Author: Lilin Sun, Founder of PlatON

Original Source: https://x.com/SunLilin/status/1864512748144742847

Introduction: Gold represents the Earth’s natural evolution, a treasure passed down and valued by humanity as a creation of our planet. In contrast, Bitcoin symbolizes the collective memory of our social evolution, emerging from our shared ingenuity.

This article, written by Lilin Sun, founder of PlatON, at the historic moment when Bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark, delves into Bitcoin’s unique value as a shared memory of human societal evolution and its groundbreaking role in payment and value storage.

The full text is as follows:

Since the Bitcoin whitepaper was released in 2013, people have often questioned its value — is it a new scam or digital gold? Over the years, different eras have brought various perspectives, practices, and answers. However, no one expected this milestone to be reached so quickly.

In October, I shared my insight in PlatON: Bitcoin is the first entirely “human-made” public good since humanity entered the digital age.

The term “human-made” clearly sets it apart from other public resources like air, water, oil, coal, rare earth elements, land, and precious metals — especially gold, which it is often compared to. These are all public goods formed through Earth’s natural evolution over long periods and exist as “ownerless resources.” Humans, through accumulation and competition, use various forms of legitimacy and legality to claim ownership of some of these resources, transforming what “Mother Earth” provides into public goods controlled by and for human society.

Some resources are fully privatized, while others maintain a degree of “publicness,” managed and operated by governments at various levels or by licensed institutions. These resources are made available to the public at a low cost, reinforcing their legitimacy and legality.

These public goods are generally provided by nature without definitive ownership. Their value arises from “something from nothing.” Moreover, all these resources ultimately originate from Earth’s memory, formed during natural evolution and created through this natural process.

Humanity’s previous accounting and currency tools were derived from the “borrowing” and secondary creation of natural public goods. Whether it was shells, gold, or even the original “tokens” invented by the Mesopotamians, they were all secondary uses and reinterpretations of natural products for calculation purposes.

Bitcoin stands uniquely as the closest thing to a deity-like or naturally formed product created entirely by humans. Even though we might know who Satoshi is, they have vanished, leaving behind an “ownerless item” and a “public good” built by a network of unrelated and unfamiliar strangers based on a shared whitepaper and code.

Is this public nature a scam? The utility of other “public goods” should effectively counter that claim. Is Bitcoin digital gold? That comparison falls short. Gold, as a natural creation and computational result, doesn’t have a definitive whitepaper as its guide. It simply follows physical laws and geographical distributions, forming a random structure that humans adopted as a symbol of primitive communal rituals and order, eventually evolving into a monetary tool through simplification.

From the start, Bitcoin was designed to address payment issues, integrating payment, clearing, and settlement into a single transaction for the first time. After Satoshi’s permanent departure, people expanded it into a large-scale computational system based on the original whitepaper.

Satoshi’s absence forever sets Bitcoin apart from other blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies; it remains a truly unique “ownerless item.” All public goods that humans can use, interact with, and bestow with legitimacy and legality are remarkable creations from “nothing,” embodying the “shared memory” of human society.

I hesitate to call Bitcoin a “currency” or even an “asset” in the traditional sense. Every time I passed the escalators to the lounge at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, I noticed the large Patek Philippe ads on both sides, which said something like, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe; you merely look after it for the next generation.”

I think this sentiment gets close to the true essence: “Currency is a memory.”

To expand on this, gold is the collective memory of Earth’s natural evolution, something humans have inherited and borrowed as creations of the Earth. On the other hand, Bitcoin represents the collective memory of human society’s evolution.

Lilin Sun has engaged in intriguing discussions and reflections with senior industry insiders on this topic, which I would like to share with you.

@LEOZC: Bitcoin is indeed a “public good,” but how can we prevent public goods from being permanently owned or destroyed?

Lilin Sun: Public goods that rely on physical laws and have evolved over time through Earth’s natural processes possess inherent legitimacy and legality. Therefore, the more primitive a natural creation, like air, the more it inherently holds inalienable legitimacy. Attempts to profit from such basic elements, like carbon emissions, lack legitimacy. In contrast, public goods that have emerged more recently are more vulnerable to human exploitation and development, often becoming fully or partially privatized through various forces. Privatized portions imply permanent ownership, while “public utilities” are part of public governance, meaning they are entrusted to specific institutions for management on behalf of the public.

To some extent, various governments also function as “public services.” Of course, different public services have evolved into different models, as discussed by Plato and Socrates. A tyrant, for example, might seize or strip away some or all of a group’s “natural rights,” leading to the worst kind of institutional arrangement and failing to provide adequate, comprehensive, and legitimate public governance — essentially losing “justice.”

Bitcoin serves as a public good with a specific purpose and scope. Although it is humanity’s original digital creation, it doesn’t have the same legitimacy or legality as natural creations of the Earth, making it more vulnerable to attacks and the risk of being taken away. In other words, human-made creations are not essential for humans and certainly not for the Earth. In this sense, they can easily be eliminated or destroyed.

In a sense, all human constructs lack enduring legitimacy. Regardless of the laws they adhere to, they cannot withstand the test of time. However, compared to the many digital public goods that humans may create in the future, Bitcoin has enough foundational legitimacy to stand out among other “something from nothing” creations made in the name of “science,” “technology,” “innovation,” or for the people.

Still, it remains a creation abstracted from Earth’s natural framework within human society. Unless humanity becomes a multi-planetary species with a completely new interstellar legal system and legitimacy, it will continue to be shaped and influenced by Earth’s legal traditions.

@LEOZC: I’ve mentioned before that a measure of human civilization is how efficiently we can convert energy into computing power. Bitcoin acts as a storage device for this computing power, and its price rises with the increased efficiency of energy conversion, reflecting the advancement of human civilization.

Lilin Sun: That still doesn’t touch the core of the computational process of the crustal movement. The real computational goals and uncertainties lie deep within the Earth’s secrets. Bitcoin and AI are merely iterative computational processes built on top of this. The ultimate aim might be to transcend, to look beyond Earth’s issues, and to explore other planets.

@LEOZC: The essence of computation might show that the universe is a simulator.

@Jindouyun: What do you mean by Satoshi’s permanent departure?

Lilin Sun: I suspect that Satoshi Nakamoto, as we once knew them, is indeed the creator. Only they could have followed such a path and gathered the knowledge necessary to create Bitcoin, with too much evidence pointing to them. And only they could have left in such a manner, offering the world a public good created from “nothing,” with clear path dependence but erased from collective memory.