The Seven Primal Elements Of The Bitcoin Brand
People tend to be dismissive about new forms of money.
This makes absolute sense because the value of a monetary asset resides primarily in the fact that other people are already using it.
In this sense, any attempt at introducing a new form of money into the world has very slim chances of succeeding.
In modern world history, governments have had a monopoly over money creation initiatives. Just imagine how everybody would react if a new monetary asset were to show up. If that asset were not even backed by a nation state, its chances of success would be even slimmer.
So, how has Bitcoin grown so fast in just 10 years?
There are several answers to that question. Most of them emphasize Satoshi’s genius of combining different technologies in a very unorthodox way.
However, because of my history degree and interest in anthropology, I would like to focus on something that has nothing to do with Bitcoin’s technical aspects.
In this article, I will argue that one of the main reasons for Bitcoin’s success is something that resonates with us as humans on a much deeper level: the primal elements of its brand, which when combined, turn it into a belief system.
The idea that some brands are actually belief systems was advanced by Patrick Hanlon, and I first learned about it from his TED Talk[1]. For those who have not watched it, the following quotes of “Primal Branding” will help you understand its core proposition:
“All belief systems have seven pieces of code that work together to make them believable. The more pieces, the more believable the belief system becomes. When products and services have all seven pieces of code (the creation story; the creed; the icons;
