You learned that value cannot be created from nothing. Energy and work are required. Entropy degrades all systems. Rules without enforcement are meaningless.
You discovered how human systems fail: coordination breaks down when incentives misalign. The Cantillon Effect systematically transfers wealth. Trust requires verification, but who watches the watchers?
Can these problems be solved? Is there a system that obeys physical laws, resists entropy, enforces rules automatically, aligns incentives, eliminates the Cantillon Effect, and replaces trust with verification?
In 2008, an anonymous developer published a whitepaper describing a system that solved every problem you've studied. Not through better humans. Not through better institutions. Through code, cryptography, and thermodynamics.
Discover how three inventions combine to create a system that resists entropy, aligns incentives, and enforces rules without human discretion. This is Bitcoin's blueprint—and why it works when everything else failed.
Discover how Bitcoin combines three existing inventions—public-key cryptography, hash functions, and proof-of-work—to solve the coordination problem from Stage 2. See how mathematical trust replaces institutional trust.
Start Module →Trace how every ledger system tried to solve coordination and trust. All failed until Bitcoin combined cryptography, thermodynamics, and game theory into the first ledger that needs no trusted authority.
Start Module →Remember Stage 1? Value requires energy. Bitcoin enforces this law digitally through proof-of-work, anchoring digital records in physical reality—making lies expensive and honesty cheap to verify.
Start Module →Stage 4 explores Bitcoin as an emergent system—order from energy and incentives.