Letter to the Bitcoin Whitepaper 17 years later, I still read you as a promise

It’s been 17 years since you first appeared.

You didn’t carry a flag or promise salvation. Just nine pages and a radical idea: that money could be ours again. That we could exchange value without asking permission. That we could trust code instead of institutions.

We didn’t meet back then. I wasn’t ready to understand you. But one day, amid the noise, I found you. And even without an instruction manual, I knew something in me would never be the same.

You’ve been called many things: money, asset, refuge, threat, utopia. Some read you literally. Others tried to rewrite you from block one. There are those who use you as an excuse, those who quote you without understanding, and those who cling to your name to justify the opposite of what you stood for.

But you’re still here. You don’t change. You don’t speak. You don’t correct anyone. And yet every one of your lines still holds.

I’ve read you many times. Each time from a different place. At first with technical admiration, then with political awe. Later with disappointment, watching what the market did with your ideas. Now, with a mix of affection, respect, and skepticism. Because I still believe in what you wrote—just not always in what’s been done in your name.

I don’t know if the world is ready for what you propose. I’m not sure even you were. But you released it anyway. Like someone who lights a spark and walks away. As if to say: here’s the crack—do with it what you will.

Today, October 31st, I’m not celebrating a text. I’m honoring the act of writing it. The courage to say: enough. The quiet faith that, among all the noise, a well-drawn line can open a path.

Thank you for being that line. Even if the world isn’t yet worthy of your proposal, some of us still read you-not as a memory, but as a promise.

KiRaCoCo