I was thinking today about how ancient Israel ran before they ever had a king. It really was a society built on rules without human rulers. No monarchy. No political elite. No centralized bureaucracy.
They lived under the laws God laid out, and if you wanted the benefits of being part of that community, you followed those laws.
Nobody forced you.
But the rules weren’t up for negotiation.
And the whole thing only worked because the One setting the rules was actually good. Just. Unchanging. Benevolent.
That idea kept bouncing around in my head… and it naturally made me think of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin follows the exact same pattern.
No one is forced to participate, but if you want the benefits, sound money, sovereignty, freedom from manipulation you have to follow the protocol.
There’s no king.
No president.
No centralized authority deciding who gets what.
Just rules without rulers.
I don’t think Bitcoin replaces the need for a benevolent divine lawgiver. It just mimics the structure. Predictable, impartial, incorruptible rules that sit above any individual.
It’s like Bitcoin echoes the blueprint God already established, a system where the rules sit higher than the rulers.
And honestly, that’s exactly why human governments always drift off course. When people write the rules, people distort the rules. Israel begged for a king, God warned them what would happen, and sure enough taxes, control, misuse of power. Same story repeated throughout history.
A decentralized system only works when the foundation is good.
That was true for Israel.
It’s true for Bitcoin.
And it’s the missing ingredient in every “stateless” model humans try to build on their own.
It even makes me wonder if Satoshi understood that true freedom requires a trustworthy foundation and intentionally designed Bitcoin to mirror that ancient pattern.
Because at the end of the day, if the rules are good, you don’t need rulers.