Most of us encounter Bitcoin through a lens we already have. Many capitalists see a free-market tool for individual economic freedom. Libertarians often see an exit from broken money and central banks. Socialists may see an alternative to a system they want to dismantle. Each framework pulls Bitcoin into its own story, and each one feels convincing from the inside. But there is something odd about a technology that fits so neatly into every opposing worldview at once: What if that tells us less about the protocol and more about the frameworks we are using to interpret it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxhG_DMS3b4

To see why, it helps to look at the system Bitcoin exists alongside. Modern fiat operates under the label of capitalism, yet it diverges from that definition at the most fundamental layer: Money itself. Governments intervene through monetary expansion and capital controls; those interventions distort price signals at every level. Printing increases supply, eroding purchasing power unevenly; those who receive new money first gain at the expense of later recipients which concentrates wealth among insiders with preferential access to resources.[1] The result is growing government influence, corporate monopolies, stifled innovation, and distorted markets. As Jeff Booth articulates: “In a free market, prices fall to the marginal cost of production; if they are not falling, we do not live in a free market.”[4]

What we call capitalism and what we call communism converge once the money underneath both is manipulated. The label changes; the extraction mechanism persists. When measured in Bitcoin, undistorted pricing becomes visible. An iPhone cost 162 bitcoin in 2011; by 2024, a superior device required 0.014 bitcoin, a 99.98% decrease in real terms.[2] In fiat terms, the same technology rose in price by 23%. The measuring instrument determines whether we see an open market or a managed one. Bitcoin offers the first opportunity for humanity to experience a genuine free market where prices fall, a reality beyond fiat altogether. Bitcoin occupies no position on any existing political or economic spectrum. The following comparison makes the structural differences visible:

Bitcoin requires no state, no central authority, no ideological commitment, and no trust in institutions. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission legally defined it as “an asset without an issuer,” comparing it to physical commodities such as gold or natural gas.[5] A protocol with no issuer, no CEO, and no political backing does not occupy a point on any existing systemic structure. It is, as Jeff Booth describes it, “a system outside the system.”

The difficulty of categorising Bitcoin reveals a deeper pattern: Every economic framework we have inherited assumes centralised money as its foundation. Capitalism presupposes a Central Bank that manages interest rates; communism requires a state that controls distribution; libertarianism depends on trust in a gold standard or privatised monetary authority. Each model carries a built-in relationship with a monetary centre, and when someone encounters a protocol that removes that centre entirely, the inherited categories have nowhere to place it.

In conversations about Bitcoin with people encountering it for the first time, I have been asked whether I am an anarchist, capitalist, communist, liberal, or libertarian. The question itself is revealing: The assumption is that conviction about money must locate a person somewhere on the political spectrum. What often follows is projection. A person who criticises the Federal Reserve is labelled a libertarian; one who values personal sovereignty gets called an anarchist; one who advocates sound money is filed under gold-standard capitalist. Each label captures one thread while missing the whole. We reach for categories because classification is how we make sense of the world. But are the categories we inherited designed for what we are encountering now, or for a world that assumed centralised money as a given?

The process of unlearning is ongoing. I still catch myself reaching for familiar categories, noticing the moment when an old framework tries to wrap itself around something that does not fit. We are still at the early stages of encountering and understanding a system that was designed to need nothing from us: no ideology, no allegiance, no political identity. The individual choices being made now, from how we store our time and energy to which assumptions we are willing to revisit, are shaping something whose full form is still emerging. When the monetary framework shifts, what feels spiritually and psychologically possible seems to shift with it.

If this resonates, Beyond Money goes deeper. You can find it at https://daniella.io/shop or read other articles on my website at https://daniella.io/blog

Sources

[1] Cantillon, R. (1755/2010). An Essay on the Nature of Trade in General (A. Murphy, Trans.). Liberty Fund.

[2] Dsouza, V. (2024, September 11). iPhone 16 price in bitcoin: Here’s how the costs changed in 13 years. Watcher Guru. https://watcher.guru/news/iphone-16-price-in-bitcoin-heres-how-the-costs-changed-in-13-years

[3] Ammous, S. (2018). The bitcoin standard: The decentralized alternative to central banking (1st ed.). Wiley.

[4] Booth, J. (2020). The price of tomorrow: Why deflation is the key to an abundant future. Stanley Press.

[5] Peterson, A. (2015, September 18). Bitcoin now classed as a commodity in the US. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/18/bitcoin-now-classed-as-a-commodity-in-the-us.html

Original: https://daniella.io/bitcoin-is-not-an-ism/