Bradley Rettler speaks about the philosophy of bitcoin in the Wyoming Union as part of UW’s Faculty Senate Speaker Series.
PHOTO BY ALI GROSSMAN
BRADLEY RETTLER — THE PHILOSOPHY OF BITCOIN You’ve likely heard of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and bitcoin, but to the average person, the terms are still confusing. Blockchain is a digital record of transactions, where each transaction added to the chain is validated by multiple computers. Blockchain technology enables cryptocurrencies. The first decentralized cryptocurrency was bitcoin. It’s exchanged through peer-to-peer networks, and it’s open-sourced, meaning anyone can participate. WATCH A VIDEO “Bitcoin was designed to be digital cash,” says Department of Philosophy Associate Professor Bradley Rettler. “One can acquire it and hold it and spend without revealing one’s identity. It was invented by cypherpunks — a group of people that could see the
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promise of the Internet for democratizing information but also its threats to privacy.” Rettler co-wrote “Resistance Money: A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin,” published this year. He wrote the book with colleagues Andrew Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Yale-NUS College, and Craig Warmke, an associate professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University. “Bitcoin isn’t just for criminals, speculators or wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs — despite what the headlines say,” Rettler says. “In an imperfect world of rampant inflation, creeping authoritarianism, surveillance, censorship and financial exclusion, bitcoin empowers individuals to elude the expanding reach and tightening grip of institutions both public and private. So, although bitcoin is money, it is not just money. Bitcoin is resistance money.” The book, which is intended for the public, explains why bitcoin was invented, how it works and where it fits among other kinds of money. The authors then offer a framework for evaluating Bitcoin from a global perspective and use it to examine bitcoin’s monetary policy, censorshipresistance, privacy, inclusion and energy use. “More than half the world lives in a country with an authoritarian government,” Rettler says. “Nearly a quarter of the world lives in a country whose local currency’s inflation rate is over 10 percent per year. For such people, bitcoin is a lifeline. As long as authoritarianism threatens and central banks behave irresponsibly, bitcoin will remain as an alternative.” In addition to his research and publishing on bitcoin, Rettler studies metaphysics, the philosophy of religion, and epistemology. He teaches on those topics as well as critical thinking, philosophy of language, money and philosophy, and science fiction. “Philosophy helps us ask the important questions about the world and how to live in it — and gives us the tools to make progress in answering those questions,” Rettler says. “In my teaching, I try to impart those tools to students, and in my research, I try to make progress in understanding the world.”