As you now know, freedom according to Spinoza is an awareness of our determinism. Under the guidance of reason, and thanks to our ability to act, we can understand the causal mechanism of servitudes, so that we can fight against them, no longer suffer them, and no longer act against our own interests.

In the end, this lucidity means no longer living in the nihilism later described by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), for whom men lose themselves in ideological ideals, i.e. political or religious fictions, because of which they deny reality, infantilize themselves and make themselves unhappy.

This is precisely what the Enlightenment rational philosophy was all about, thanks in particular to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for whom only an educated individual, under the guidance of reason, can think for himself and determine, ethically, what is "true" or "good," and what is toxic.

In other words, he says, if we think for ourselves, if we reason as rational adults, and if we therefore strive to attach ourselves to the causal links between things, we will no longer need a moral authority to teach us, for example, the true virtues of religion or true ethical values in the political and economic spheres.

It's a line of reasoning that makes the link with the Austrian school of liberal economics, born in the extremely fertile intellectual atmosphere of Vienna before the First World War. For it was in this context that intellectuals such as Carl Menger (1840-1921), Ludwig von Mises (1883-1979) and Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) laid the foundations for a new school of liberal economics, which was to become the foundation for the convictions of future cypherpunks. And hence the creation of Bitcoin.

Menger and Mises established, for example, that all knowledge must be constructed according to the causal link between things, and thus proposed a new causal conception of economics. Inspired in particular by the liberal spirit developed a few years earlier by the French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850).

Hayek, on the other hand, considers that all economic decisions always express a form of uncertainty and ignorance, and that the fact of not suffering from it because of morality, beliefs, prejudices or political ideologies, makes it possible to analyze economic behavior correctly and, by extension, to consider what is good for individuals, for society and for the State.

This is how these liberal Austrian economists came to firmly criticize all socialist ideas - Hayek spoke of "planism" - and all moral policies inspired by them, which, in his view, only lead to ruin. Giving economic power to governments, inevitably behind the times and out of step with what should and shouldn't be done, was doomed to failure.

For example, the Austrians believe that when a state grants itself, by coercion, the power to create money to manage the economy and resolve crises, the risk is that it will never be able to refrain from abusing this power.

Why is this? Because it always finds itself in a form of servitude that prevents him from doing so, and thus pushes him, as Spinoza would say, "to see the best, to approve it... but to do the worst".

As a Spinozist, Hayek explains in a video that "since this power cannot be taken away without violence, all that can be done is to use a trick and introduce a new concept of money that governments can no longer stop". An argument echoed by Milton Friedman (1912-2006) in an interview, in which he in turn discusses this new form of digital currency in the context of the nascent Internet.

These are the political and economic arguments put forward by the first cypherpunks, Eric Hughes (1953-), in his "Cypherpunk manifesto", or Timothy May (1951-2018) in his "crypto anarchist manifesto", and which Satoshi Nakamoto will take up again.

Particularly when he inscribed the Times headline of January 3, 2009 in the coinbase of the Genesis block of Blockchain Bitcoin to illustrate the end of one era, Keynesian, and the beginning of another with liberal, anarchist and libertarian aspirations.

The White Paper published on October 31, 2008 presents Bitcoin as a means of exchanging value on the Internet without a trusted third party, based on a decentralized protocol. A "Copernican" revolution that will finally enable people to regain their ability to act, i.e. their freedom, their freedom to trade, their right to property and respect for their privacy.

Why? Because Bitcoin allows us to extricate ourselves from this servitude in Spinoza's way, thanks to reason, thanks to Galileo's language of mathematics. And, as Hayek suggests, without the state being able to oppose it. And peacefully, without coercion or proselytizing.

In fact, this is the last parallel I'll draw between Spinozism and Bitcoin, to show that there's no point in convincing anyone who doesn't subscribe to a Copernican or disruptive concept other than through reason, understanding, curiosity or good will.

Not by force, not by violence. Because the fact is that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Hayek, Spinoza or Satoshi Nakamoto never threatened anyone who didn't believe in their ideas and demonstrations.