Bitcoin is not a technology, it is a religion - looking at the redemption path of crypto assets from the perspective of faith in the capital market.

A year ago, I participated in a debate during a voice discussion on a certain social platform: “Is the development of Bitcoin today based on faith or capital manipulation?” That discussion left me deeply frustrated. To be honest, this question should not have been raised.

I have always believed that the essence of the cryptocurrency industry is consensus and culture—or rather, faith. Four years ago, I quit my traditional job to fully devote myself to this industry because of this belief. After experiencing countless ups and downs in trading, my emotions have fluctuated, but this belief has never wavered.

By 2025, the entire crypto space was permeated with a sense of disappointment. As this year was about to pass, we still hadn't solved the industry's biggest problem—narrative failure, loss of faith.

As an ordinary industry practitioner, I have seen and thought about many things over the past four years. Now it is time to systematically organize these ideas.

Bitcoin is a modern religion

Christianity has Jesus, Buddhism has Siddhartha Gautama, Islam has Muhammad. What about Bitcoin? It has Satoshi Nakamoto.

These three major religions each have their classics—the Bible, the Buddhist scriptures, and the Quran. The classic of Bitcoin is that nine-page white paper: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

Continuing to delve deeper into the comparison, you will find that Bitcoin has a complete religious system: it has doctrines (the modern financial order will eventually collapse, Bitcoin is that Noah's Ark), rituals (mining and HODL), has experienced splits, and has also been co-opted by governments.

But if we really want to call Bitcoin a modern religion, we must discuss its differences from traditional religions.

The first difference: Decentralization. This term has been used a bit too much in the coin circle, even with a hint of sarcasm, but it is indeed the fundamental characteristic of Bitcoin, this modern religion. I am not talking about the technical degree of decentralization of the network, but rather whether the cohesion of the consensus comes from a bottom-up process.

Satoshi Nakamoto did something unprecedented - he created this world and chose to disappear forever. He renounced authority, did not establish a central deity, and did not have any individuals or organizations with divine power. Instead, Bitcoin grew from the ground up like wild grass. The words in the white paper and the genesis block have remained unchanged: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Anyone can understand it in their own way.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the most human-like god of creation, yet the least human-like. He possesses the power to destroy entire religions—the kind of power that can annihilate the world with the push of a button—but he has forever relinquished it. Even more astonishing is that Bitcoin believers have always believed he is protecting this world. Today, even governments around the world are starting to believe this.

The second distinction: Internet. This has changed everything. Traditional religions rely on face-to-face preaching, wars, and immigration to attract followers. What about Bitcoin? It is not limited by geography, and its spread has grown at an exponential rate. Even more impressive, it attracts the global younger generation through modern influences like meme culture.

There is a third key: Dedication and Return, as well as Division and Expansion. These two points indicate that Bitcoin essentially establishes a “faith capital market.”

Faith in the Capital Market

If you are a Bitcoin believer, you do not need to fast or practice austerity, just run a full node or hold Bitcoin.

When your faith is challenged—whether it's the big or small block debate, or the emergence of new public chains like Ethereum and Solana—you can still continue to run a full node or hold Bitcoin.

These actions are religious rituals in themselves. The difference is that it does not promise you a wonderful life in the afterlife, but rather provides you with tangible material and spiritual dual returns through price performance.

The beauty of it here is, what is the ultimate result of all the debates and divisions? The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies continues to rise.

Compare this: Traditional religions clash to explain the world, ultimately fragmenting it into pieces. The conflicts of cryptocurrencies, however, are the opposite – they resemble the infinite expansion after the Big Bang, growing larger and more prosperous.

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

Bitcoin is certainly a concrete modern religion. But from a higher dimension, it has pioneered the brand new concept of “faith capital market”, far surpassing the scope of a single religion. I call this the “religion without religion”.

Bitcoin has gone through a process of secularization, from running full nodes, to HODL, and now most crypto players do not emphasize the specific meaning, treating Bitcoin as a totem placed at the top of the market. Just like Christmas, it is no longer purely a Christian holiday. People enjoy Christmas trees and gifts, relish the festive atmosphere, and put Santa hats on their avatars, but they are not necessarily Christians.

The Double-Edged Sword of Secularization

In 2024, the total retail sales during the holidays in the United States are expected to be around $973 billion, with the first time surpassing $1 trillion in 2025. This is just the data from the United States, which accounts for 40-50% of global Christmas consumption.

What about the commercial value of the Christian tradition? Donations from believers, church tickets, religious books, and souvenirs, among others, add up to about $1.304 trillion.

However, it should be noted that this figure also includes the tourism and consumption contributions of non-Christians, and the actual pure religious income is even less.

Secularization has transformed Christmas from a serious religious holiday into a global cultural phenomenon. This has expanded the influence of Christianity while also diluting its religious core.

Bitcoin and the entire crypto market have also gone through the same process. More and more people are flocking in, not for belief but merely for speculation. There is nothing right or wrong about this; it is an inevitable trend.

The key issue is: celebrating Christmas did not shake the faith of true Christians, but did the massive wave of speculation shake the confidence of Bitcoin believers?

What does the recent viral article on Twitter “I wasted 8 years of my life in the cryptocurrency industry” indicate? It indicates that the sense of nihilism and frustration in the crypto space is spreading. This is not a good sign.

The Root of the Problem: Technological Myths

The cryptocurrency industry has entered a dead end - overly obsessed with the 'technological myth'.

Practitioners and speculators have been asking: “What else can blockchain be used for?” Practitioners want to use this question to guide their entrepreneurial direction, while speculators want to use it to choose their investment targets. So what’s the result? Everyone is competing to create “faster, more efficient, and more applicable” blockchains.

This is actually self-castration.

If cryptocurrency is just the second Nasdaq, then it is repeating meaningless work. The greatest harm in itself is not the biggest damage. What is the biggest harm? It is the dilution of the essential understanding of “faith in the capital market” and the consumption of faith itself.

Without Christianity, there is no popular culture Christmas. Without a capital market forged by faith, there is no paradise for entrepreneurs and speculators. Yet we keep asking, “What new narrative should we create to attract more people in?”

This causal relationship is obvious, yet we ignore it.

meme coin: The Savior of the Industry

meme coin is the true savior of the cryptocurrency industry.

First, it should be clarified that there is no need to return to the fervent era of Bitcoin maximalism. The appeal of the cypherpunk spirit and apocalypticism is decreasing year by year among the new generation of young people, and the understanding threshold is too high.

What really needs to be revitalized is not the specific religion of Bitcoin, but the understanding of the “religion without religion”—that is, everyone's beliefs can be consolidated through the internet in the crypto market, gaining not only material wealth but also unleashing infinite power.

The core value of Bitcoin can be summed up in one sentence: “You and I both believe it has value.”

Sounds like nonsense? Wrong. This is a great decentralization of value explanation and power delegation. You and I can write “value of one gram of gold” on paper, but no one will believe it. But Bitcoin did it - starting from scratch, overcoming numerous barriers of language, culture, and geography, and finally even institutions and governments acknowledged it.

This greatness has been seriously underestimated.

From ancient times to the present, individual consciousness has been very fragile and easily trampled upon. We habitually underestimate the value of our thoughts as independent individuals. In fact, a considerable amount of the world's resources is consumed in wars—wars for the consciousness of you and me. Political elections, advertising and public relations, and education are all aimed at making you and me believe what is good and what is bad.

The internet has changed everything. It allows our ideas to communicate and collide across all boundaries, 24/7. Cryptocurrency takes it a step further – it shows us the immense power that can arise when countless people's ideas align and grow exponentially.

The greatness of cryptocurrency is not only underestimated but also inverted. While building technology is indeed great, the core of a house is to provide people with shelter. Similarly, while the “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” is a brilliant concept, the core is that everyone recognizes its value.

But we have been creating faster and more efficient blockchains, fantasizing that this will attract more people. It's like thinking that we can replicate the Christmas phenomenon by abandoning religion.

Secondly, meme coins have never experienced a truly mature bull market cycle. Many people still understand meme coins as worthless crazy speculation. pump.fun and Trump’s coin have polluted the true definition of meme coins.

What is a true meme coin? To be honest, I don't really like the term “meme coin.” The early success of DOGE and SHIB has made us accustomed to looking for reasons in hindsight, ultimately attributing their success to the virality of the dog head images. Thus, the concept of “meme coin” was born.

But Murad Mahmudov did something important—he systematically explained what a true meme coin is, proposed quantifiable quality assessment criteria, and delivered speeches to promote it on major platforms. His “meme coin supercycle” theory has had a significant impact in the crypto space.

He captured the key point: meme is just syntactic sugar for faith assets, and true faith assets must clearly express their doctrine like Bitcoin.

So SPX is great, clearly mocking the S&P 500 and traditional finance. NEET is also great, clearly calling for people to break free from the shackles of work.

Just like Bitcoin believers endure hardships in the fluctuations of prices, forging a true faith asset is not an easy task. New religions need to find a clear positioning internally, unite the community, and continuously expand their influence outward. This is a long process, and not every step of progress can necessarily be reflected in the price.

The reason meme coins are seen as saviors is that when everyone realizes that “meme coins” is just a misnomer that doesn't touch the essence, and that “faith assets” are the true essence of the market, the surprise will come. At that time, people will say: “meme coins are back!” But in reality, “faith assets” have never left.

Conclusion

What the world cares about changes every year, every month, and even every hour. We cannot expect cryptocurrency to always be one of the most talked-about topics globally.

If we lose faith, this industry should also perish.

Greatness cannot be planned; no one can predict the next reason a cryptocurrency becomes the world's top trend. This is a form of asceticism. Bitcoin is a sociological model, a cyber religion. If we forget this, the entire crypto industry will degenerate into a purely commercial activity based on Bitcoin consensus. And what merchants have always wanted is not consensus reinforcement, but only income enhancement.

I cannot change anything, nor do I want to change anything. But I will persist in my belief in the capital market.