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The Dao of Bitcoin: Towards a Cosmology of Energy Money
Embark on a journey where timeless wisdom intersects with modern innovation and discover how the principles of Daoism illuminate the profound connections between energy, harmony, and the emerging force of Bitcoin.
In Daoist philosophy, the Dao is the universal force governing both tangible and intangible aspects of existence. It's believed that all phenomena are manifestations of the Dao, interconnected by the vital energy known as Qi, which animates all life and saturates the natural world.
Money also exerts both tangible and intangible force. It connects us all. We use money to store the energy of our efforts. We transform our time into energy, and we use money to store the value of our time. Money is an exchange of energy.
Our modern money has no connection to energy. It requires no effort or time to produce. Modern money cannot store energy and the world around us has evolved to reflect this disconnect.
Bitcoin is energy money. It presents the opportunity to unify humanity by fundamentally transforming our interactions through linking transactions to energy.
The Dao of Bitcoin questions our current monetary system and imagines a world that runs on energy money — a world where the money promotes harmonious living connected by energy. Explore how the Dao and Bitcoin envision a world where money aligns with the natural flow of energy, promoting harmony and sense-making in society.
In Daoist philosophy, the Dao is the universal force governing both tangible and intangible aspects of existence. It's believed that all phenomena are manifestations of the Dao, interconnected by the vital energy known as Qi, which animates all life and saturates the natural world.
Money also exerts both tangible and intangible force. It connects us all. We use money to store the energy of our efforts. We transform our time into energy, and we use money to store the value of our time. Money is an exchange of energy.
Our modern money has no connection to energy. It requires no effort or time to produce. Modern money cannot store energy and the world around us has evolved to reflect this disconnect.
Bitcoin is energy money. It presents the opportunity to unify humanity by fundamentally transforming our interactions through linking transactions to energy.
The Dao of Bitcoin questions our current monetary system and imagines a world that runs on energy money — a world where the money promotes harmonious living connected by energy. Explore how the Dao and Bitcoin envision a world where money aligns with the natural flow of energy, promoting harmony and sense-making in society.
175 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 24, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 20, 2025
Money doesn't grow on trees.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
What if I told you these are three different ways of saying the exact same thing?
If you recognize that money is a unit of account, a medium of exchange, and a store of value, then it's only natural to accept that money at its most abstract formulation is simply information:
"Money is information. It is information we collect about the cost of things. We use it to quantify the world around us. To allow us to figure out what our things are worth in relation to other things. The soundness of a money measures its reliability in storing value over time. Sound money is reliable; you can count on it having a certain value today and in the future. Sound money allows us to determine the proper price of goods and services. Unsound money makes it difficult to figure out what anything should cost. Sound money accurately stores information about the cost of things. Sound money is a sensible store of information."
So long as fiat money can be printed ad infintum to bankroll the military industrial complex, why would we consider the US dollar to be accurate information? Why would we be surprised to see the negative externalities of dark money, regulatory capture, institutional usury, systemic seigniorage, and pervasive rent-seeking happening everywhere? Why wouldn't we start questioning the ripple effect of the Cantillon effect? Why wouldn't the rest of the world that has economies that operate downstream of the dollar supply not live in constant fear, uncertainty, and doubt? If not resentment, disbelief, and desperation?
"Infinite money creates a scarcity mindset in almost everyone. Most people observe the rising cost of living and experience the feeling of fear or even panic. Fear of the unknown, fear of the future. Uncertainty about making ends meet. Leaky money promotes hoarding, individualism, and fast food culture, where everything is built as quickly and cheaply as possible."
If money is no longer a reliable measure of value but simply a means of control and extraction, how can humanity collaborate or organize or build together? How can we incentivize cooperation? How can we coincide our wants?
"Money is a medium of communication. It is one of the most common ways we communicate. Money is a sense-making apparatus. In the broken money world, a subtle distortion becomes ingrained in the foundational layer of sense-making, leading to a systemic corruption of all communication within the system."
Enter a pseudonymous, Good Samaritan, white hat coder: Satoshi Nakamoto. A cypherpunk who asked a very simple question...
What if there was a money that was not backed by the Federal Reserve or 11 aircraft carriers and 5,000 nuclear warheads and the monopoly of violence? What if that money was backed not by physical scarcity (gold) or political scarcity (fiat) but by mathematical scarcity (blockchain aka timechain)? What if that money operated on principles like "rules without rulers" and "don't trust, verify?"
What if that money were backed by the currency of the universe itself: energy?
"Bitcoin's immaculate conception presents the possibility that it has always existed. The genesis block could be viewed merely as the first time we started recording Bitcoin. Knut Svanholm has discussed the idea that Bitcoin might be an element with an atomic weight of zero and that the discovery of Bitcoin is better described as the discovery of our ability to observe this element.
For an element to have an atomic weight of zero, it must be void of protons or neutrons, possessing only electrons. Element zero is purely information. If element zero had always existed prior to our ability to measure it, that means it would have existed back to the time of Lao Tzu. If true, it means there could be undiscovered methods for gauging that information. The understanding of how to observe element zero might not be a binary event.
The interesting thing about observing element zero is that the process requires energy. Producing element zero requires a predictable amount of energy. Interacting with element zero requires energy. By spending Bitcoin, we capture a measurement of the value of the thing we spent it on, priced in energy; because element zero requires energy to produce, we can almost think of pricing other things in Bitcoin as pricing the energy spent in creating them. Element zero transfers energy."
All economy is just the transformation of energy into value. If one accept this definition of economics, then Bitcoin is the purest conversation of energy into value. This would explain why the world is seeing an emergent first principle emerge known as the Joule Paradox:
"Energy sets the value of bitcoin and bitcoin sets the value of energy."
If we have a public ledger of information backed by energy, we could safely call this document the most objective database in the entire world because energy is the only thing in the entire universe that no one can fake.
Once humanity is able to guarantee the separation of Money and State, suddenly everyone has a way to protect their own time and energy without having to trust a third party. We are no longer slaves to "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Humanity finally has an incorruptible, immutable, unconfiscatable, permissionless, borderless, open source money available to all.
Believe it or not, the thesis of this book states that Bitcoin is "perfect money" for the following reason:
Bitcoin = time = money = energy = Bitcoin
There is nothing more valuable than protecting your time & energy. But no one can force you to believe that. This is why self-sovereignty is a game of consent. The first act of financial freedom is to choose it. The deeper into the Bitcoin rabbithole you go, the sooner you'll have the epiphany:
Bitcoin is a strange game where the only winning move is to play.
Bitcoin is just money without the Bullshit. No CEO, no country, no committee, no corporation, no cartel, no council, no conglomerate, no counter-party, no church, no cult of personality. Just pure P2P energy transfer. That's the beauty of freedom money. That's the logic of energy money. That's the answer to the game theory.
With absolute mathematical scarcity, individuals can finally afford an abundance mindset.
For the sovereign individual, all you have to do is nothing but HODL. That's financial wu wei. That's energy money that aligns & vibes with the Dao.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
What if I told you these are three different ways of saying the exact same thing?
If you recognize that money is a unit of account, a medium of exchange, and a store of value, then it's only natural to accept that money at its most abstract formulation is simply information:
"Money is information. It is information we collect about the cost of things. We use it to quantify the world around us. To allow us to figure out what our things are worth in relation to other things. The soundness of a money measures its reliability in storing value over time. Sound money is reliable; you can count on it having a certain value today and in the future. Sound money allows us to determine the proper price of goods and services. Unsound money makes it difficult to figure out what anything should cost. Sound money accurately stores information about the cost of things. Sound money is a sensible store of information."
So long as fiat money can be printed ad infintum to bankroll the military industrial complex, why would we consider the US dollar to be accurate information? Why would we be surprised to see the negative externalities of dark money, regulatory capture, institutional usury, systemic seigniorage, and pervasive rent-seeking happening everywhere? Why wouldn't we start questioning the ripple effect of the Cantillon effect? Why wouldn't the rest of the world that has economies that operate downstream of the dollar supply not live in constant fear, uncertainty, and doubt? If not resentment, disbelief, and desperation?
"Infinite money creates a scarcity mindset in almost everyone. Most people observe the rising cost of living and experience the feeling of fear or even panic. Fear of the unknown, fear of the future. Uncertainty about making ends meet. Leaky money promotes hoarding, individualism, and fast food culture, where everything is built as quickly and cheaply as possible."
If money is no longer a reliable measure of value but simply a means of control and extraction, how can humanity collaborate or organize or build together? How can we incentivize cooperation? How can we coincide our wants?
"Money is a medium of communication. It is one of the most common ways we communicate. Money is a sense-making apparatus. In the broken money world, a subtle distortion becomes ingrained in the foundational layer of sense-making, leading to a systemic corruption of all communication within the system."
Enter a pseudonymous, Good Samaritan, white hat coder: Satoshi Nakamoto. A cypherpunk who asked a very simple question...
What if there was a money that was not backed by the Federal Reserve or 11 aircraft carriers and 5,000 nuclear warheads and the monopoly of violence? What if that money was backed not by physical scarcity (gold) or political scarcity (fiat) but by mathematical scarcity (blockchain aka timechain)? What if that money operated on principles like "rules without rulers" and "don't trust, verify?"
What if that money were backed by the currency of the universe itself: energy?
"Bitcoin's immaculate conception presents the possibility that it has always existed. The genesis block could be viewed merely as the first time we started recording Bitcoin. Knut Svanholm has discussed the idea that Bitcoin might be an element with an atomic weight of zero and that the discovery of Bitcoin is better described as the discovery of our ability to observe this element.
For an element to have an atomic weight of zero, it must be void of protons or neutrons, possessing only electrons. Element zero is purely information. If element zero had always existed prior to our ability to measure it, that means it would have existed back to the time of Lao Tzu. If true, it means there could be undiscovered methods for gauging that information. The understanding of how to observe element zero might not be a binary event.
The interesting thing about observing element zero is that the process requires energy. Producing element zero requires a predictable amount of energy. Interacting with element zero requires energy. By spending Bitcoin, we capture a measurement of the value of the thing we spent it on, priced in energy; because element zero requires energy to produce, we can almost think of pricing other things in Bitcoin as pricing the energy spent in creating them. Element zero transfers energy."
All economy is just the transformation of energy into value. If one accept this definition of economics, then Bitcoin is the purest conversation of energy into value. This would explain why the world is seeing an emergent first principle emerge known as the Joule Paradox:
"Energy sets the value of bitcoin and bitcoin sets the value of energy."
If we have a public ledger of information backed by energy, we could safely call this document the most objective database in the entire world because energy is the only thing in the entire universe that no one can fake.
Once humanity is able to guarantee the separation of Money and State, suddenly everyone has a way to protect their own time and energy without having to trust a third party. We are no longer slaves to "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Humanity finally has an incorruptible, immutable, unconfiscatable, permissionless, borderless, open source money available to all.
Believe it or not, the thesis of this book states that Bitcoin is "perfect money" for the following reason:
Bitcoin = time = money = energy = Bitcoin
There is nothing more valuable than protecting your time & energy. But no one can force you to believe that. This is why self-sovereignty is a game of consent. The first act of financial freedom is to choose it. The deeper into the Bitcoin rabbithole you go, the sooner you'll have the epiphany:
Bitcoin is a strange game where the only winning move is to play.
Bitcoin is just money without the Bullshit. No CEO, no country, no committee, no corporation, no cartel, no council, no conglomerate, no counter-party, no church, no cult of personality. Just pure P2P energy transfer. That's the beauty of freedom money. That's the logic of energy money. That's the answer to the game theory.
With absolute mathematical scarcity, individuals can finally afford an abundance mindset.
For the sovereign individual, all you have to do is nothing but HODL. That's financial wu wei. That's energy money that aligns & vibes with the Dao.
May 8, 2025
Probably a better presentation than a book. Not a lot to chew on besides the congruence of the Daodeching and Bitcoin. That is profound, but not worthy of a book.
I did like the mixed presentation of quotes from the Dao, Satoshi, and Mises.
I did like the mixed presentation of quotes from the Dao, Satoshi, and Mises.
August 10, 2025
This beautiful, inspiring book is a salve for my Bitcoin loving soul. This was also my introduction to the Dao, and the term Daomoney. It all fits together perfectly!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews