Bitcoin is a neutral protocol that exists outside every economic and political framework humanity has built. It carries no ideology, no party platform, and no central authority. Therefore, every attempt to place Bitcoin inside an existing mental model, whether capitalist, socialist, libertarian, or anarchist, says more about the framework doing the categorising than about the protocol itself. It is the classification puzzle that Daniella Liberati sits with in “Beyond Money: Regaining Sovereignty, Rediscovering Humanity,” and it may be one of the reasons so many of us struggle to place Bitcoin at all.
This piece is a structural observation drawn from personal experience and independent research. It is not financial, therapeutic, or medical advice. Full disclaimers.
Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin is a neutral protocol with no ideology, no central authority, and no political allegiance; it exists outside capitalism, communism, libertarianism, and every other -ism-based system.
- Modern fiat economies are managed, centralised systems regardless of their label; in a debt-based economy, the Cantillon Effect concentrates wealth among those closest to the money supply.[1]
- When measured in Bitcoin, free market pricing becomes visible: The cost of an iPhone dropped 99.98% in bitcoin terms between 2011 and 2024, while its fiat price increased by 23%.[2]
- The difficulty categorising Bitcoin reveals that our economic and political frameworks are built around centralised money; remove that foundation and the categories collapse.
- The labels we use to categorise money, politics, and each other may be the very structures that prevent us from seeing what lies beyond them.
Why Is Modern Fiat Not Capitalism?
Modern fiat is a managed, centralised economy operating under the label of capitalism. Capitalism in its textbook form requires private ownership, free market competition, and limited government intervention, with prices determined by supply and demand. What we experience in practice diverges from that definition at the most fundamental layer: Money itself. Governments intervene through monetary expansion (printing) and capital controls, and those interventions distort the system at every level. Printing increases the supply, eroding purchasing power unevenly. Those who receive new money first gain at the expense of later recipients, a mechanism known as the Cantillon Effect, which concentrates wealth among government insiders and favoured corporations with preferential access to resources.[1] The result is growing government influence, corporate monopolies, stifled innovation, and distorted price signals.
As Jeff Booth articulates: “In a free market, prices fall to the marginal cost of production; if they are not falling, we do not live in a free market.”[4] What we call capitalism and what we call communism converge once the money underneath both is manipulated. The label changes; the extraction mechanism persists. When measured in Bitcoin, undistorted pricing becomes visible. An iPhone cost 162 bitcoin in 2011; by 2024, a superior device required 0.014 bitcoin, a 99.98% decrease in real terms.[2] In fiat terms, the same technology rose in price by 23%. The measuring instrument determines whether we see an open market or a managed one. Bitcoin offers the first opportunity for humanity to experience a genuine free market where prices fall, a reality beyond fiat altogether.
How Does Bitcoin Compare to Capitalism, Communism, and Libertarianism?
Bitcoin occupies no position on any existing political or economic spectrum. The following comparison makes the structural differences visible:
| Feature | Capitalism | Communism | Libertarianism | Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership Model | Private, profit-driven | Collective, state-owned | Private, voluntary exchange | Self-sovereign |
| Control of Money | Central banks and private institutions | State-controlled | Privatised or gold-backed | Decentralised, algorithmic issuance |
| Value Flow | Favours asset owners | Centralised redistribution | Market-driven | Distributed to all network participants |
| Ideological Basis | Market efficiency, competition | Class struggle, equality | Individual freedom, non-intervention | Neutral protocol, transparency, free market |
| Governance Structure | Market and government interplay | Centralised planning | Minimal state intervention | Consensus among decentralised nodes |
| Inflation Policy | Targeted via central banking | Controlled by state | Trust in gold supply | Hard-capped supply: 21 million BTC |
| Censorship Resistance | Low to moderate | Low | Medium, still requires trust | Very high: no central chokepoint |
| Accessibility | Varies by class and location | Controlled by state allocation | Varies by market access | Global, permissionless |
| Moral Foundation | Efficiency and growth | Equity and solidarity | Autonomy and property rights | Mathematical integrity, sovereignty, transparency |
Bitcoin requires no state, no central authority, no ideological commitment, and no trust in institutions. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission legally defined it as “an asset without an issuer,” comparing it to physical commodities such as gold or natural gas.[5] A protocol with no issuer, no CEO, and no political backing does not occupy a point on any existing systemic structure. It is, as Jeff Booth describes it, “a system outside the system.”
Why Is It So Hard to Place Bitcoin in a Political Category?
The difficulty of categorising Bitcoin reveals a deeper pattern: Every economic framework we have inherited assumes centralised money as its foundation. Capitalism presupposes a Central Bank that manages interest rates; communism requires a state that controls distribution; libertarianism depends on trust in a gold standard or privatised monetary authority. Each model carries a built-in relationship with a monetary centre, and when someone encounters a protocol that removes that centre entirely, the inherited categories have nowhere to place it.
In conversations about Bitcoin with people encountering it for the first time, I have been asked whether I am an anarchist, capitalist, communist, liberal, or libertarian. The question itself is revealing: The assumption is that conviction about money must locate a person somewhere on the political spectrum. What often follows is projection. A person who criticises the Federal Reserve is labelled a libertarian; one who values personal sovereignty gets called an anarchist; one who advocates sound money is filed under gold-standard capitalist. Each label captures one thread while missing the whole.
We reach for categories because classification is how we make sense of the world. The question worth sitting with is whether the categories we inherited were designed for what we are encountering now, or for a world that assumed centralised money as a given.
This self-assessment maps where you currently sit across both layers of programming: The Individual Matrix and the Systemic Matrix, so you can see which layer is producing the plateau.
Where Are You on The Journey?
Two invisible layers of programming shape our experience of money, abundance, and freedom. This self-assessment reveals exactly where you are and what it means. You will not be asked for your email and your entries are not saved or transmitted.
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The process of unlearning is ongoing. I still catch myself reaching for familiar categories, noticing the moment when an old framework tries to wrap itself around something that does not fit. We are at the early stages of encountering a system that was designed to need nothing from us: no ideology, no allegiance, no political identity. The individual choices being made now, from how we store our time and energy to which assumptions we are willing to revisit, are shaping something whose full form is still emerging. When the monetary framework shifts, what feels spiritually and psychologically possible seems to shift with it.
If this framework resonates, Beyond Money goes deeper into exactly this. You can find it at daniella.io.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bitcoin a Political Movement?
Bitcoin is a decentralised protocol governed by mathematical rules and maintained by consensus among independent nodes; it has no leader, no party, and no political platform. Because every prior monetary system has been tied to a political structure, people instinctively try to place Bitcoin on the left-right spectrum. But the politics projected onto it originate in the frameworks of the people encountering it.
Why Do People Confuse Bitcoin with Capitalism or Libertarianism?
The confusion arises because Bitcoin shares surface-level features with several ideologies without belonging to any of them. It supports private ownership (like capitalism), limits government control over money (like libertarianism), distributes value to participants (like socialism’s stated aims), and operates without hierarchy (like anarchism). Each model recognises a familiar thread and claims it, yet all existing economic labels were built around centralised money.
Can Bitcoin Exist Without Any Government or Institution Supporting It?
Bitcoin has operated continuously since January 2009 without any government, corporation, or institution managing its protocol. It has no CEO, no board of directors, and no marketing department. The network runs on roughly 54.5 million wallets holding a non-zero balance as of December 2024, maintained by decentralised nodes across the globe.[6] Governance happens through voluntary consensus, as the 2017 Bitcoin Cash fork demonstrated when users chose which version to support.
Sources
[1] Cantillon, R. (1755/2010). An Essay on the Nature of Trade in General (A. Murphy, Trans.). Liberty Fund.
[2] Dsouza, V. (2024, September 11). iPhone 16 price in bitcoin: Here’s how the costs changed in 13 years. Watcher Guru. https://watcher.guru/news/iphone-16-price-in-bitcoin-heres-how-the-costs-changed-in-13-years
[3] Ammous, S. (2018). The bitcoin standard: The decentralized alternative to central banking (1st ed.). Wiley.
[4] Booth, J. (2020). The price of tomorrow: Why deflation is the key to an abundant future. Stanley Press.
[5] Peterson, A. (2015, September 18). Bitcoin now classed as a commodity in the US. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/18/bitcoin-now-classed-as-a-commodity-in-the-us.html
[6] Bitcoin Magazine Pro. (n.d.). Bitcoin: Addresses with non-zero balance. https://www.bitcoinmagazinepro.com/charts/addresses-non-zero-balance/