Imagine a world where every person spoke a different language. Imagine the chaos that would ensue. All of the fighting, betrayal, and evil that would occur because no one could communicate with anyone. It would be a dog-eat-dog world. Then imagine, at a snap of a finger, everyone speaking the same language. Imagine the peace that would result. Rather than stabbing and stealing, two people could talk it out, resolve conflict with dialogue, and cooperate.
Imagine how this concept regarding the degree to which language influences peace and cooperation on earth is rooted in our oldest stories. It is found in the Old Testament with the Tower of Babel, where humanity is described as having one language and one speech. With a shared tongue and a unified will, humanity resolved to build a tower whose top would reach the heavens. However, their unity was directed toward self-glorification rather than obedience. As judgment, God confounded their language, causing them to cease understanding one another’s speech. Deprived of communication, their cooperation collapsed. The work ceased, the tower was left unfinished, and the people were scattered across the Earth. Thus Babel became the place where language was divided and human unity dissolved. To put things poetically, we have lived in Babel ever since, up to the invention of Bitcoin.
The concepts explored here in this article surround the work of Ella Hough and her honors thesis titled Bitcoin: The Language for Discovering, Speaking, Settling, and Preserving Truth (Hough, 2025). The paper argues that Bitcoin should be understood not merely as a financial asset but as humanity’s first non-sovereign, censorship-resistant, and non‑extractive language. Her thesis covers many subjects, including how there are similarities between how spoken language and monetary language can be used as a technique of oppression, how Bitcoin could solve issues regarding the loss of local language and culture, and how Bitcoin could be a tool to help us understand reality better. The purpose of this article is to summarize and reflect upon her brilliant ideas.
To begin, it would be helpful to first reflect upon language itself. In the thesis, Hough articulates how there is a distinction between ‘communication’ and ‘language’. Communication is prolific across nature. Animals communicate, but their communication is static, and certain sounds will have certain meanings. Our language, on the other hand, is fluid, dynamic, and adaptive. Our language is constantly evolving for the purpose of being “a pathway, a catalyst, and a system of communicating meaning” (Hough, 2025). She further elaborates how language goes beyond mere communication; as it is our “most robust interface of reality, not just for perception, but for active communication, interaction, and shared meaning” (Hough, 2025). She highlights that humans have developed many kinds of language, such as: mathematics, writing, code, and money. These languages extend beyond mere methods of communication and cooperation, but are a method for us to share meaning and mutual exploration of reality itself.
There is something beautifully elegant in this observation that is worth elaborating on, especially as it relates to Bitcoin. Consider the communication of a dog: a dog will bark perhaps because it perceives a threat with its senses and wishes to warn its owner of this threat. Communication involves transmitting sensory information. We do something additional to this. Sure, we also communicate our sense “Do you see that beautiful landscape over there?”, but we also attempt to use language (such as the very writing of this article) to ascribe meanings to things, and to mutually explore these more grand questions about the nature of our reality together. That being said, language is extractive, meaning that the words conveyed never fully capture the reality it is meant to describe. In other words, “analogies can help bridge the familiar and the unfamiliar, yet they inevitably fall short because they are fundamentally not the same, they inevitably cause the loss of meaning. Bitcoin represents something rare: a language that overcomes this shortfall, the first non-extractive translation language of truth” (Hough, 2025). I would add, as explored in my book The Ancient Way of the Mind: How Modern Thinking Blinds Us From the Wisdom of the Past, that the mere act of analytical and linguistic thought prevents our bodies from the visceral experience that would help us fully realize the grand existential questions regarding our reality, but a computer program performing this function would greatly assist our ability to understand reality more clearly (Bright, 2025). Given the inherent flaws and limitations of our analytical minds, a point scholars have recognized for ages, we cannot help ourselves, myself included, in trying to convey ideas about meaning and reality through spoken and written language, a tendency Hough highlights so elegantly. To make matters worse, there is the issue of meaning being lost in translation.
As explained previously, an aspect that makes human language unique is its dynamic nature, giving it flexibility across differing environmental and technological conditions. Additionally, language never fully captures reality, as it can only paint it in broad strokes. To make matters worse, there exist completely different languages derived from entirely different roots. While it is already difficult to grasp the meaning conveyed in ancient texts of the same language written long before the context of one’s own life, the challenge is compounded when those texts must first be translated before they can even be read. With this hardship of reading aside, modern communication alone is difficult as many of the people sharing this planet today are not able to communicate without translation. Recall the idea that language provides us the ability to cooperate peacefully. Now consider that roughly 16.5% of the world’s population (as of 2021) speaks English (World Languages, n.d.). However, this is not to suggest that it would necessarily be good if all of the world spoke one common language. Hough wisely points out in her thesis that there is a richness and benefit in the diversity of linguistic language. Local languages are not simply methods of communication. Embedded within them are cultural values, perspectives on reality, and they play a large role in local identity. Perhaps it is worth noting that both the author of this article (Sydney Bright) and the author of the thesis (Ella Hough) speak Chinese. While I cannot speak for Ms. Hough, I have long noticed that speaking Chinese can influence the way I speak and think. Not only are my mannerisms different, but so are the patterns that I use to describe my thoughts. When we speak, we attempt to translate what is in our minds into words. However, as discussed here, language is imperfect and the language you use acts as a filter. Different languages act as different kinds of filters, influencing the way one articulates what is inside the mind. Similarly, because different languages require different articulation of ideas, they also influence how one reflects on and processes one’s thoughts, as well as how one interprets the surrounding world. That said, we humans are faced with an issue: it would benefit us all if we could speak one language globally, but it would simultaneously benefit us all if all local cultures could hold onto their local identity and cultural heritage. The solution to this issue, Hough proposes, lies in the invention of Bitcoin.
Consider how a similar issue of differing languages exists within the monetary realm as well. Only 4.7% of the world speaks the dollar, while 13% of the world speak either dollar, euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar or Swiss Franc (Gladstein, 2021; Hough, 2025). Put another way, 87% of the world falls outside of the main monetary languages of our world, which are less trustworthy and prone to a great deal of inflation. Bitcoin, of course, is the solution to this issue because it can allow the entire world to transact under one monetary unit, allowing for the other 87% of the world to participate in the global economy without the need for translation (currency conversion). On top of that, when considering Bitcoin as a language that communicates truth, it may simultaneously be able to act as the global language, so that people elsewhere in the world are not forced to adopt English over their local languages. As worded by Hough (Hough, 2025):
“Bitcoin, as a communications protocol, a monetary system, and a global network, creates the conditions for a new kind of language. It offers the possibility of becoming a true “language of opportunity and empowerment,” not by replacing people’s languages of identity, but by preserving them. In contrast to imperial languages that extract and erase, Bitcoin enables individuals to participate globally without surrendering local meaning.”
The concept of linguistic imperialism explored in the thesis is also worth reflecting upon. Consider how languages (linguistic and monetary) can be used for the purpose of control and exploitation. When an empire conquers foreign lands, a common hallmark in history is that the conquered are taught the linguistic language of the conquering. While there are many reasons for this, it results in language conversion becoming a means by which one group extracts wealth from another. Hough also points out how linguistic language can be twisted in other ways as a form of extraction and control. In 20th century China, there was an organic movement amongst the population to simplify characters, making some aspects of life more convenient while also improving the literacy rate (Tsu, 2022). Consequently, both the Nationalist Party, which ruled China from 1928-1949, and the Communist Party which replaced them worked towards systematizing the simplified Chinese of the modern day (Tsu, 2022). The Communist Party, as stated in Jing Tsu’s book Kingdom of Characters: A Tale of Language, Obsession, and Genius in Modern China, used this alteration of language as an “instrument with which to reach their revolutionary goals: If the Chinese could read easily, they could be radicalized and converted to communism with the new script” (Tsu, 2022). The Communist Party had an ulterior motive in simplifying Chinese, it acted as a means for them to spread propaganda that was used to gain power and control. Again, the alteration of language can be viewed as a possible tool towards the extraction of wealth. Put in this perspective, it shares a commonality with the conversion of monetary language.
Similar to linguistic language, the conversion of monetary language is a very common method of extracting wealth. Today, many people around the world work in one country, such as the United States, only to send money back to their families in their home country. In order to do so, there are companies that help with the remittance process and charge a fee. According to a 2002 report from the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank, the remittances from the U.S. to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean alone amounted to $15 billion annually (Orozco, 2002). This conversion from the world reserve language to another involves an extraction of wealth because a high fee is charged simply to move the money. Again, the idea re-emerges that there is a great need for a global non-extractive language such as Bitcoin. Not only is Bitcoin non-extractive in the sense that the interpretation of the information conveyed is more precisely interpreted, but it resolves a need for translation that has the potential to dissolve some methods of imperial wealth extraction.
Finally, Hough makes a wonderful observation regarding the relationship of language and privacy. Again, Hough, throughout her thesis, reinforces the idea that language is a means by which we interface with reality. She also aims to articulate the idea that Bitcoin is similarly a truth-seeking machine and “if language is the interface of reality, money is the unit of account of reality” (Hough, 2025). That being said, she also makes clear that linguistic language is an imperfect interface of reality, and “if language inherently selects, compresses, and represents parts of reality, then language itself is a form of privacy” (Hough, 2025). This concept of language being inherently private is admittedly apparent in hindsight. We are constantly choosing our linguistic word choice to selectively say, and not say, what we mean to reveal, and not reveal. Freedom of speech is not only expressed in our ability to say what we want to say, but also to not say what we do not want to say. A similar respect should be given to our freedom of monetary language.
The thesis of Ella Hough is a humbling reminder: Bitcoin should not be thought of as simply money, and money should not be thought of as simply something we use for trade. Bitcoin is potentially the world’s first non-extractive, global, and censorship-resistant language, and is a powerful tool that humans can use to help us interface with reality and the truth. It can be a means of preserving local linguistic languages, while allowing for the entire world to speak one language. Simultaneously, it can help prevent some of the parasitic extraction that some people have done, and currently still do, to other people. It can be a means at which we people communicate freely, privately, peacefully, and truthfully with one another.
References
Bright, S. (2025). The Ancient Way of The Mind: How Modern Thinking Blinds Us From Wisdom of the Past. Bright Minds Consulting LLC.
Gladstein, A. (2021, May 12). Check Your Financial Privilege. Bitcoin Magazine. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-privilege
Hough, E. R. (2025). Bitcoin: The language for discovering, speaking, settling, and preserving truth (K. Basu (ed.)). Cornell University.
Orozco, M. (2002). Attracting remittances: market, money and reduced costs. Inter-American Development Bank. https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Attracting-Remittances-Market-Money-and-Reduced-Costs.pdf
Tsu, J. (2022). Kingdom of Characters: A Tale of Language, Obsession, and Genius in Modern China. Riverhead Books.
World Languages. (n.d.). Index Mundi. Retrieved February 7, 2026, from https://www.indexmundi.com/world/languages.html
