We talked about Svetski returning to writing the other day (#1578680), so it feels appropriate to run a Book on Books on his Bushido of Bitcoin.

I remember the book fondly, and even though I'm not exactly a big fan of Japan (no hard feelings, just not interested), some of these virtues and historical anecdotes are nice. (I've been told in hindsight that much of Svetski's interpretation of Japanese/Samourai history is bonkers; I have no way of assessing it.) The subtitle is what we're really here to talk about... A Moral Code for a World on a Bitcoin Standard, a story of what happens when we win.

Of course, we haven't done too much winning lately, have we, so the hubris of a book like this was an early indication of a cycle top.

(This review was published in Bitcoin Magazine Print's The Mining Issue in 2025, the mentioning of which was a condition of me republishing the reviews on SN.)

I have been a fan of Svetski for years.

Reading his work and seeing the scorn he receives from other Bitcoiners, I’ve often found myself in the confused position of Hamish Linklater’s character from the movie The Big Short — unable to “figure out why no one listened to Baum, the guy with all the good ideas”. A few years ago, it was an informal rule among us copy editors at Bitcoin Magazine to assign Svetski’s articles to me. I enjoyed them; the others couldn’t stand them.

True, Svetski is an acquired taste. His writing is vertiginous and jarringly harsh. It’s uncompromising and so full of broad-brushed claims that readers will lose their way more than once, in this book as in many of his long-form articles. Even I, poised in his favor and inclined to agree with much of his thinking, can only stomach about a dozen pages at a time. Getting through the almost 350 pages of Bushido takes a while.

Thus, if you have even the slightest of Svetski allergies, make a pledge to yourself to see through the antics of Bushido, the insults, and the topics where Svetski is likely to trigger you. Take seriously the idea that maybe — just maybe — there’s something deeper coming across these pages.

It’s hard to summarize as wide a scope as that presented in The Bushido of Bitcoin since it tries to cover everything: from pre-modern Japanese virtues to Alexander the Great to the origin of words, how to live well, and how Bitcoin brings back hierarchy and an appreciation for excellence to our times. The cultural values of ancient civilizations belong in the modern world; over the last century we have lost many of those core virtues, and we are spiritually, socially, and morally poorer for it.

"When the book isn’t radical, high-flying, or incoherent, it is dreamy."

There is lots of Nietzsche and Spengler, Spartans and Ayn Rand. Much like Nietzschean philosophy itself, one has to sift through a lot of intricacies to get to Svetski’s worthwhile core. It flows like a History Channel episode mixed with a less eloquent version of Jordan Peterson, all wrapped in Japanese, Greek, and English etymology. Svetski longs for a different era — the past ages of kings and chivalry, or the future renaissance of such morals that Bushido predicts. Over the long arc of human civilization, today’s experiments in states and democracy, HR departments and central banks, are insignificant. In time, the cyclical forces that power them turn over — and the uncensorable hardness of Bitcoin ensures a world of strong men and good times.

"Bushido, often translated as 'the way of the warrior', was the moral code governing the samurai in Japan’s Edo period";

it gradually disappeared in the 1870s. Bushido tries to be a “playbook for a life on a Bitcoin Standard” (page 124); it’s how we live and behave when Bitcoin wins. Its battle isn’t Wall Street or retail or nation-state adoption, but the soul of humanity.

The point with Bitcoin, and the reason Svetski writes about ancient ideas and societies and virtues for Bitcoiners is that “we now have a framework for excellence, which the ugly and deceitful cannot take advantage of” (page 316). Bitcoin isn’t value-neutral, he says; its adoption inspires changes “in domains such as food, family, self defense, knowledge, energy, shelter, health, masculine and feminine roles and much more” (page 142). It has, Svetski believes, “begun to transform the people who have come into contact with it”.

Aside from the etymology, which he seems to have reproduced faithfully from widely accessible databases (except “uni-verse”, where he bro-sciences us), he draws extensively on Inazo Nitobe’s century-old book Bushido: The Soul of Japan. Like most non-experts, I can’t gauge to what extent he has accurately portrayed the duties and values of a samurai, the workings of pre-modern Japan, or whether he’s playing fast and loose with the facts of ancient Greece or feudalist Europe. The reader has to trust him, which, given his otherwise aggressive and radical stances, they are unlikely to do.

In the last third of the book he ruffles many feathers. One way or another, Svetski is going to annoy you — like when he claims female suffrage was “quite possibly the greatest political mistake the West ever made” (page 56); “Women”, he writes, “are literally designed to bring life into the world, and it is a man’s duty to create the frame and structure around her so she can do this safely and freely” (page 136).

"By modern standards, he’s a fascist and a misogynist, a dangerous antidemocratic force and a mindless bigot."

But Svetski doesn’t care for modern standards, rallying against them with all the bile of the self-righteous, purple-haired, queer academic he much despises. He is well aware of how unpalatable his ideas seem to others, but won’t budge: “If I’ve just pissed you all off, that’s fine too. Such is life, and such is exploration of ideas at the edge. This is where I choose to live, and I accept the consequences” (page 324).

What he wants is to challenge you, not preach — though the text often feels like an endless hammering of precisely that. Still, he hopes that the book gives “a deeper appreciation and perspective of this ancient, sacred heritage of man” (page 13). 

You don’t have to agree with everything Svetski says. But you must appreciate what he has created and the deep human vision he demands from a curious reader.

Is Svetski right in all (any) of his ramblings, the coherent ones and wacky ones alike? Hardly. Could there still be some forgotten wisdom in the many past civilizations he surveys, something that our contemporary sensitivities, morals, and societies have ignored and discarded? Certainly.

Only you can tell if wading through the former to find the latter is worth it.

Selected quotes

• “This is a book on behavior and the virtues we cannot ignore if our goal is to build a new and ascendant civilization. Who we become is determined by how we behave” (page 320)
• “The Samurai believed in doing, not saying. Action and behavior demonstrated their faith, knowledge and values, more than words ever could.” (46)
• “If you look back on the last century, we've had a steady rise of mental health issues, depression, and a plethora of syndromes and disorders - in lock step with the rise of 'psychology' both as a study and an institution. We have come to ignore the body and the very things that make us alive. We’ve drugged the feelings which are otherwise signals to act, into oblivion and replaced them with numbness and docility” (page 134)
• Money is a signaling network. It transmits information. But when the cables through which it operates are broken, rusted, or in our case elastic and obfuscated by the whims of a host of bureaucratic megalomaniacs, the information necessary to make decisions is completely distorted” (pages 238-39).

BOOK on BOOKS Archive

A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin by Jason Maier (#1574659)

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Better Money? Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin by Lawrence White (#1556942)

I Am Not Your Bruh: 21 Keys to Sound Parenting, by George Mekhail (#1548087)

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (#1540851)

Gradually, Then Suddenly: A Framework for Understanding Bitcoin as Money, by Parker Lewis (#1536970)

Fiat Ruins Everything: How Our Financial System is Rigged and How Bitcoin Fixes it, by Jimmy Song (#1530254)

Bitcoin One Million, The Final Chapter of Fiat, by Fred Krueger & Ben Sigman (#1521960)

Hijacking Bitcoin: The Hidden History of BTC, by Roger Ver (#1525907)

The Philosophy of Bitcoin, by Álvaro D. María (#1517354)