BLOCKCHAIN RELIGION [FT418:24-25]
While some people are setting up blockchain religions, others are finding the Christian god via Bitcoin, the most popular blockchain currency.
After discovering Bitcoin in 2013, Tomer Strolight, 52, decided that “The more I studied it, the more I realised that this is an incorruptible system, that this is a system that has justice built into it through math and truth.” He decided it was not just the work of humans, but “the genius of God” – a discovery that led him to be baptised.
He was not the first to come to God through Bitcoin; there is a whole network of Christian Bitcoiners who held their first conference, ‘Thank God. Religious scholar Joseph Laycock of Texas State University says: “In America, we have Christian versions of everything. We have Christian golf balls in addition to normal golf balls. We have Christian rap albums in addition to normal rap albums.” It has also been pointed out that Bitcoin itself comes with all the trappings of a religion, with a mysterious and pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, a sacred text, Nakamoto’s white paper in which he laid out the blueprint for the cryptocurrency, and a holiday, Bitcoin Pizza Day, which marks the first time someone used Bitcoin to buy something (pizzas). Henry Romp, a 30-year-old software developer from Vermont has formed the “Church of Bitcoin” based on this, saying: “When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, I think that he was divinely inspired… a benevolent God of some sort either sent him, or sent him the idea.” Romp periodically holds ‘audio services’ on Twitter, with readings from Nakamoto’s white paper, and has a library of Bitcoin books he shares with the curious.
