The “Bitcoin conspiracy non-conspiracy” is what I would actually call it. For many people, the notion of “Bitcoin” naturally brings to their mind either the toy of a lame capitalist-geek craze, the conspiracy theorist’s fringe currency, or the drug-addled Silk Road trader.

However, I am none of these, and I still became interested in this new financial movement. My interest was actually initially piqued by the media attention that I saw that Bitcoin received versus the real definition and scope of Bitcoin itself. I wasn’t some drug addict looking for the Silk Road to get my fix, nor was I some capitalist Joe looking to make a quick buck off of future people’s misfortune (as a Ponzi scheme would work). I just noticed that it was actually being slandered on live TV.

The time that I initially found out about Bitcoin, it was because the news was reporting on the Silk Road. Bitcoin supposedly funded the Silk Road, and so I had written it off as a fad for the shady side of the Internet. Then, I forgot about it.

A couple years later is when I started to hear it in the news again, but it was being compared to a “bubble” and a “Ponzi scheme.” Looking into it, I found that it was actually neither. Also, the media claimed that it was mostly for drug dealers and other outcasts of society. I quickly learned, however, that trade for legal items was actually a greater percentage than trade for illicit goods. So, how do I know it was unjustly vilified?

Let me explain.

Here is a graph showing the price of Bitcoin in US dollars.

As you can see, it had an exponential spike early on, and is now encountering another such exponential spike.

But, “What is the price of Bitcoin based on,” you might ask? Well, it is based on the market capitalization of the commodity. When more dollars are “in the system,” the price naturally goes up. This happens because the number of Bitcoin in existence is not rising by very much at all, and will hit a limit of 21 million in about the year 2140. Combine the limited supply with the amount of dollars being used to buy the commodity, and you get a sharp spike as more people buy into it.

Many people then claim that it is due to speculation, and that it is a bubble about to pop. They might then point to “tulip mania” in the 1630’s as a comparison to Bitcoin. This, in my mind, is the silliest objection you could possibly leverage against Bitcoin.

Tulip mania was really only about the trading price of rare tulips for specific types of goods. There are many theories as to why the crash in price happened, but it is generally agreed upon that a crash did happen. However, tulip mania differs from Bitcoin in a very obvious way: Bitcoin is a payment system as well as a commodity.

Bitcoin is not just tulips. It’s not like you’re only trading back and forth with Bitcoin by handing it to someone in person (like they were doing with the tulips); this thing works like it’s own payment system. There is no middleman, and no governing body overseeing the transactions between people.

I can send you Bitcoin with just my phone and yours, with no one like PayPal, Chase, or Citi overseeing the transaction. This level of virtual payment abstraction is something new to currency as a whole. Never before have we not only seen a new commodity, but a commodity with a never-before-seen payment system.

Bitcoin is revolutionary. It’s like cash, for the Internet. This thing is so staggeringly mind-blowing that it even taxes the ability of the mind to comprehend it. This isn’t some tulip people pick up off the ground and trade directly for pigs or loaves of bread; this is something that replaces the whole bartering system entirely. Not only does it facilitate trade, it is the commodity you are trading with as well.

Therefore, comparing it to a “bubble,” or anything we’ve seen in the past, is incredibly naïve.

Then there’s the “Ponzi scheme” objection. Well, that can be easily dismissed because a “Ponzi scheme” requires an investment with a supposedly “guaranteed” return. The people getting their investment from future investors is what fuels this “guaranteed” investment… until the last inventors don’t get anything and the ones at the top get it all. A Ponzi scheme, therefore, is a scam.

There is no denying it; the ones who initially became interested in Bitcoin when it was real cheap have millions of dollars worth of it now. However, a Ponzi scheme is only a shady promised return on investment, whereas Bitcoin is a complete commodity/financial system package. Again, there is no comparison. Sure, people made money by adopting the payment system early on, but that in no way can be compared to a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme isn’t something that is actually useful after everyone (including the last one getting into it) has invested. Bitcoin, on the other hand, continues to be a useful facilitator of trade even after the last Bitcoin is snatched up out of the cryptographic mine tunnel. The last investor in Bitcoin is still going to be able to buy things with his Bitcoin that he bought with USD at a certain price. Therefore, comparing Bitcoin to a Ponzi scheme seems incredibly naïve.

So then, what is fueling the rise in price of Bitcoin if it isn’t a Ponzi scheme, a trading bubble, or a fringe group of individuals interested in purchasing shady items off the Internet? Well, it’s that as interest in the currency has risen, more people are buying Bitcoin so that they can use the payment system. Combine that with the fact that you also have a fixed supply of Bitcoin, and it becomes increasingly clear: Bitcoin has no comparison in history.

How can we know for certain that Bitcoin is gaining in popularity and widespread usage? I can point to the growing list of sites that accept Bitcoin, the restaurants that have started implementing it, or the growing search interest as a whole. That might convince you that more people are accepting it for payment, but that wouldn’t convince you that it is necessarily gaining in popularity.

Fortunately, it just so happens that we have a tool for measuring the popularity of something on the Internet: Google Trends. Let’s see what Google Trends has to say about the search “buy Bitcoin.”

When overlaid on top of the price of Bitcoin, we find that there is an obvious correlation. What’s going on here?

It seems that when interest in the currency spikes, there is a spike in price. It is such a beautiful correlation, that there must be a reason for it. My guess? More people using the system equals more Bitcoin that has to be bought with dollars, and that equals a higher price of Bitcoin.

When interest in the system dropped, people sold Bitcoin and the price went back down. When people became more interested, the price went up. Can this rise in price just be another fad, though?

Yeah, that is the million-dollar question.

If Bitcoin were a “fad,” then that would mean that widespread adoption of the system would never happen. It would die off in usage, and eventually become something you couldn’t use to trade for anything. But what would make Bitcoin fall in popularity?

It’s better than any currency in existence. It’s better than the dollar, the euro, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, or anything else you could throw at it. The programming behind it is open source, anybody can see how it works, and absolutely no one could cheat the system. It’s a cryptographic masterpiece made by an anonymous person named “Satoshi Nakamoto,” who probably remained hidden because he feared for his life (no, really… stay tuned for that bit of the story).

So, here we have this currency that is qualitatively better than anything in existence, and the mainstream media is trying to vilify it. What could the possible motive for that be? Well, it turns out that if you can make something unpopular, you can kill it.

And that’s Bitcoin’s only weakness. What are the odds?

That got me thinking… there could actually be a Bitcoin conspiracy happening right now, and no one would be aware of it. The mainstream media comes off as ignorant fools to the people in the know, whereas they come off as knowledgeable and trustworthy to the regular viewers of such filth.

As long as the media vilifies the supporters of the currency as people who just want to support illegal drug trade, illegal porn, terrorism, and the like, then the brainwashed are just subconsciously conditioned to view Bitcoin supporters as members of that same vilified group.

The people-in-the-know can point out the facts all they want, but the sheeple won’t listen to reason when their favorite talking heads claim that the people who are trying to get you into Bitcoin are all crooks.

Think about it. It’s beautiful. The people that actually know what Bitcoin represents and see that it is the next greatest thing to happen to society are either painted as people that are trying to get people into Bitcoin to make a quick buck (Ponzi scheme), as people that are too naïve to see that it is a bubble, or as people trying to prop up something that lets them get their heroin.

Hacking attacks on Bitcoin exchanges are used to destabilize trust in something that literally doesn’t rely on the exchange that was hacked in the slightest. You can hack an exchange, but that isn’t the same as hacking Bitcoin. The Bitcoin payment system is so beautiful in its implementation of cryptography that it would take many, many times the computing power of the world’s largest supercomputer to crack.

Oh, and when I say “many, many” times, I mean more like running that supercomputer for trillions of trillions of years, and only coming close cracking it. Maybe it’ll get lucky and crack it in 1 trillion less years than that… who knows?

The point is, hackers can’t hack it, banks can’t control it, and the government can’t just print more of it as it sees fit. How could something like that, combined with a revolutionary payment system, ever lose popularity?

Oh, yeah… that’s right, if the news were to manipulate the gullible then of course interest in Bitcoin could fall. Doesn’t that make you wonder why they are that ignorant about Bitcoin? Don’t you think the talking heads research the topic in-depth before making a news story about it? Why are they all so misinformed?

That got me thinking… I’d post about it in a conspiracy forum and see how it fares. It’s a conspiracy, right? What if the media and government are in on it, and Bitcoin is being targeted by propaganda?

I went to one of the most popular conspiracy forums I found (and it had even been mentioned in the mainstream news): Godlike Productions. If you go to godlikeproductions.com, you’ll find a site where people can post anonymously about any topic. You don’t need to register, or sign up for anything, and it is supposedly touted as a free speech website.

You can only find the best conspiracy theories if you go somewhere where it is completely open to everybody, right? Well, Godlike Production and conspiracy theories go hand-in-hand, so I thought I’d make a topic on the forum about my Bitcoin conspiracy idea.

However, I noticed that almost no one was mentioning Bitcoin on the forum. In all the anonymous posts on the forum, not one person was talking about Bitcoin within the past month when the skyrocket in price happened… despite the exponential increase in interest shown in Google Trends.

That got me digging. I soon found that people were claiming that the word “Bitcoin” was being censored on that site, and that no forum administrators cared to comment on why it was happening. You would have to type something obfuscated like “B. I. T. C. 0. I. N.” or else that word would get redacted to the word “illegal.”

Hold on a second. The mainstream news is attacking Bitcoin, and the conspiracy sites are censoring Bitcoin? What?!? Aren’t they supposed to be polar opposites?

So, I decided to post a new topic on there myself, and see how it went. I went to Godlike Productions, and posted the following without logging in (or as an “anonymous coward,” as that site likes to describe them):

B. I. T. C. 0. I. N. You can’t even type it in a thread without the post getting denied or words being redacted. If you look outside this site, you’ll find news stories about it have been increasing, but not on this site. If you go to Google trends and search for “buy _______”, you’ll find interest has been increasing. My question is why is interest in it on this site not only almost nonexistent, but not even close to the exponential interest shown in the Google trends graph? With all this bank crap going on, and the properties of this new system to alleviate the most hardcore-prepper’s concerns, why isn’t this a topic for this site? Make you wonder, doesn’t it?

I got one reply. A user said “bullshit,” and that was it. I promptly got banned from site. I couldn’t get a screenshot of the thread before it was deleted, but I have this message that notifies me that it was removed

I then tried to post using my 3G instead of my Wi-Fi, but I guess there was a cookie stored in my browser. So, it banned me for using the computer that was previously banned using another IP, and then promptly logged that IP address as being banned as well so that I couldn’t go post from my PC.

Wow.

So, hold on. Isn’t Godlike Productions supposed to be a safe haven for conspiracy theorists to discuss their crazy conspiracies without censorship?

Why was Bitcoin censored, then? Why is gold the only thing people are allowed to post about when mentioning saving up for the great coming apocalypse?

Check this out: most of the users of Godlike Productions are people that wouldn’t believe the mainstream media. They get most of their “news” from the forum site. If the non-conspiracy theorists are being force-fed propaganda, and the conspiracy theorists are being blinded to Bitcoin, then that results in a concerted effort to undermine the rising popularity of Bitcoin. And it succeeds.

This freaked me out. What are the chances that the same topic the mainstream news is woefully ignorant of is also a topic that gets censored from a conspiracy theorist website?

It seems that the idea of Bitcoin then doesn’t have a home anywhere, right?

That’s why I call it the “Bitcoin non-conspiracy conspiracy.” It’s a conspiracy that conspiracy theorists don’t even hear about because the websites that they rely on to get their conspiracy news is likely censored by the same people behind the censorship of the mainstream media.

This freakin’ blew my mind.

I decided that since I couldn’t post this story in a conspiracy forum and have it accepted, nor could I go to the mainstream media to get it noticed, I was going to have to create a blog and post it solo.

Hopefully you find this as intriguing as I have.

I encourage you, fellow Internet peoples, to search for the truth, and never give up until it’s found out. Also, go to Godlike Productions (at godlikeproductions.com), and post about Bitcoin. Maybe if enough of us go to that website and post about it, it might break through the censorship and ignorance.

Also, I now understand quite clearly why Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin) decided to remain anonymous. It is amazing what power is being thrown behind discrediting such a revolutionary payment system.

Like this page, spread the news far and wide, and help bring an end to this corrupt manipulation by whoever is controlling both groups of people.

Do I think there is really a Bitcoin conspiracy? Not necessarily. If it continues to fail to be brought up on conspiracy theorist’s websites, then I would just be hard-pressed to believe otherwise. I am always open to feedback, and if you have potential rebuttals that take all of this post into account, then I might be happy to change my mind.

It’s either change my mind on this, or remain forever wary that there is something spooky going on with the Internets. Just do a search for “Bitcoin conspiracy.” You’ll find that there is almost no talk about this anywhere.

Oh, and if I end up “suicided,” then my friends will all know the truth. Haha… Just kidding. 😉

Peace.