course, it’s not a technical manual nor does it promise any get-rich-quick schemes.
But it does deliver plenty of witty remarks and some sharp explanations while cleverly playing with alphabetical order: Money, Bitcoinia, and Cryptography are strategically placed at the beginning.
Beyond that, it addresses something that a few of us – not enough – had already been circling: the beauty of Bitcoin. For those who have long tried to understand the reality of the elephant by touching it with their white canes, they have finally reached the stage where "possessing becomes knowing" and where there is something better to do than debate: enjoy.
The work opens with a quote from Bergson as its epigraph: “Wherever something lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is inscribed.” This arrow was missing from our quiver.
What follows is exciting: an extraordinary series of metaphors ranging from Bitcoin mythology (the rabbit hole) to classical mythology (I particularly liked Theseus’s ship maintained by coders), passing through feudal law (where Bitcoin might be considered an allodial property) and even touching on the Silk Road.
I admit I was puzzled by the phrase “Everything is true, and yet it could be about something entirely different.” The cunning Ali Mitchell did not yet have my own alternate history in hand when he wrote this mischievous hook. It’s true that there’s an article on Utopia…
Ali Mitchell shares my taste for biblical quotations. “Store up treasures in heaven” is something I had early found in the prophet from Guernsey and which he rediscovered on block 666,666. I smiled at entries like Halal or Immaculate Conception; I found the article on Jesus very relevant.
Many figures appear in this little book—well-known or improbable Bitcoiners—including Emmanuel Kant and Baruch Spinoza. The latter also graces the cover of Pierre Ginet’s recent publication Bitcoin: The Gospel of Freedom, complete with laser eyes. These also have their own entry to remind us that this isn’t about passively waiting for a million dollars like in some TV game shows but about cultivating critical thinking to separate signal from noise.
Here, Ali Mitchell has Amsterdam’s philosopher (though he assigned T to Time instead of Tulip) pose the great question: what might spark in humans the desire to resist what is illegitimate in machine authority while being protectors of their own freedom?
The book concludes with a more political epilogue, a useful list of Bitcoiners’ holidays, and a short bibliography that honors me by citing Acéphale as well as The Way of Bitcoin."ç