Bitcoin and Philosophy (Session 1)

Provenance

Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: stage-1 acceptance ruling — lane open-web-talk approved for opus-only hosting; mp3 tier deferred pending a disk volume). Series: Landian Bitcoin. Source: audio original (.mp3).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:06

  Hello everyone, welcome to Nick Land's 8th session seminar, Bitcoin and Philosophy. It's a packed class and lots to talk about, so I think I'm going to straightforward give it to Nick to start the seminar. And I'm in the background if you guys have any questions or want to talk and participate in the conversation…

• 00:21:06

  They've been secured by being made irreversible, but they've been made real, because of adopting certain temporal characteristics. They have a time structure that gives them their reality, and one of course can say, I think going a whole hog, maybe it's a bit extreme at this stage, but we'll get there soon, so I might…

• 00:41:03

  But the kind of language you're selecting there seems to me like someone like Foucault is extremely relevant to that. And I think obviously the first thing that I can be predicted already to say is that Foucault's a Kantian. I mean, Foucault's doing critique. It's very recognisable to me. I mean, it's a very, it's…

• 01:01:28

  It's set up this whole new structure and criterion for what is the nature of wealth. You are, this coalition, this agency, whatever it is, is put in a position of subverting it. By definition if it's doing that it is the most introspective. It's the most introspective. It's the most introspective. It's the most…

• 01:23:27

  And you're looking quite quickly at the specific nature of monetary signs that I think we have to get onto. I was very naively thinking this was second block material, but I think everything rushes forward. So, you know, what is going on, first of all, with a paper note? And a paper note has... two aspects to it. One…

• 01:40:38

  Bitcoin makes no promises about what it's worth in relation to the dollar at all. And that's... The market will then play that out and everyone has their own beliefs and expectations and forecasts and everything that will come into play. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thanks. So the point being, Bitcoin is not representational…

• 01:58:18

  So basically, like Peter Wopredale, I think that, oh, it's an intense but closeted form of phenomenology. So I call it closeted. Right. So how do we make sure that this doesn't be... What is the difference here with Bitcoin? Well, I'm having more trouble seeing what the connection is, honestly. Because, I mean…

• 02:15:52

  So please feel free to use that. And we can obviously engage in communication beyond the confines of this particular period. So thanks, everybody, so much for this session. Thank you. Thanks, Nick.