Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World by Knut Svanholm and Luke de Wolf, Lemniscate Media, 175 pages, $25.00.

This is a book review from The Mining Issue of Bitcoin Magazine Print. Get your copy here.

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There is a similarity across the Bitcoin books published this [last] summer: They’re all about self-improvement and spiritual development. As a community, we seem to have moved on from writing about what money is, what it used to be, or how it operates in the modern world — or the specific ways in which bitcoin differs.

Instead, we’re now writing and thinking about life with bitcoin. Bitcoin has a culture, its virtues and values push its users in certain directions. [Aleks] Svetski writes about classical virtues and how they let us live well on a bitcoin standard. Mekhail writes about how to raise kids with intention and a long-term, orange, focus. In Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World, Knut Svanholm and his podcast sidekick Luke de Wolf gives us “a journey of introspection and self-improvement” (page 11). This “is a book about you” (page 13); not that different from how [George] Mekhail thinks about parenting.

It’s an unbelievably entertaining and powerful book, with plenty of food for thought about the insanities of our world. The chapter headings are slick, the chapters themselves digestible and relatable. If a measure of a book is how often I laugh, pull out my highlighter, or incessantly send quotes to friends, then Inverse of Clown World receives excellent marks. It’s the perfect combination of light, relaxed reading and hard-hitting punch — sprinkled with a whole jar of humor. 

The allure of Inverse is to see that all the madness in the world — political grandstanding, gender dysphoria, the broad moral, fiscal, and political decay — call out for an explanation. Why is it happening? How did it come to this? It seems so obviously irrelevant and so obviously stupid.

Svanholm and de Wolf have an answer, which “is more straightforward than you might think. When the money stops working, everything becomes political and a farce” (page 51). Shockingly, the book’s main suggestion is that moral and political collapse is downstream of the money.  

Hurling us straight off the deep end, the opening chapter is praxeology — that arcane, philosophical foundation for all Austrian economics. We then venture from the highest echelons of academic economics and mathematics to popular culture interpretations of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, to observations of reciprocal altruism in nature and its counterpart in human internet affairs. High and low, indeed.

Some dozen pages in, it feels like reading a textbook-like description of markets and the stylized economic hypothetical known as the prisoner’s dilemma. The authors draw important conclusions from the modern debate about that game-theoretical exercise: “[economist Robert] Axelrod’s findings emphasized the importance of being friendly and forgiving, but also appropriately retaliatory” (page 19). “The balance between self-interest and cooperative behavior is crucial in the game of life, where decisions shape futures” (page 21).

What that has to do with Clown World is a little unclear, and indeed we must wait some fifty pages to get an inkling of what precisely the authors mean by the label. Then again, if you’ve read Svanholm before or listened to the Bitcoin Infinity Show at all — or, you know, not been cave-bound for the last decade-plus — you have a pretty good idea. 

Several descriptions are broad-stroke, which is understandable when you try to capture something roughly meaning “everything stupid”. It’s the desire for free lunches (page 41). It’s where “pleasing bureaucrats becomes increasingly profitable, while providing as much value as possible to your fellow man becomes increasingly futile” (page 50). Clown World directly follows from a political money, “which makes people focus on totally arbitrary issues” (page 65); indeed, most so-called societal problems aren’t even problems. Clown World is equality-focused (page 101). In contrast, Bitcoin is fair, honest, and meritocratic. At the very end of the book, we learn that “Clown World is a byproduct of people not taking responsibility”. From that definition it quickly follows, via self-reflection and better “mental software”, that “Taking responsibility for your actions is the only thing that can make the whole damn circus disappear” (page 163): 

”Success in the Bitcoin world comes from providing value to your fellow human beings, not mass theft or political manipulation. Everything Divided by 21 Million equals the inverse of Clown World.”

There is no doubt in my mind that Clown World is indeed disappearing, pulling away its most ardent proponents and last, bitter beneficiaries kicking and screaming. Messrs Svanholm and de Wolf think something similar:

”things such as Bitcoin ATMs will look as ridiculous as phone booths in the not-too-distant future. […] it’s not only the ATMs that will fall into obsolescence. Everything in the Jurassic fiat currency world is on the brink of extinction. Are you a dinosaur or a human being?”

Between the ridiculing of wokeness and climate change worries, we get plenty of advice about screening out noise and guarding one’s time and mind. We get personal chapters about Knut running through the rainy slush of Gothenburg, Sweden, as well as unbelievably lengthy adventures in the Einsteinian spacetime and astrophysics. The far-fetched relevance to Clown World (“our attention also shapes our realities”, page 113) could have been reached without this much extravagance. 

We get musings on creativity, stoicism, and what the relationship is between freedom and responsibility. Indeed, “whatever small step you take to increase your personal freedom footprint increases the total level of freedom dioxide in the atmosphere” (page 133).

Why should you read this book at all? It’s simple, really: It’s Knut, it’s funny, and at times it’s pretty inspiring.

•  “When people know enough about Bitcoin to have stopped worrying about their financial future, they usually care less about how others perceive their words and actions and more about honesty and integrity” (page 53). 
• “In a world where correct pronoun assignments, teenaged weather activists, the big game last night, Taylor Swift’s latest boyfriend, and a mostly harmless flu are headline news, it’s easy to see that some force is trying to avert our eyes from the men behind the curtain” (pages 24-25)
• “Clownish political ideas have existed for as long as politics itself. They come in many ways, shapes, and forms, and it can be hard to see their ridiculousness when living among them” (page 36)

Final nugget:

“You’re an absolute winner if you have one more Satoshi this year than last. Zoom out and be patient. Sell your chairs, slay your heroes, and take responsibility for your actions” (page 63).

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.