Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? A reflection on Atlas Shrugged
W ho is John Galt?
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
After several strong recommendations from within my physical and virtual social circles, I set out to read Ayn Rand’s nearly 1200 page novel, Atlas Shrugged. Upon finishing it, I must agree with the sentiment: the book is a worthy investment of your time.
Set in the heart of twentieth century America, the story captures the reader’s interest with mystery, romance, business, and politics. But besides offering a captivating story, the book’s main purpose is clearly philosophical, providing an interconnected perspective on morality, relationships, economics, governance, and more. It’s bound to resonate strongly with some readers while exposing others to a worldview that will test their beliefs down to their core.
If you haven’t read it or listened to the audiobook, I recommend that you close this article and begin doing so. (No, don’t watch the movies.) Continuing to read this article will expose you to massive spoilers.
If you have read it, you may have noticed some parallels with bitcoin. Or maybe you didn’t, but I certainly did, and in this article I will describe some of them.
The page numbers for all quotes will be referencing the centennial edition hardcover.
A big subject
“What you’ve been struggling with is the greatest problem in history, the one that has caused all human suffering. You’ve understood much more than most people, who suffer and die, never knowing what killed them. I’ll help you to understand. It’s a big subject and a hard battle—but first, above all, don’t be afraid.”
(Dagny Taggart to Cherryl Taggart, pg 891)
Ayn Rand’s magnum opus stands as a comprehensive polemic against what she views as humanity’s greatest problem: the ongoing, coercive redistribution of resources by men claiming moral superiority through altruism. The novel gradually works to dismantle this moral claim, attempting to deprogram any skeptics and enlighten them to the opposite conclusion. It’s indeed a big subject, reflected by the length of the book.
Satoshi Nakamoto was identifying a similar problem while creating bitcoin. Coercive redistribution is typically performed either by confiscation, or money printing. Bitcoin is a tool that can help protect its users from both.
Conviction in bitcoin begins by recognizing a particular problem in your life, and looking for a solution. The problem is that the money you’ve been using is against your own best interest. When you work hard for payments of dollar bills which someone else printed for free, you are valuing your week’s labor as equivalent to the little work it took to stamp ink onto a slip of paper.
For some, this can be hard to admit. After all, you’ve been using fiat money your entire life. Your friends, family, and collective society as a whole have been using fiat money for generations. How can we all be so fantastically misguided? Surely, this must be how things are supposed to work, right? Even if you can’t make sense of it rationally in your own mind, you’re no monetary expert. The government-promoted men on television, claiming to be experts in economic matters, are telling you that everything is normal. And so it must be. Right?
Atlas Shrugged criticizes those who choose to reject their own mind and self-interest, in favor of collectivist narratives. It confronts people who are afraid to think, to change their mind, to admit the rational, who instead spend their time defending their own destroyers. Such tendencies are more prevalent than one might think, with men and women spending lifetimes working hard and making an earnest attempt to save for their future, but finding themselves exhausted, stressed, in debt, possessing a negative net worth, a home that doesn’t belong to them, and looking forward at an uncertain future with no clear path to retirement. And yet, they continue to use fiat money, often dismissing bitcoin as nothing but fairy dust or a tool designed for gamblers and violent criminals.
Don’t be afraid to change your mind and admit you were wrong. Don’t suffer and economically die, never knowing what it was that killed you. Bitcoiners will help you to identify your own woes with your own rational mind, and present a solution for your evaluation. Prepare for a big subject and a hard battle, nobody said it would be easy.
The root of money
“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. […] When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. […] Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men who produce.”
(Francisco d’Anconia, pg 410)
When people first think of the relationship between Atlas Shrugged and bitcoin, the direct references to money within the book might come to mind, perhaps most notably the famous “Money Speech” delivered by Francisco d’Anconia.
The speech makes a strong case for money being a force for good in the world, contrary to the platitudes which often draw connections between money and evil. It points out that money is nothing but a tool, and it will always reflect the nature of its user.
Some tools are better than others, and monetary tools come in many forms. The forms which offer the highest standard of objectivity (being neutral, scarce and immutable), are those which best serve the purposes of productive men—men of ability and virtue. If a money has a supply which can be arbitrarily changed by a special group of people (e.g. central banks), then it instead serves the purposes of the state, of men who obtain money non-productively, of looters and of moochers.
“Do you wish to know whether [the day of ruins and slaughter] is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of society’s virtue. […] Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of the wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on the wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’”
(Francisco d’Anconia, pg 413)
Gold is referenced throughout Atlas Shrugged, and the author died a few decades too early to be able to comment on the potential for bitcoin as an attractive alternative. However, it seems fair to say that so long as bitcoin continues to evade the control of any one person or group, and so long as it remains reliably and verifiably limited in supply, then it possesses the features which best serve the purposes of productive men. It’s a competitor in the arena of virtuous money.
When the dominant form of money works against productive men, as it does today with fiat money, there is a fuse lit for rebellion. The victims of such a system will only put up with it for so long, before they migrate toward a monetary tool that better suits their interest. When they begin doing so, the fiat money they are abandoning starts to have less and less influence—it becomes decreasingly useful for buying productive labor. Alarmed, those who print fiat money will print even more of it in an attempt to buy back the productive men, but such an action only underscores the reason for abandonment in the first place. Inevitably, the fiat money is left unable to buy anything of value at all. “Account overdrawn.”
To what safe haven can the productive men flee? It must be something which the state cannot control or corrupt. In our digital age, bitcoin presents itself as perhaps the most reasonable choice.
Withdraw your support
“I am speaking to those who desire to live and to recapture the honor of their soul. Now that you know the truth about your world, stop supporting your own destroyers. The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction. Withdraw your support. Do not try to live on your enemies’ terms or to win at a game where they’re setting the rules. Do not seek the favor of those who enslaved you, do not beg for alms from those who have robbed you, be it subsidies, loans or jobs, do not join their team to recoup what they’ve taken by helping them rob your neighbors.”
(John Galt, pg 1066)
It’s wise not to play a game that’s rigged against you. When people compete over fiat money, it’s a rigged game—everyone is at a severe disadvantage compared to those who possess the power to arbitrarily create that money (and the friends of such people). When this fact is pointed out, a common response is that it’s obvious no one should try to use fiat money to save for the future. “It’s intended to be debased! After all, inflation is a good, stimulatory force for the economy! People who want to save for their future ought to instead buy bonds, stocks, and other investments!”
This response amounts to playing the state’s game, living on its terms, accepting its system, and joining its team. The man who holds a government bond has purchased a promise from non-productive men to return additional fiat money to him at a later time, with the additional money undoubtedly being acquired by non-productive means (printing, or confiscation). The woman who buys shares of stock or real estate properties now has interest in maintaining the status quo—a system where she benefits from the steady, indefinite printing of fiat money, causing her asset prices to rise unnaturally. At the expense, of course, of all those people who can’t currently afford to store wealth in such assets, and are living paycheck to paycheck. Value continues to flow away from them, and towards her.
Saving and investing are not the same thing. Making an investment causes you to be invested in the future of something external. If your investment is in a traditional financial asset, you are now invested in a traditional financial system. It suddenly becomes much easier to make excuses for that system, to convince yourself that it is not as immoral as you once thought. To subdue your rational instincts and proclaim that money printing is a good thing. To forget or ignore the people who find themselves on lower rungs of the Cantillon Effect ladder than yourself.
In Atlas Shrugged, we witness the hero John Galt point out that contradictions cannot exist, and that rational thought cannot accommodate inconsistencies. While protagonists Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden attempt to fight a dystopian system from within the confines of that system itself, Galt insists that the only way to dismantle it is to abandon it completely. Choosing to play by an enemy’s rules provides them with sanction, and cedes the ground which they require to survive.
Galt puts his beliefs into action, establishing a secret community in the mountains. In Galt’s Gulch, people are free from the external system which seeks to siphon away their life’s energy via taxation and regulation. Productive men may enter the Gulch, provided they vow to abandon their life’s work in the outside world. Numerous philosophers, artists, scientists, inventors and industrial tycoons painfully decide to do just that, upon recognizing that their work is feeding, and permanently attached to, an immoral system which stands against their own self-interest.
In Galt’s Gulch, the residents no longer have access to the grandiose luxuries of New York City, but they do have access to the luxuries of peace and liberty, for perhaps the first time. They can finally enjoy the fruits of their own ability to the fullest extent that the mountains allow. They are men on strike, waiting for the looters on the outside to collapse under their own weight, with no one left to loot. When that day arrives, they intend to return to the broader world and resume leading society towards progress, not by force, but by unobstructed production and voluntary trade.
This presents the strongest analogy between the novel and bitcoin. Bitcoin is Satoshi’s Gulch, a way to opt out of the corrupt and crumbling fiat monetary system. Bitcoin can function independently of that system, through a network of voluntary participants. It provides no sanction for its enemies. Those who print dollars shall be disappointed to discover there is no way to print bitcoin. Bitcoin must be earned, through work and production. Where gold failed due to its cumbersome physical nature, bitcoin gives us a more realistic solution for the digital and global economy we find ourselves in.
Bitcoiners, too, are men on strike. We willingly forgo short-term gratifications in favor of accumulating more satoshis, and we wait for the day when fiat money collapses under its own weight. As that day approaches, the value of those satoshis will begin to saturate, and many of us will start thinking about deploying our bitcoin into acts of production and entrepreneurship. This will mark our return to the outside world, after it has been relieved of its central banking shackles. The previous game of fraud and injustice will be over, replaced by a volitional game with objective and transparent rules.
The anteroom
To buy bitcoin is easy. To join Satoshi’s Gulch is not. If someone is curious about the potential of bitcoin and dedicates a 1% allocation to it within their diversified asset portfolio, that person has not joined the Gulch. They are likely viewing bitcoin as an avenue for acquiring more fiat money, and intend to sell away their bitcoin as soon as the dollar price becomes enticing enough. After all, they remain 99% invested in the future of the older regime.
Only after someone understands bitcoin as a superior monetary tool, as the best savings mechanism ever devised, will they be able to enter the Gulch. Someone who deeply understands such things would never have “a 1% allocation” to bitcoin. Nor would they be merely “hedging their bets” with bitcoin. Both statements imply a fiat money mindset, aligned with the status quo. To enter the Gulch means to resolve the cognitive dissonance keeping you attached to the old system which you know is dysfunctional, and to go on strike against that system. In its place, you’d be committing to a new mindset, founded upon your own understanding of a rational alternative, and better aligning with your ideals.
In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden struggle mightily with the prospect of leaving the old world behind and committing to an alternative elsewhere. It’s difficult for them to accept the true nature of the society around them, and they don’t want to abandon what they’ve worked so hard to build. It’s revealed that most of the men in Galt’s Gulch experienced similar struggles:
Her eyes fell suddenly upon the inscriptions she had noticed, and forgotten, on the walls of the room.
They were cut into the polish of the wood, still showing the force of the pencil’s pressure in the hands that had made them, each in his own violent writing: “You’ll get over it—Ellis Wyatt” “It will be all right by morning—Ken Danagger” “It’s worth it—Roger Marsh.” There were others.
“What is that?” she asked.
He smiled. “This is the room where they spent their first night in the valley. The first night is the hardest. It’s the last pull of the break with one’s memories, and the worst. I let them stay here, so they can call for me, if they want me. I speak to them, if they can’t sleep. Most of them can’t. But they’re free of it by morning… They’ve all gone through this room. Now they call it the torture chamber or the anteroom—because everyone has to enter the valley through my house.”
(Dagny Taggart and John Galt, pg 751)
Deciding to abandon an old way of thinking for a new one can be difficult. It can mean swallowing your pride and admitting you were wrong. It may involve trading away the assets you had previously put your faith into, and worked hard to acquire. Initially this shift can bring about feelings of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, leading you to second-guess your decision. However, so long as you remain convinced in the rationality of your new path, these feelings will soon subside, replaced by a sense of liberation. After all, continuing to act against the reason of your own mind would constitute one of the gravest self-betrayals you can commit.
If someone begins to seriously accumulate bitcoin and the value of it immediately proceeds to rise, they might avoid the initial negative feelings, and instead experience euphoria and self-praise. However, at some point, every bitcoin holder tends to face volatility and downturns. The bear markets are the true test, where people may prove their conviction and join the Gulch. The bear market, in this sense, is like John Galt’s guest room. If you find yourself there, pay attention to the writings on the walls of the past—other bitcoiners have gone through it before you. Listen to their encouragement, follow your rationality, and if you last through the night, you may be rewarded when the sun rises.
Halley’s Fifth Concerto
Rand’s novel features Richard Halley, a composer of magnificent music that is cherished by the story’s protagonists. However, he only writes four concertos for the old world, before he moves to Galt’s Gulch.
“Why, no, Miss Taggart, I haven’t given up music. What makes you think so? I’ve written more in the last ten years than in any other period of my life. I will play it for you, any of it, when you come to my house… No, Miss Taggart, it will not be published outside. Not a note of it will be heard beyond these mountains.”
(Richard Halley to Dagny Taggart, pg 737)
Halley’s Fifth Concerto is the first of many pieces he writes for the new world, which are held tightly among the men on strike within the mountains. Everyone in Galt’s Gulch is productive to the extent of their desire and ability, but nothing produced there is shared with the competing system on the outside.
This can be compared to the community within Satoshi’s Gulch. Our Gulch is not a physical location, but a region of cyberspace. Our work within this region is not secretive, but it is useless to the outside world of people who do not use bitcoin. Many of us devote our time and energy to building tools, services, and businesses that are completely confined to this region. Our effort will only be useful to people who decide to join the Gulch themselves, or in the eventuality that the fiat system collapses under its own weight, and bitcoin steps in to replace it.
Halley states that after his migration to the mountains, he began to write more music than he ever had before. I don’t think this mention was a random choice by Ayn Rand. Instead, I believe it’s referencing something important, which many bitcoiners can attest to. Once the commitment is made to align your behavior with your mind’s reason, your love for your work tends to grow. Your productive output tends to increase. If you refrain from such a commitment, it can lead to contradiction and internal conflict, which can cause you, at some level, conscious or subconscious, to detest your work and only achieve the bare minimum.
In this sense, Richard Halley’s Fifth Concerto and subsequent music can represent that which is unachievable until the commitment is made. The maximum level of achievement in your life is likely limited by your choices to act in opposition to your own mind. In such a state, you may only ever produce four concertos, so to speak. If you transcend this barrier, who knows what incredible creations you will be capable of?
Bitcoiners often report a sense of peace upon metaphorically joining Satoshi’s Gulch, having freed themselves from constantly worrying about a financial future predicated on the opaque and unjust systems of fiat money. Our time preference is lowered, and we are able to focus on longer-term projects that bring us the strongest feelings of happiness and fulfillment. Frequently found among these longer-term projects are works of self-improvement: eating healthier, exercising more, and putting additional time towards learning, reading, and writing. We become better people, and love life more than ever before.
Final thoughts
While I chose to go into detail on some of the most important and powerful analogies I noticed between Atlas Shrugged and bitcoin, there are many more to be found.
The character of Ragnar Danneskjöld can represent the idea of bitcoin actively redirecting wealth away from the looters of the old world, toward the productive men in the new. Ragnar’s partnership with the Mulligan Bank in Galt’s Gulch can be compared to the wealth waiting for people who decide to claim it, by joining Satoshi’s Gulch as an early adopter of bitcoin.
One can imagine some parallels between the character of Francisco d’Anconia, and Michael Saylor in the real world.
Eddie Willers is the productive man who deserves bitcoin but cannot escape his attachments to the prior system. Jim Taggart is the nocoiner who can’t change his mind or look reality in the face, and collapses with the old regime.
Wyatt’s Torch symbolizes our decision to opt out, and the beacon of our promise to return once the money underlying society’s values is objective and transparent, serving the interests of productivity.
If you are someone who is fond of Atlas Shrugged and recognize its connections to bitcoin, head over to my friend’s website, satoshigulch.com, and see if there are any garments or merchandise in the store that you’d like to purchase to help spread the message.