Author: c00k1e; Source: X, @neet_acc

One year ago, I participated in a debate on Twitter Space: “Does Bitcoin’s development rely on faith or market manipulation?” Deep down, I believe this debate shouldn’t have happened, and even after it, I was deeply disappointed.

I have always believed that the core value of the cryptocurrency industry is consensus and culture, or in other words, faith. When I quit my traditional job four years ago to fully dedicate myself to this industry, I held this mindset. Through successes and failures in trading, my mood has experienced countless ups and downs, but my conviction has never wavered.

2025 is expected to be a more disappointing year for crypto enthusiasts. As this year draws to a close, we still haven’t solved the biggest problem facing the current crypto market—narrative failure and loss of faith.

As an ordinary participant in the crypto industry, my work may be mundane, but over these four years, I have seen and thought about many things. I have always had a faint feeling that one day, I would systematically write these thoughts into an article.

Now is the time.

Bitcoin as a Modern Religion

Christianity has Jesus, Buddhism has Shakyamuni, Islam has Muhammad, and Bitcoin has Satoshi Nakamoto.

Christianity has the “Bible,” Buddhism has the “Tripitaka,” Islam has the “Quran,” and Bitcoin has “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

If we compare in more detail, we will find that beyond these levels, Bitcoin shares many similarities with traditional religions. For example, Bitcoin also has its own doctrines (the modern financial order will eventually collapse, and Bitcoin will serve as Noah’s Ark at the end of the modern financial order), its own rituals (mining and HODL), and it has experienced splits during its development, eventually becoming a tool used by governments for specific purposes, and so on.

But if we call Bitcoin a “modern religion,” we must discuss its differences from traditional religions.

First, “decentralization.” This term has developed a somewhat ironic tone in the current crypto industry, but undoubtedly, it is the most fundamental characteristic of the modern religion that Bitcoin represents. What I emphasize here is not the degree of decentralization of a blockchain network’s operation, but whether “the consensus formation process is decentralized.”

Satoshi Nakamoto, the “creator god” of Bitcoin, chose “self-exile.” He relinquished his authority, creating a new world. Bitcoin has no central deity symbolizing authority, nor a person or entity with divine power. It grows in a bottom-up manner, contrary to traditional religions. The Bitcoin white paper, and the phrase in the genesis block “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks,” has never been altered. If you’re interested, you can interpret them in any way you like.

Satoshi is the most human-like “creator god,” yet also the most inhuman, because he exhibited non-human moral standards—or rather, ideals. Satoshi possesses not only Bitcoin worth billions of dollars but also the power to destroy this religion with a single action, like holding a button that could wipe out the world, yet he disappeared. If you think more deeply, after so many years of Bitcoin’s development, Bitcoin believers still believe that Satoshi is guarding the world he created, and even today, governments have begun to believe this too. You will find how incredible this is.

Second, “the internet.” This makes Bitcoin unlike traditional religions, which rely on face-to-face preaching, conquest through war, or immigration to attract followers. The internet not only makes Bitcoin’s dissemination non-linear and non-geographical but also enables modern meme culture to attract the younger generation.

Of course, there is also “dedication and reward,” and “splits and expansion.” These two points are very important—they determine that modern religions are essentially “faith capital markets.”

Faith Capital Markets

If you are a believer in Bitcoin, you don’t need fasting or asceticism; you only need to run a full Bitcoin node or hold Bitcoin.

When your faith in Bitcoin is challenged—whether by disputes over block size or by smart contract chains like Ethereum, Solana—you only need to run a full node or hold Bitcoin.

Both running a full node and holding Bitcoin can be seen as religious rituals of this religion. These rituals do not promise a better life or an afterlife of bliss; instead, they provide believers with material and spiritual returns through price performance.

Similarly, disputes over block size or the emergence of new chains like Ethereum and Solana ultimately lead to the continuous rise of the total market cap of cryptocurrencies. In crypto, conflicts of faith no longer result in physical destruction or spiritual conquest—instead, they create a situation opposite to traditional religions, which seek to explain and divide the world through conflict. Crypto conflicts resemble sparks that create worlds, like the universe expanding infinitely after the Big Bang, growing larger and more vigorous.

The universe is vast enough to contain countless Earths. The capital market is also vast enough to accommodate countless tokenized beliefs.

Of course, Bitcoin is a specific modern religion. But from the perspective of pioneering the “faith capital market,” its significance far exceeds that of a single modern religion. I call this “the religion without a church.” Today, Bitcoin has undergone a process of secularization similar to traditional religions—manifested in rituals from running full nodes, to HODL, to almost no crypto user emphasizing specific meanings, instead quietly occupying the top of the crypto pyramid like a totem. Just as Christmas is no longer a Christian religious holiday in today’s world, we enjoy Christmas trees, gifts, the festive atmosphere, and even wear Santa hats on social media, but we may not be Christians.

You could say Bitcoin is just a cryptocurrency because if Bitcoin collapses, the entire crypto market will cease to exist. The value of all cryptocurrencies is fundamentally based on Bitcoin’s value. But I prefer not to define Bitcoin that way—what is Bitcoin’s core value? Digital gold? Tokenized energy? Fiat currency killer? In my view, Bitcoin’s core value is that it established a form of modern religion—namely, the faith capital market.

Secularization

Whether in traditional religions or Bitcoin, secularization is a double-edged sword.

Take Christmas as an example. The global commercial output generated by Christmas (holiday retail, gifts, travel, decorations, and related consumption) has significantly surpassed the commercial output of traditional Christian institutions (such as donations, church tickets, sales, and related income). According to estimates from Statista and the National Retail Federation (NRF), the US holiday retail sales in 2024 will be about $973 billion, expected to break $1 trillion for the first time in 2025. This is only for the US market, which accounts for about 40-50% of global Christmas spending.

In contrast, the traditional “commercial value” of Christianity—such as tithes, offerings, church tickets (like tourist church visits), sales (books, souvenirs), and related income—amounts to approximately $1.304 trillion, according to the “Global Christianity Status 2024” report by Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

If we exclude contributions from non-Christian tourists and souvenirs, this $1.304 trillion figure must be further discounted.

Secularization has transformed Christmas from a strict religious holiday into a global cultural phenomenon. This has, to some extent, expanded Christianity’s influence but also diluted its core religious essence.

Similarly, Bitcoin and its entire faith capital market are subject to this process. Just as many around the world see Christmas merely as a day of joy, more and more crypto market participants are entering solely for speculation.

This is neither right nor wrong; it is an unstoppable inevitable process. But what we need to point out here is that celebrating Christmas does not shake the faith of traditional Christians, but does the massive wave of speculation shake the faith of traditional Bitcoin believers?

The same secularization process applies: the joyful atmosphere of Christmas does not cause Christians to doubt their faith, but the speculative atmosphere in crypto markets can lead believers to nihilism and frustration. The viral article on Twitter “I wasted 8 years of my life in the crypto industry” is one of the best recent proofs.

Where is the problem?

Illusions

I dare not draw a hasty conclusion on this issue. From the intuitive feeling of a crypto participant, I would cautiously say that it might be true, but more likely, Bitcoin has developed too quickly, and the fundamental belief in Bitcoin is much smaller compared to traditional religions.

More importantly, the crypto industry has gone too far in “technological mysticism.” For a long time, whether industry practitioners or speculators, everyone has been repeatedly seeking an answer to a question—“What else can blockchain technology be used for?” Practitioners use this to determine their entrepreneurial directions, speculators use it to identify their targets. When everyone pursues faster, more efficient, and practically applicable blockchains, it is undoubtedly self-destructive.

If the crypto industry is just a second Nasdaq, then it is merely wasting money on repetitive tasks. And wasting money is a trivial matter; the real damage lies in the dilution of the understanding of the “faith capital market” and the consumption of faith itself.

Without Christianity, there would be no pop culture Christmas. Without faith, the capital market it creates would have no paradise for entrepreneurs and speculators. If we ignore this obvious causal relationship, we will keep asking, “What new narrative can we create to attract more people into the crypto market?”

Both traditional religions and cryptocurrencies inevitably face this question—“In different eras, how to attract young people with different cultural preferences?” Bitcoin has provided a new answer, astonishing the traditional religions in less than 20 years. Now, it’s the turn of Bitcoin and the entire crypto industry to face this challenge.

The Savior

Meme coins are the saviors of the crypto industry.

First, the foundation of the faith capital market is Bitcoin, but this does not mean we need to aggressively promote maximalist Bitcoin ideology again. The most fundamental and fanatic elements of religion are often niche—whether it’s the cypherpunk spirit or apocalyptic predictions of the collapse of traditional finance, their novelty for the new generation is diminishing, and they have high barriers to understanding.

In other words, revitalizing Bitcoin as a specific religion actually underestimates Bitcoin itself, because what we need to revive is a “religion without a church,” a cognition that every individual’s belief can be凝聚 through the internet in the crypto market today, not only to gain material wealth but also to unleash infinite power.

The most core value of Bitcoin is “you and I both believe it has value.” This may sound like a trivial statement, but it is actually a grand decentralization of the right to interpret value. You and I can write “value of one gram of gold” on a piece of paper at will, but we cannot persuade anyone to accept its value—there is no anchor or central authority backing it. Starting from zero, overcoming language, culture, geography, and other barriers, and ultimately gaining recognition from institutions and governments—this greatness is vastly underestimated by the masses.

Throughout history, individual consciousness has been extremely weak and easily trampled, so much so that we have underestimated the value of each independent, living idea. In fact, most resources in this world are spent on war—the war for invading our consciousness. Political elections, advertising, even basic education—everything consumes enormous amounts of money, all just to make you and me believe that something is good or bad.

The internet is great; it allows our ideas to cross all barriers, to constantly exchange and collide. Cryptocurrency is great; it makes us vividly see that once we understand each other’s ideas and they grow exponentially into a huge scale, what we can achieve.

The greatness of cryptocurrency is often underestimated or even inverted. While the technology of building houses is impressive, the core value of a house is to provide a place to live. The “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” is an ingenious concept, but its core value is that people recognize Bitcoin as a valuable, usable electronic cash—like money. Over the years, we have created countless blockchains claiming to be faster, more efficient, and more useful, fantasizing that this will attract more real people into the market.

It’s like thinking that, apart from religion, phenomena like Christmas can be easily copied and replicated. We think holding a sword makes us a master swordsman, but in reality, we have neither sword nor the skill.

Second, meme coins have never truly experienced a complete and mature bull market cycle. Even today, many still believe that meme coins are just about reckless speculation with no intrinsic value. Since last year, the popularity of pump.fun and Trump’s coin issuance have polluted the true definition of “attention tokens” and meme coins.

What is a real meme coin? Honestly, I don’t even like the term “meme coin.” It originated because early DOGE and SHIB succeeded wildly despite being considered useless. We tend to look for reasons after success but ignore the value of faith. So, okay, their success was because that smiling dog image had a huge influence worldwide, so we call it a “meme coin.” Then we continue to carry on classic internet meme symbols—Pepe, Wojak, Joe…

Here, I must salute Murad Mahmudov, the first to systematically explain what “meme coins” are, propose a set of quantifiable quality standards, and deliver speeches on a large stage. His “meme coin supercycle” theory gained significant influence in the crypto world.

He grasped a crucial point—meme is merely a syntax sugar for faith assets. True faith assets must, like Bitcoin, clearly communicate their doctrine, what we are facing, what we need to change, and how to influence or even change the world.

Therefore, SPX is good because it is clear—clearly telling people that we want to mock traditional finance by surpassing the actual value of the S&P 500. NEET is good because it is clear—telling people that the nine-to-five life is just a scam, and we need to wake more people up to escape the slavery of work.

Just as Bitcoin believers endure asceticism through price fluctuations, creating true faith assets is no easy task. In this process, new religions outside Bitcoin must find their true positioning and meaning internally, unite and strengthen large communities externally, and expand their influence continuously. This will be a long process, and not every small step will be reflected in the price.

Meme coins are the saviors of the crypto industry. This is because when everyone realizes that “meme coins” are just a misleading term that misses the essence, and “faith assets” once again shine brightly in the crypto market, everyone will exclaim, “Meme coins are back!” In fact, “faith assets” are the essence of this market; I won’t say they are indispensable because they exist inherently.

Conclusion

This world’s concerns change every year, month, day, and even hour. We cannot expect that cryptocurrencies will always be one of the most watched topics worldwide. If we lose faith, this industry should die.

Greatness cannot be planned; we cannot predict what will cause the next wave of cryptocurrencies to become the hottest topic again. It is a form of asceticism. Bitcoin is a sociological model, a cyber religion, a religious form. If we forget this, the entire crypto industry is nothing more than a “business” based on Bitcoin consensus. And what businesspeople want is never the continuous strengthening of consensus but always increasing revenue.

I cannot change anything, nor do I intend to. But I will stick to my belief—faith in the faith capital market.