I must begin with a methodological and almost moral precaution: Bitcoin has no ideology. It has no flag, no party, no political manifesto. Satoshi Nakamoto, whether an individual or a collective, has never given the slightest indication of the protocol's political leanings. Let us repeat: Bitcoin is neither left nor right. It is a neutral monetary protocol, just like the internet itself.
Classifying Bitcoin as left-wing or right-wing is like classifying TCP/IP as conservative or HTTP as socialist. It's absurd, let's not be afraid to say it. Yes, but others will retort that once software creates a currency (as is the case with Bitcoin), then neutrality has no place…
This is something to consider because we live in a binary world. A world where everything must be categorized into one camp. An era obsessed with labels, identities, and tribes.
So be it: if some people insist on politicizing Bitcoin, let's examine it. Not as an ideological totem, but as a social object.
And here's the surprise: Bitcoin could very well appeal to the left. Perhaps even more so than to the right…
A technology born from a rejection of the concentration of power
The left criticizes the concentration of wealth, the asymmetry of power, and structures of domination. This is convenient because Bitcoin is literally a technology designed to prevent the concentration of power.
- No CEO.
- No shareholders.
- No central state issues the currency.
- No bank is able to decide who has access to the system or not.
It's a network where every individual can participate, verify, challenge, fork, propose, and build. A network that operates by consensus, in a profoundly horizontal manner. Everyone is on equal footing with Bitcoin.
If we remove the word “blockchain” from the contemporary vocabulary and simply describe the organization of the network, it almost sounds like an anarcho-syndicalist dream.
Okay, I dare to invoke the anarchists, an ideal à la Proudhon, even: "Property is theft."he said, and suddenly here is a currency that belongs to no one, therefore a little bit to everyone.
Here is a more elegant, journalistic, and impactful reformulation:
Although Marx and Proudhon disagreed on many points, it can be said that Bitcoin nevertheless resonates with the Marxist dream of an economic tool finally freed from the control of a dominant class.
Bitcoin, in its structure, strangely resembles what these thinkers imagined: a common currency, pooled, managed collectively by its participants — impossible to privatize, impossible to confiscate.
What? You want me to say what I'm hesitant to say?
Is Bitcoin, after all, a… communist currency, since it refuses to allow any one group to appropriate the monetary infrastructure?
A matter of perspective, no doubt.
Perhaps. And let's go even further.
Bitcoin is the first currency that eliminates domination
The left has always asked itself: Who controls the issuance of currency?
You only need to listen to one speech by Mélenchon to get the answer. It's the elites. Among them are central bankers, governments, and opaque institutions.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, removes the issuance of money from human hands. It places it in a transparent, accessible, predictable protocol, a monetary policy embedded in the code, impossible to manipulate to favor one group over another.
Indeed, Marx already denounced money as a tool of domination allowing a small elite to extract disproportionate value from collective labor.
"Capital is dead labor which, like a vampire, lives only by sucking living labor." Karl Marx, Le Capital
Bitcoin, by freezing its total supply, permanently blocks the possibility of creating money to enrich the wealthy at the expense of others.
It's a leveling. An implicit redistribution of monetary power. One couldn't dream of anything better in a world where equality between citizens is the goal.
Bitcoin protects the weak against the strong
Now, let's step out for a moment from the mental cage of Western thought in which we are trapped. Let's remember that the first president to make Bitcoin legal tender, Nayib Bukele, came from a political tradition firmly on the left.
And although today he claims to represent a “third way”, his speeches remain imbued with themes dear to the left – “social inclusion, equality for all” – and even his authoritarian drift evokes, in some aspects, the historical figures of regimes claiming to be left-wing…
Let's go a little further, geographically, and look elsewhere:
Argentina, Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkey, Cuba, Venezuela. Simply ask yourself the question: Who suffers from inflation? More importantly, who bears the brunt of a structurally unequal system, marked by the North-South divide?
Always the same ones, you might say: the poor, the precariously employed, the unbanked, the workers who have no room to maneuver.
And who needs Bitcoin the most, in your humble opinion?
Who actually uses it on a large scale?
I'll tell you: Nigerians, Indians, people from poor countries where banking infrastructure is non-existent or corrupt.
It is they — the excluded, the forgotten, the “outcasts” of the system — who find in Bitcoin a lifeline.
Because they understood something before everyone else:
Bitcoin is the people's bank. And when we agree to remove our blinders, we suddenly grasp the issues much better.
The left has always sought to protect the little guy from the structures that crush him. Bitcoin does this, and far better than public policies, because it cannot be stopped by starting a war or imposing an international embargo.
The Bitcoin myth = right-wing libertarians
Now, it's undeniable that Bitcoin is associated with libertarians, sometimes vocal, often caricatured. We think of Javier Milei, but also of Donald Trump. Certainly, but this association is incomplete.
She ignores a crucial part of the story: Bitcoin was first adopted by the margins.
- Political activists.
- Journalists under threat.
- Persecuted minorities.
- Women in patriarchal societies (Afghanistan, Iran).
- Communities excluded from the banking system.
- Migrants sending remittances without confiscatory tax.
Libertarians may have seen Bitcoin as a tool for individual sovereignty. That's true. But let's not forget that the left can see Bitcoin as a tool for social justice, allowing vulnerable people to escape abusive control.
The left might like Bitcoin because Bitcoin resembles them.
This might well surprise the political left, the champagne socialists perhaps, but not the original left. The left of thinkers, workers, utopians, activists, and defenders of civil liberties.
The left wing that wanted:
- a fair currency
- a truly democratic economy
- protection for the most vulnerable
- a limitation of arbitrary power
- a fight against monopolies,
- a redistribution of power
On these points, Bitcoin is perhaps the technology most aligned with left-wing ideals since the birth of the Internet.
It's crazy that I didn't see it...
Final word
In conclusion, we can say that Bitcoin is the Schrödinger's cat of political economy: capitalist or communist? Libertarian or social?
Emancipatory or subversive?
It all depends on where in the world you are and the social class you live in.
For an Argentinian ruined by inflation, Bitcoin is a shield.
For a central banker, it's a threat.
For a Marxist, an ordinary mortal.
For a libertarian, the apotheosis of the individual.
Bitcoin is par-of the the left and the rightand both currents at the same time.
That is why it disturbs, fascinates, worries, and liberates.
And it is perhaps precisely this ambiguity, this quantum nature, that makes it the most revolutionary political tool of the 21st century.
