This is an opinion editorial by Tomer Strolight, editor-in-chief of Swan Bitcoin and author of “Why Bitcoin.”
Words. How do you describe with words the things that we don’t have words for? Words describe things we’re familiar with. But we’ve never seen anything like Bitcoin before. That’s why it’s so hard to describe it. So we use metaphors, which are still just old words for other things.
The same is true when you yourself take part in something that’s never happened before — something that nobody’s familiar with. If you want to describe it, or even understand it for your own self, practically any word you use is just a metaphor. You have to stretch and bend the meanings of the words you do have and try to paint enough of a picture as to why they apply. But, if you’re going to be honest, you also have to paint the picture clearly enough to not confuse or mislead the people you’re communicating with. This includes yourself. It’s really easy to get misled when you don’t have the words to describe what it is you’re doing.
You have to count on metaphor after metaphor after metaphor. And then you have to take each metaphor apart. If you can. This is the only way I know of to talk about deep, close encounters with Bitcoin. At least it is in the present day.
It’s the only way to describe what I did — what we did — in what is now called the Blocksize War.
But let’s be clear:
I didn’t actually fight; not physically.
And it wasn’t actually a war; nobody died.
No bombs were dropped.
No bullets were fired.
No blood was spilled.
No land
