"Bitcoin is a financial tool born of code and cryptography. But seen in a wider frame, it belongs to a cultural lineage more than a century old. Since the 1910s, avant-garde movements have probed questions that later became central to Bitcoin: Who decides value? Can rules replace rulers? How do systems record time, distribute trust or resist authority? Far from appearing out of nowhere in 2009, Bitcoin crystallized ideas that had long circulated in artistic experiments."
"You don't need to like art - or on-chain art - to follow this argument. This article is not a case for "Bitcoin art" but for understanding Bitcoin's conceptual prehistory. If you are a Bitcoin maximalist, read what follows as the backstory of your protocol's worldview, not an art-world detour. And if you are an on-chain maximalist, remember that maximalism of any kind denies reality: The logic of Bitcoin was not born on-chain."
"Artists tend to surface and stress-test ideas before society at large absorbs them. What they explore in canvases, instructions, networks or number systems often migrates years later into economics, engineering and politics. The point of this article is not to conflate art with Bitcoin, but to show that Bitcoin is the cultural consequence of ideas rehearsed for over a century - ideas about decentralization, protocol, time and value that were already in the air long before they were established in code."
Bitcoin originated as a financial tool of code and cryptography but also sits within a cultural lineage extending over a century. Avant-garde movements since the 1910s probed questions central to Bitcoin: who decides value, whether rules can replace rulers, and how systems record time, distribute trust or resist authority. Artists surface and stress-test ideas that later migrate into economics, engineering and politics. Maximalist belief that Bitcoin was born purely on-chain ignores its conceptual prehistory. Early 20th-century Futurism exalted speed, the machine aesthetic and industrial dynamism, calling for the destruction of museums and libraries in favor of an aesthetic reboot.
Read at Bitcoin Magazine
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