Truth, currency and immortality. Blockchain and Faust II

2008 also showed that there is an opportunity in every crisis: The collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers on Monday, September 15, caused the global economy to tumble. Time and again it was said that since Black Friday 1929 no event would have such serious consequences as this one: It will go down in history as „Black Monday“. Although the consequences were contained thanks to enormous state efforts, something has changed fundamentally as a result of this shocking experience: Trust in banks, but also in state institutions, was sustainably damaged. The IMF’s 2009 annual report concludes that the crisis has „reached all sectors and countries in the global economy through banking systems and has been exacerbated by the collapse of consumer and corporate confidence“.This situation painfully demonstrated how vulnerable our modern monetary and economic system is. But we also owe this crisis an invention that will change our world. A man or a group called Satoshi Nakamoto – who hides behind this pseudonym is unknown still today – invented the Blockchain. „So far,“ says a white paper published by Nakamoto on the Internet, „global trade is almost entirely based on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. The crisis has clearly shown that these financial institutions are not „third parties to be trusted“.The idea Nakamoto had against this background is basically simple: we need a technical system that allows money to be transmitted directly from the sender to the recipient. This is intended to eliminate banks that traditionally carry out such transactions. Blockchain is the technique that enables such an immediate transfer, Bitcoin is the currency that can be transferred. As simple as the idea may be, its technical realization is just as complex. Because it is indispensable for the success of Blockchain that the money, more precisely: the data that represent the money, flows safely from one party to another.Nakamoto’s innovation thus responds to a crisis that has many symptoms and extends far beyond the financial sector. Its core is a loss of confidence that extends not only to the financial world, but to large parts of public life and is expressed in the accusation of the „lying press“ as well as in the concept of the „postfactual age“, which has been so much talked about since Donald Trump’s election. The Americanist Michael Butter rightly describes the many circulating conspiracy theories as a „symptom of a deeper crisis of democratic societies“,