This is an opinion editorial by Nozomi Hayase Ph.D., who has a background in psychology and human development.
Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera hit “Another Brick in the Wall,” challenged authoritarianism and the rigidity of modern education.
The dysfunction of the school system captured by the song continues even now. In the U.S. public schools are regulated and controlled by the various state, local and federal governments. The education system, funded through taxes and fiat money (declared by decree, with no intrinsic value) is based on the idea of students as a blank slate — a view that we are all born with no innate skills, strengths or personality traits.
This philosophy that denies the inborn uniqueness of each child has been incorporated into the curriculum for kindergarten through twelfth grade, through initiatives like the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Prescribed academic standards are applied uniformly to every child, with a federal requirement that all schools test all children annually.
The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire criticized the way mainstream schools teach students to the test, calling it, “The banking concept of education,” where teachers deposit information into students’ minds. This approach to education enforces conformity, while suppressing independent thinking and creativity in students.
As the centrally-managed education system turns young people into cogs in the wheel of The State apparatus, an alternative form of learning environment is now emerging around bitcoin, the hardest money ever created.
Creation Of Money As A Discovery Process
Bitcoin enabled the separation of money and The State for the first time in history. With its unique monetary design, bitcoin also enables a departure from the banking model of education.
Bitcoin is a new class of asset-based currency. It has intrinsic value with its fixed supply at 21 million bitcoin.
With Bitcoin, the creation of money involves a process of discovery. While the fiat monetary system creates money out of thin air, satoshis come into existence through the function called mining. Using game theory that creates fairness, and a fixed set of rules, computers around the world engage in a process which utilizes the SHA-256 hash function to generate new coins.
By igniting the spirit of play, and engaging people in this creation of money, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, has opened up a new learning space where people can enter voluntarily.
The wealth of the 21 million bitcoin is like a treasure that is slowly released to humanity, waiting to be claimed. A consensus algorithm known as proof-of-work is used to facilitate each person’s participation in the network to discover this hidden wealth. Through engaging in sportsmanship in the treasure hunt, people begin to learn new skills, develop capacities to work as a team and solve problems collaboratively.
The New Gift Economy
Bitcoin fuels innovation and entrepreneurship. New jobs and opportunities that are created allow us to think freely, to develop original ideas and experiment with them. Here, instead of working to meet the criteria imposed by others, each individual can set their own standards for success and strive to live up to them with genuine feedback from the free market.
This is now creating a new form of gift economy that encourages each of us to find our own unique gifts; talents and abilities that we are all born with. It has revitalized the original vision of education rooted in the Latin word, “educare” which means to bring out what is within us; to nurture our inborn nature, releasing the genius within.
Bitcoin is a sensei that does not exercise authority. Instead of directions from instructors, the protocol maintains the integrity of the learning environment. Bitcoin teaches us that what we love is what we are gifted at doing and what we are born to do. The network incentivizes each of us to find what we love to do.
Bitocoin’s new gift economy began to transform work from meaningless labor to vocation. As if being called by the creator of Bitcoin, people began to follow their heart and take the path that leads to their own personal greatness.
Building Blocks For The Future
Institutionalized education, by denying each person’s uniqueness, has created a widespread poverty of imagination. It has led to the deterioration of our society, to the creation of a debt based economy that extracts rather than produces, and to a reliance on the use of violence to solve conflicts rather than diplomacy and dialogue.
The built-in scarcity of bitcoin (a fixed monetary supply, with issuance that decreases every four years) guarantees an increase in its value, thus creating a flow of abundance.
Pierre Rochard, Vice President of mining company Research RiotBlockchain talked about how this money that cannot be inflated can be used to increase purchasing power and engage people in charitable giving:
Benefiting from the network effect of donated purchasing power, people can begin to invest in themselves, directing their resources, time and energies toward their original vision.
As the fiat economy stagnates, with growing unemployment and cuts in wages, the Bitcoin space, tapping into our inherent potentials, is always recruiting new talent. With new economic activities being generated, the youth of today are now given a choice to refuse to become another brick in the wall that segregates humanity through the hierarchy of class, race and nationality, thereby perpetuating war and economic exploitation.
They can now begin to imagine and actively engage in building blocks of their own design for their own future.
Path To Prosperity
El Salvador, the country that first declared bitcoin legal tender, is leading the way. A community in El Zonte, a small surf town with a population of 3,000 began to claim financial sovereignty, enlivening the dream for the poorest members of Salvadorian society.
Inspired by Bitcoin Beach (El Zonte), Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa engaged in efforts to use bitcoin as a medium of exchange to empower an impoverished South African township. By leveraging bitcoin, they are generating humanitarian support to build schools, clean water infrastructure and sustainable farming systems.
With the use of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s Layer 2 scaling solution, Bitcoin’s new gift economy can now become circular. It allows each of us to receive Satoshi Nakamoto’s gift to find what we as individuals are uniquely gifted with, and to simultaneously return the gift by sharing our talents and skills with our communities. The more one is gifted, the greater contribution one can make.
Each person holds a key to a puzzle that can unlock the hidden treasure given to humanity. Through our active participation in the collaborative discovery of the 21 million coins, the value of the network increases. Our society — as a whole — gets enriched. Through each claiming their own genius, we together inherit the wealth of the world, delivering prosperity for all people.
This is a guest post by Nozomi Hayase. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.