It's time to build new institutions
Wake up! The Bitcoin Renaissance is underway. A new age is dawning and with it comes a rare opportunity to rebuild society on a more just and stable foundation. A full cultural revival however requires the founding of new institutions. The Bitcoin Tree Forum or BTreeC represents one such attempt and is a physical embodiment of low time preference. It seeks to instill in society the ideals of stewardship, cooperation and freedom. A BTreeC is a generations long project and as such will evolve with time, but the time to begin is now. So join the Nakamoto Tree Project and let's get to work building tangible, real world institutions that can educate, inspire, and support our local communities for centuries to come.
Bitcoin +Trees + Civics = BTreeC
A BTreeC is a grove of trees (ideally Giant Sequoias) planted by bitcoiners and stewarded by bitcoiners as an act of service for the generations to come. It serves as a local forum to gather and coordinate human effort towards projects that promise long term value to the community. It's a meeting place for citizens to lower their time preference and partake in something bigger than themselves. At the center of the grove is a publicly accessible Bitcoin node or QR code that serves as a portal for communities to transfer value between one another and facilitate other, yet to be imagined, use cases. Bitcoin is a public utility and as such it should have public interfaces.
"The gothic cathedral is a symbol of bold, ambitious, long-term projects; indeed, any single contributor to the monument would likely die before its completion, but contributed nonetheless—because it was a project worth undertaking. So it is with a [Bitcoin Tree Forum], and so it is with Bitcoin." - paraphrased from Cathedra's excellent 2021 shareholder's letter.
The best time to begin a Bitcoin Tree Forum was January 3rd 2009. The second best time is now.
The Bitcoin Tree Forum is like a cathedral. It's a loooong term thing. Cathedrals are cool. They take a lot of work, they stand the test of time, and they lift the human spirit. A grove of Giant Sequoias is a natural cathedral. Bitcoin is a monetary cathedral. Unfortunately building cathedrals is expensive, however planting them is cheap. Plant one in your yard, plant one at city hall, host a meetup and then install a public Bitcoin node (either onsite or inside the local library) and display a QR code. Run lightning and connect to the Blockstream satellite broadcast. The future is ours to make, so let’s make it beautiful, and lets push Bitcoin into the public sphere on our own terms.
Behold the ultimate low time preference flex
From humble beginnings...
These are some of the sequoias in my little backyard nursery. They'll be needing new homes soon!
a grove takes root...
For best results, just add water (not too much) and sunlight. It's really not very hard.
and becomes a cathedral.
Wait 1000 years or so and your glorious grove will look like this.
Bitcoin Tree Forums can be places of renewal to the civic spirit that seems to be in decline across so many of our fractured human communities
A Roadmap for the Nakamoto Tree Project
Grow the human network. Plant the trees.
Plant trees, join the network, tell your friends
Start by planting some trees on private land or in public spaces. Giant Sequoias if you can. Sign up for the newsletter, join the telegram channel, and follow @btcfangorn on twitter. If you're wondering how to get sequoias, google it... but I've also started a humble nursery of about 70 sequoias in my back yard and will be donating them to the cause.
Connect with the Bitcoin network
Install a weather-proof node or a lightning QR code
If Bitcoin Tree Forums are to be physical touchstones for the Bitcoin network, we'll need nodes and QR codes. Bonus points for going off grid and connecting to Blockstream's satellite broadcast. It would be cool to have a node running on site in a weather proof climate controlled container, but to begin it will be most practical to simply display a QR code from a node dedicated to the grove. Ideally this node will run in some public space such as a library.
Build the future
Constructing the institutions of tomorrow will require local experimentation
There is no blue print, only a foundation gifted to us by Satoshi. Decentralization and diversity will replace the traditional monoliths. In times of change flexibility trumps rigidity. What new use cases can leverage public nodes? Can we improve human cooperation? As a local instance of a global monetary network a Bitcoin Tree Forum offers opportunities for experimentation in hyper local governance models. Perhaps ownership of the node's wallet can be distributed via multisig to a variety of community members (private citizen founder, mayor, local business sponsor ect). Go forth and tinker!
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail"
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements."
— Aldo Leopold
" The Big Tree (Sequoia) is Nature's forest masterpiece, and, so far as I know, the greatest of all living things."
— John Muir
