Bitcoin & Accelereactionnism: The Currency of the New Zeitgeist
Several people have asked why I haven't written on my blog for a long time (my wife primarily;). I was simply waiting to see things more clearly. With My Apophenia, I try to connect elements that seem unrelated but reveal deeper trends.
I believe technology isn't adopted just for its practical benefits. It becomes popular when it reflects the dominant ideology of the time - what we call the Zeitgeist or spirit of the times.
The developments since Trump's return to power have been striking. The Trump Coin, tariffs, tensions with allies, the spread of fake news - all these show the emergence of a world where isolationism, imperialism, and the restriction of individual freedoms are becoming the norm.
In this article, I explore why Bitcoin isn't just a technological innovation, but the perfect monetary expression of this new Zeitgeist. I'm not making moral judgments - I'm simply connecting emerging ideas with this new currency that seems perfectly suited to the world taking shape.
The connections I'll examine:
Bitcoin & Reactionary Accelerationism, what I call Accelereactionnism
Bitcoin & Techno-cesarism
Bitcoin & Capitalism of Finitude
Bitcoin & Accelereactionism (accelerationnism + reaction)
Trump's coalition represents a fascinating political alchemy: the fusion of seemingly incompatible forces—acceleration and reaction. Lorenzo Castellani aptly describes this as "accélération réactionnaire"—a new coalition where Silicon Valley tech visionaries coexist with America's most geographically, culturally, and socially peripheral voters. Their common ground? A desire to break free from constraints—regulatory, cultural, and economic—while simultaneously protecting identity and sovereignty.
Bitcoin embodies this paradox perfectly. On one hand, it represents radical technological acceleration: a decentralized digital currency functioning outside traditional monetary systems, promising borderless transactions and algorithmic governance. It's the ultimate tool for those who wish to propel us into a techno-futurist world unencumbered by legacy financial institutions.
Yet Bitcoin also carries profoundly reactionary elements. Its fixed supply (capped at 21 million coins), similar to gold, the oldest asset, rejects the modern monetary theory of unlimited fiat expansion. Its proof-of-work consensus mechanism explicitly values computational "work"—a digital parallel to the traditionalist valorization of tangible labor. Perhaps most tellingly, Bitcoin's philosophy harks back to gold-standard economics, a monetary conservatism explicitly rejecting post-1971 monetary policy.
Bitcoin thus mirrors Trump's new coalition: accelerationist in its technological means, reactionary in its ends. Elon Musk, exemplifies this duality, championing both futuristic SpaceX rockets and Bitcoin's gold-like scarcity. Bitcoin appeals equally to tech libertarians dreaming of algorithmic governance and Main Street Americans distrustful of Washington's monetary policy.
Bitcoin is the monetary manifestation of a world simultaneously racing toward the future while yearning for aspects of the past. It's not coincidental that Bitcoin's rise aligned with the populist wave that brought Trump to power in 2016, nor that it has found renewed momentum during his return. The cryptocurrency serves as the perfect financial vehicle for an era defined by acceleration and reaction fused into a single, potent political force.
Bitcoin & Techno-cesarism
Classical cesarism—from Julius Caesar to Napoleon—was characterized by direct relationships between leaders and people, bypassing traditional power structures and intermediaries. In our digital age, this phenomenon has evolved into what we might call techno-cesarism: the creation of direct relationships between technology and people, circumventing established institutional frameworks.
Bitcoin embodies this cesarist impulse. It creates a direct relationship between people and money without traditional intermediaries like banks, payment processors, or central banks. The rallying cry "be your own bank" captures this essence—a promise of monetary sovereignty at the individual level, unmediated by institutions that claim to represent collective interests but operate with minimal democratic input.
This disintermediation mirrors Trump's political style. Just as Trump communicates directly with his base through social media, bypassing traditional media gatekeepers, Bitcoin enables direct financial transactions without institutional approval. Both represent a revolt against layers of intermediation that populist movements view as corrupted or compromised.
Critics often mischaracterize Bitcoin as simply replacing one elite (bankers) with another (miners and whales). This misses the cesarist element that makes Bitcoin appealing: the perception of a more direct relationship with monetary value. While central banks maintain a facade of technocratic independence, they remain embedded in political-economic power structures. Bitcoin, despite its imperfections, offers a transparent ruleset anyone can verify—a monetary constitution written in code rather than obscured by technocratic jargon.
The convergence between Trump and tech leaders like Musk and Thiel represents a fundamental alignment around power and intermediation. When Thiel declares that "competition is for losers," he's articulating an important truth about network economics: the goal isn't to compete within existing systems but to create new monopolistic platforms that connect users directly. PayPal (which Thiel co-founded) didn't try to be a better bank; it created direct payment rails between individuals. SpaceX doesn't try to be a better NASA contractor; it establishes direct access to space.
This mirrors what Bitcoin accomplishes in the monetary realm. It doesn't attempt to reform central banking—it creates an entirely new monetary network where users connect directly. The value doesn't come from competing within the system; it comes from owning the rails themselves. This is cesarism adapted for the digital age: direct power relationships replacing mediated ones.
Trump's administration recognizes this power dynamic. The MAGA movement itself operates as a direct connection between Trump and his supporters, bypassing traditional political structures. By incorporating figures like Musk into his orbit, Trump isn't just adding business expertise—he's embracing network architects who understand how to build systems that connect people directly while accumulating power at the protocol level.
In a world where trust in intermediaries has collapsed, Bitcoin's techno-cesarism offers an alternative: a monetary system where the relationship between people and money is direct, transparent, and governed by rules that no single entity can change unilaterally.
Bitcoin & Capitalism of finitude
Arnaud Orain's concept of "capitalisme de la finitude" provides an illuminating framework for understanding Bitcoin's place in our current economic moment. This form of capitalism emerges cyclically throughout history when resources are perceived as finite and the economic game shifts from positive-sum to zero-sum thinking.
Bitcoin was designed as a response to perceived resource scarcity—not of natural resources but of monetary soundness itself. Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, released during the 2008 financial crisis, portrayed central bank monetary policy as inherently corrupt and inflationary. The solution? A digital currency with an absolute cap on supply, mimicking the scarcity of gold in a digital realm.
This artificial scarcity is Bitcoin's defining feature. By limiting the total supply to 21 million coins, Bitcoin rejects the core premise of post-1971 monetary policy: that currency supply should expand with economic activity. Instead, it embraces the mercantile view that money itself is a finite resource to be accumulated rather than a medium that should flow freely to facilitate exchange.
The timing of Bitcoin's resurrection during Trump's second term is telling. As Orain points out, we've entered a period characterized by "la progressive disparition de la scène mondiale du libéralisme économique." (The progressive disappearance of economic liberalism from the world stage) The free trade and multilateral cooperation that defined the post-1945 and post-1989 orders are giving way to what Branko Milanovic calls the perception of commerce as a zero-sum game.
Bitcoin thrives in this environment because it transforms monetary policy itself into a competitive arena—a race to accumulate a finite resource. Its energy-intensive mining process directly connects monetary creation to resource consumption, making explicit what mercantilism always “understood”: that economic advantage comes through resource control, not mutual exchange.
As the global order fragments into competing imperial "silos" with tariff barriers and resource nationalism, Bitcoin offers a parallel financial system designed for precisely this world. It's deflationary by design, rewarding hoarding over circulation, accumulation over exchange—the perfect currency for a capitalism of finitude where everyone is scrambling to secure their piece of a supposedly limited pie.
The irony is that Bitcoin's artificial scarcity comes at enormous cost—computational power, electricity, mining equipment—consuming very real finite resources to maintain digital scarcity. In this sense, Bitcoin isn't just adapted to the capitalism of finitude; it actively reinforces its underlying logic of resource competition and zero-sum thinking.
Conclusion
The relationship between technology and ideology is inherently dialectical. Bitcoin exists simultaneously as both symptom and catalyst of this emerging world order. A comprehensive study of how Bitcoin's narratives have influenced thinkers, politicians, entrepreneurs, and citizens would reveal much about our current moment's ideological underpinnings.
I cannot pretend to be optimistic about these developments. As a European observer, I find myself in a position reminiscent of Stefan Zweig in the 1930s—watching with growing unease as familiar institutions and values crumble. We Europeans seem caught between obsolescence and irrelevance, witnesses to the death of one world order and the birth of another that appears increasingly hostile to the principles we once took for granted.
What we're experiencing isn't merely a technological or economic shift, but a fundamental realignment of power, values, and social organization. Bitcoin isn't just a new form of money—it's a harbinger of a transformed world whose contours we can only begin to discern. Whether this transformation leads to greater human flourishing or deeper entrenchment of zero-sum thinking remains to be seen, but the trajectory concerns me.