(REVIEW) “God Bless Bitcoin” is a decent primer on the basics of cryptocurrency and its overlap with religious values. However, its lack of dissenting voices makes it more useful for energizing true believers than converting skeptics.
It’s no secret that the American economy is making people uneasy right now. High rates of inflation and a recent stock market scare, where the Dow dropped over 1,000 points to hit its lowest point in two years, are more signs of it. This is an America that is over $30 trillion in debt. In such times, it’s no surprise when people start looking at alternative forms of currency to hedge their bets.
One of the most popular recent alternate forms of currency is “cryptocurrency” — and the most popular version of that is Bitcoin, a digital currency you can use to pay for anything you wantwithout the need for middlemen like a bank or a treasury that prints paper money. This has been huge among tech bros and finance entrepreneurs who claim it is the currency of the future and that it will free people from having their money controlled by governments or large financial institutions.
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This is a documentary that tries to bring that level of enthusiasm to religious audiences. Through a series of interviews with religious leaders, experts and celebrities like Mark Cuban, Tony Hawk and Robert T. Kiyosaki (“Rich Dad, Poor Dad”), along with animations and narration, argues that cryptocurrency is the answer to many of the problems that religious people — and ethical people everywhere — care about.
The film’s pitch is fairly standard free-market libertarian fare. They argue that our current money system is broken and that we should adopt digital currency — particularly Bitcoin — to fix it. The basic reason is that the money we use now is “fiat currency.” This means it’s money that the government declares as our currency and has control over. That monopoly of control, the film argues, has two major problems. The first is that because the government controls the money, they can — and often do — inflate it whenever they want, making each dollar you earn less valuable each year. The second is, in a worst-case scenario, that the government can cancel money as a means to control you.
The movie does a solid job identifying the problems that crypto-enthusiasts see with our current forms of money and how cryptocurrency — and Bitcoin in particular — solves those problems. Each stage of the argument is taken in steps, with at least three layers of explanation. The various experts they interview will explain it, then they’ll have an infographic and then their chief explainer will summarize what they’ve gone through in the simplest way possible. Sometimes, I felt talked down to, particularly with the sing-song voice some people use when explaining the concepts. At the same time, I can’t fault them for wanting to err on the side of clarity.
With its pitch of free-market libertarian entrepreneurship to religious audiences, “God Bless Bitcoin” is a very American documentary. Which is, frankly, part of the movie’s charm. It’s commonly observed that America is unusual in its union between social and religious conservatives and economic ones. A recent study from Cambridge University Press of 99 countries found that in almost every single one that are socially conservative were negatively correlated with being economically conservative. This makes sense. The freedom types chafe at any authority — religious or government — telling them what to do. Meanwhile, religious conservatives support submitting yourself to the higher authorities of God and the community and don’t mind using the government to enforce that.
In America, economic and religious conservatives are united by opposition to government coercion and a belief that free markets both create the most freedom and the most good for people. And yet, sometimes there’s still deep tension in those alliances. The film also does a good job of going through how members of different religious traditions see Bitcoin as a way of acting out their faith.
Whether it’s “Moksha” or “Yogakshima” in India speaking to material and spiritual well-being, Buddhism being a “decentralized religion” like Bitcoin in a decentralized economy, Islam having a tradition of Muhammad saying that people can’t fix the price because “God fixes the prices,” One common thread is that most religions have a principle of “do good with your wealth” — and that is the case they make for why they see using Bitcoin as an extension of their beliefs.
Some of the attempts to show compatibility between faith and Bitcoin work better than others. The strongest cases are when they focus on values that people of faith prioritize, like family formation, protection from big government programs and the poor not having their wealth stolen from them. Others, such as the contention that Bitcoin “blockchain” is like the “chain” of Jewish tradition, felt like a stretch.
The biggest weakness of this documentary is it doesn’t contain any dissenting voices. This is a problem with documentaries I’ve talked about before. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with a documentary having a strong point of view, but those views are most persuasive when you feel like you’ve heard the other side. Most people recognize that when you’ve only heard one side, you’re missing something. That’s why The Book of Proverbs (18:17) says, “In a lawsuit, the first to speak seems right until someone comes forward and cross-examines.”
Because people with critical thinking know they aren’t getting both sides of the story, they know they’d have to research the other side to feel like they’ve learned something. But because they’re busy, there’s a strong likelihood they won’t do the extra research. So they’ll simply be left unpersuaded. The people left will be the people who lack critical thinking skills and who simply believe what they’re told without skepticism. That isn’t really who you want to be the main people in your movement.
The film also falls into a bit of utopian thinking. One thing I’ve always appreciated about libertarians is a lack of idealized thinking. They know that life is full of tradeoffs and that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You can’t just print money. A free market is supposed to make the world better, not perfect. People who promise a perfect world, like politicians, are probably selling you something.
And yet, as the film goes on, it keeps promising more and more. Crypto can never be broken by anyone … ever! Crypto will keep us safe from governments. Crypto will stop war. Crypto will create freedom that will never be taken. Because of the ra-ra treatment of cryptocurrency, there is definitely a televangelist prosperity gospel vibe to this movie.
To be clear, I’m sure that the people involved in this movie are sincere. I even think that they raise some really interesting points. But because of its presentation, I’m left unconvinced the picture of Bitcoin I’ve been given is accurate enough to act on responsibly.
Cryptocurrency is a really fascinating topic worth talking about. It’s gratifying to see it being talked about in the context of faith. If it had only trusted the audience more to inform them rather than advertise to them, it would have added something even more valuable to the conversation.
The full “God Bless Bitcoin” movie is available to watch for free at godblessbitcoin.com.