The next Pope will know about Bitcoin

Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Robert Prevost, has just begun his pontificate. With 69 years at the time of his choice and taking into account the current life expectancy, it is reasonable to assume that the Catholic Church could lead for about two decades, if health accompanies him.

That leads us to imagine a not so distant future, around 2045, in which a new Pope is chosen. And if the world follows the direction in which it advances today, it is inevitable to consider something that today sounds like heresy for some, but with simple projection for those who closely follow economic and technological transformations: The next Pope will know about Bitcoin.

Leo XIV has not said a single word about cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin. Nor is it that he does: he has other priorities such as artificial intelligence, digital ethics, work and evangelization in secularized societies that have already made clear in his first speeches.

That omission of Bitcoin by the Supreme Pontiff is also a period signal. We are at a historical moment in which it is still possible, from the most influential religious leadership in the world, look the other way when talking about decentralized money, structural inflation or collapse of the Fíat system.

But that window is closing. Who assumes the papacy within approximately 20 years will not be able to ignore the subject. By then, Bitcoin will probably have ceased to be a novelty or a speculative instrument, and will have consolidated as a backbone – or, at least, an extremely important part – of a new financial architecture. It will no longer try to “talk about Bitcoin”, but to understand the world through Bitcoin, with all the philosophical, economic, political and even religious consequences that entails.

From cryptootics we have been documenting day after day how Bitcoin is gaining ground in the minds of individuals, communities, companies, investment funds, governments and even nations-states.

And Bitcoin gains ground not due to fashion or marketing, but by necessity. Because traditional money is failing, because state currencies of forced course no longer fulfill their basic functions (specifically because it is not a good stable account unit in time, or reserve of value) and because savings, as a civilizational act, need a more solid land than the whim of a central bank or the fiscal delirium of a state in crisis.

The Pope who comes after Leo XIV will possibly be a Millennial (Term that describes someone born between 1981 and 1996, approximately). A man who grew no longer under the shadow of the cold war, such as Francisco, or in the inertia of the post -industrial world, such as Leo XIV, but in a digital, global and hyperconnected environment. Someone who has seen the collapse of several national currencies, who has lived the banking disruption of digital money, and who may have had access to a Bitcoin Wallet.

That future pontiff cannot respond with silence. Cannot simply limit to repeat as a mantra Biblical that “love for money is the root of all evils”, as if Bitcoin were just another form of greed.

You will have to understand, and explain that Bitcoin is not money to love, but money to protect yourselfto survive, to build justice where there was only manipulation and dependence before.

He must understand that Bitcoin is not the enemy of the essence of the Gospel. It is, in many ways, a tool that can strengthen human dignity, by offering each person the right to save, to exchange already protect the fruit of their work. What could be otherwise to Christian morals in that?

What if the next Pope does not only know about Bitcoin, but he values ​​it? What if you have a deep understanding of the role it fulfills in the natural order of freedom and personal responsibility? None of that is crazy.

Today many young Catholic priests can already be exposed to those ideas because they want to understand the world they are called to evangelize. And that world, in a few decades, will probably be a bitcoinized world (to a greater or lesser extent, but I have no doubt that it will be).

The successor of Leo XIV will be chosen by Cardinals who will have lived a transition of economic models. Maybe not everyone will be in favor of Bitcoin, but none will be indifferent.

Maybe at that time, Bitcoin is no longer the subject of controversy, but of doctrine As part of the theological debate about what type of economic structures the common good serves best.

Today most religious leaders – Catholics and not Catholics – are still talking about money as if nothing had changed from Bretton Woods. They continue to think in terms of central banks, interest rates and fiat money printed by decree. But that will not last. Bitcoin is redrawing the map of economic power. And if the Catholic Church wants to continue talking to the heart of the contemporary man, he will also have to talk about money in his current forms.

Pope Leo XIV has opined on artificial intelligence and digital ethics, but the monetary issue is still pending. Maybe he himself approaches it in the years to come. Maybe not. But we can be sure: the next Pope will not be able to dodge it. Because Bitcoin will be, by then, as part of the human landscape as the Internet today. And because, like any deep transformation, it will demand a moral, spiritual and also institutional response.

It is likely that the next Pope not only knows about Bitcoin. It is likely to understand why it exists.

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