Bitcoin is an extraordinary invention, reorganizing and reframing modern civilization, with implications in almost every discipline of academic study.
The disciplines Bitcoin integrates or impacts include:
- Mathematics, through its use of cryptographic techniques and proofs;
- Application of the Scientific Method through generating repeatable results under the same conditions in validating and constructing Bitcoin’s blockchain;
- Creation of a provably verifiable, immalleable and verifiable digital History preserving all actual valid network events back in time from its genesis;
- A new approach to aspects of Politics and Law where the rules cannot be changed (except under extreme circumstances) or broken;
- Finance subject to these unchangeable and unbreakable rules, challenging the assumptions of many long-established financial theories and valuation models;
- In Economics, it introduces the existence of a commodity whose future supply and discovery schedule is known in advance, forever, and does not respond to demand;
- With regard to several schools of Engineering, Bitcoin’s new application of energy through its proof-of-work method of updating its Accounting records, has led to innovations and widespread applications in systems engineering and power management which is expected to have major implication on civil engineering and environmental studies;
- As it expands into all of the above fields, it inevitably gets the attention of governments and becomes a consideration in both International Affairs and Domestic Policies;
- Bitcoin further applies ethical, political, epistemological and ontological Philosophies to create a modern money that binds and organizes humanity in a global society, aiming to significantly and favorably impact our future;
- Finally, at least for this short article, the complexity of the above interactions itself often has psychological implications on those exposed to Bitcoin, frequently leading to growing humility and decreases in time-preference, among other changes.
Bitcoin is not only a novel and unprecedented invention, it is so multidisciplinary in what it is composed of and imposes profound effects upon that the study of it becomes a necessary long term requirement of our civilization.
Growing our understanding of this increasingly impactful invention will require ongoing enquiry and research into all of these disciplines, combined with efforts to unite the new insights and effects it reveals in each. Such efforts will enable us to form and explore new hypotheses about humans and the world - a world with Bitcoin.
In summary, Bitcoin is a revolutionary phenomenon that demands our focussed, long term attention and study.
The creation of a Bitcoin Academic Center at a top-tier institution such as George Washington University, with faculties and educational programs that already have deep expertise in these many disciplines, possessing a long term mandate to shine light on its potential will accelerate and deepen the beneficial impacts of Bitcoin.
Tomer Strolight is the author of Why Bitcoin? and speaks at many Bitcoin events around the world.