On the occasion of Bitcoin Pizza Day, re-examine world civilization through the thoughts of Satoshi Nakamoto

Author | The Primedia DAO Founder Jerry

This article is written in response to an invitation from media friends, using Bitcoin Pizza Day as an opportunity.

The original theme was to discuss the relationship between Bitcoin cycles and this round of bull and bear markets, which is indeed necessary. This may be the last iteration of bull and bear cycles determined by Bitcoin cycles, after which we will enter a bull and bear cycle based on infrastructure advancements and the fundamentals of a thriving Web3 ecosystem.

However, if we take Bitcoin as a starting point for discussion, I find that there are deeper issues worth exploring—what was Satoshi Nakamoto's original intention, what was the larger historical context of Bitcoin's birth, how the efforts in the crypto world since Bitcoin have brought new vitality to our civilization, and what the corresponding old order is, whether its necessity and urgency are sufficient to support the emergence of this force…

If we view Bitcoin as Satoshi Nakamoto's resistance to the hegemonic dollar order, this time cycle spans from a decade to several decades, as the world entered a modern civilization dominated by the U.S. based on dollar hegemony after the dissolution of the Soviet Union; whether intentionally or unintentionally, Satoshi's anti-dollar hegemony and anti-modern civilization stance essentially aligns with today's mainstream commercial and technological civilization, a time cycle that has been ongoing for a century, starting from computers and information technology; since the bourgeois revolutions, the transition from industrial civilization to commercial technological civilization has been an inevitable journey, with its origins in the ancient Mediterranean civilizations of Greece and Rome—this is a narrative of civilization spanning millennia; commercial technological civilization is about to reach its peak due to the arrival of AI, and humanity's community of shared destiny will also face a test of destruction and survival…

This brings us into the process of the digital evolution of human society. Regarding the opportunities and threats brought by AI to humanity, we previously discussed this in "Why Talking About 'AI Threats' Again is Groundless Worry," and will not elaborate further here.

History cannot be chosen, so discussing whether the civilization system of the past millennium is the best seems meaningless. However, in the context of the impending test of destruction and survival, it is still necessary to extend the timeline of human civilization history once again. In the earlier periods of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, the histories of ancient India, ancient Babylon, ancient Egypt, and ancient China can extend human civilization history to thousands of years, as well as the much earlier evolution of Homo sapiens over tens of thousands of years in prehistoric civilization…

In the civilization systems traceable over thousands of years, the four ancient civilizations have been replaced by lower forms of civilization—regarding why the ancient Greek and Roman civilization lineage became mainstream and why the four ancient civilizations declined, this requires more specialized scholars to conduct systematic research. However, looking at the ancient Chinese civilization, the pictographic writing civilization system has a far superior understanding of heaven, earth, and humanity compared to the philosophical to scientific lineage of ancient Greece and Rome.

Now, in the digital process of human society, we inevitably face the choice of the evolution of human civilization forms once again. We have the opportunity to make choices—returning to today's theme, if humanity can leverage the tremendous productivity increase brought by AI-driven computing power, it will inevitably reshape and redefine the existing economic and social order, as well as the global international landscape.

Historically, every transformation has involved a struggle between old and new forces. In "Tencent's Ambition: How a Gaming Company Can Save the World?" we expressed concerns about this. However, with the new civilization forms brought by the crypto world initiated by Satoshi Nakamoto's encryption, hashing, and decentralized Bitcoin, all of this can be alleviated. For more on this topic, please refer to "The Value Logic of 'Civilization Stops' and 'Bear Market Bottoms'."

An important detail here is the contradiction between the exponential growth of productivity brought by AI and humanity's corresponding governance capabilities of digital order—if humanity does not develop a more sophisticated form of digital civilization to govern AI computing power, AI will gradually reach or even surpass human comprehensive capabilities in the digital society over the next 20 years. The Primedia DAO previously discussed this topic based on the exploration of the crypto world, where humanity is evolving sophisticated digital social governance capabilities.

We trace back to the evolution of civilization over thousands of years because this digital civilization can be measured within the context of human evolutionary history. Our leap from blockchain/Web3 encrypted economy to the metaverse/digital society is a more advanced progression than the industrial revolution, the Age of Exploration, and the information technology revolution in human society.

In the process of shaping the digital civilization ecosystem, the existing commercial technological civilization centered around dollar hegemony will inevitably be iterated. In such a grand context, the economic structure and stagnation concerns that economists worry about, and the new generation's issues of internal competition and spiritual desolation that sociologists are concerned about, are not significant problems. Bitcoin, which originated in the geek world, until its speculative and hype-driven rise through Ethereum's ICO in 2017, was negative in itself, but in this grand context, it possesses extraordinary positive energy—this is a chaotic yet fundamental driving force in the evolution of human civilization forms.

All of this seems to have just begun, but the pace of change is surprisingly fast—the development of AI + Web3 over the next 20 years will bring humanity a new world civilization ecosystem. However, if not handled well, there is a real possibility of failure, which is why Musk and others have jointly called for controlling AI development, and earlier, Hawking expressed deep concerns about AI's impact on humanity's future.

Returning to the introduction, I originally wanted to discuss the relationship between Bitcoin and bull and bear markets, but after a slight intoxication, I settled on this discussion of survival and destruction. Bitcoin's status as digital gold is unshakeable, but its overall size in the crypto economic market will gradually diminish in the increasing market of Web3 native assets and off-chain asset NFTization, especially in this round of bull and bear cycles where we have high expectations for Hong Kong's Web3. This is also why the "carving the boat to seek the sword" faction has never waited for the appearance of the golden pit.

Probabilistically speaking, June in Hong Kong will provide a vigorous force for the crypto market, forming the fundamentals of the crypto market with a large number of Web3 native assets and off-chain asset NFTization in this bull market, since then entering the Bitcoin cycle era after the bull and bear iteration. All of this is very important, as it will form a foundational value support in the evolution of civilization forms at the level of destruction in human existence.