Bitcoin constitutes a financial instrument that originates from code and cryptography. However, when examined within a broader context, it can be seen as part of a cultural lineage that extends over a century. Since the 1910s, avant-garde movements have interrogated fundamental questions that later became central to Bitcoin: Who determines value? Can rules supplant rulers? How do systems chronicle time, distribute trust, or resist authority? Therefore, it is evident that Bitcoin did not spontaneously appear in 2009 but instead crystallized ideas that had long been circulating within artistic experiments.

An appreciation of art—whether traditional or on-chain—is not a prerequisite for understanding this argument. The aim of this article is not to advocate for “Bitcoin art” but rather to elucidate Bitcoin’s conceptual prehistory. For the Bitcoin maximalist, the subsequent discussion serves as the backstory to the protocol’s worldview rather than an art-world detour. Conversely, for on-chain enthusiasts, it is crucial to acknowledge that maximalism in any form can obscure reality: the logic of Bitcoin did not originate exclusively in digital realms.

Artists typically emerge to interrogate and stress-test ideas prior to their broader acceptance within society. The visions they manifest in canvases, instructions, networks, or number systems often migrate into economics, engineering, and politics in subsequent years. The purpose of this article is not to equate art with Bitcoin but to demonstrate that Bitcoin is a cultural byproduct of ideas rehearsed over the past century—ideas surrounding decentralization, protocol, time, and value that were in circulation long before being codified.

Avant-Garde Futurism: Embracing Speed, Systems, and the Machine Aesthetic

If the early 20th century’s avant-garde movements had a launching pad, it would be Italian Futurism. Announced in 1909 on the front page of Le Figaro by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, this movement exalted “the beauty of speed,” the dynamism of industrial cities, and the power of machines, aircraft, and modern weaponry. It advocated for the demolition of museums and libraries in favor of an aesthetic renewal—art aligned with the machine age.

Futurist painters like Giacomo Balla and sculptors like Umberto Boccioni pioneered visual strategies to capture motion: blurred outlines, repeated forms, and “lines of force” that rendered figures as vectors within a dynamic system. Boccioni’s iconic work, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” (1913), portrays a figure in motion, its body articulated in aerodynamic planes—more akin to a fluid diagram than to anatomical depiction. Similarly, Luigi Russolo’s “Intonarumori” (noise intoners) infused the sounds of factories and engines into orchestral performances, transforming music into a mechanical event.

The legacy of Futurism is complex; Marinetti’s later association with Italian Fascism casts a shadow. Nonetheless, the movement sowed seeds of a mentality pivotal to both art and Bitcoin: art conceived as the design of systems rather than mere objects. The Futurists embraced rhythm, repetition, serial processes, and the intentional use of technology as a catalyst. They envisioned culture as functioning on protocols—machines whose outputs are defined by predetermined rules and cycles.

The Futurists resonated with the rhythm of machines, the pulse of assembly lines, and the precision of stopwatches. Bitcoin transposes that rhythm into the realm of economics: value emerges not from authoritative decree but from a timed, rule-governed process distributed across a network. Although Futurism could not have envisioned digital currency, it prepared the groundwork by normalizing repetition and system-oriented thinking.

Dada: Anti-Art as an Opponent to Systems

Amid the turmoil of World War I, another avant-garde emerged in Zurich, New York, and Berlin: Dadaism (circa 1916-1920). While Futurism embraced the promises of modernity, Dada sought to dismantle them. Dada artists rebelled against the rationality that had precipitated war, creating “anti-art” — absurdist performances, nonsensical poems, and collages of debris—to subvert bourgeois sensibilities. In doing so, they directly challenged the authority of art institutions and the concept of intrinsic value in art.

A familiar example is Duchamp’s “Fountain” (1917), yet another illustrative case is his Monte Carlo Bonds (1924): printed bearer “securities” intended as a limited edition of thirty, each priced at 500 francs, designed to raise capital for a roulette “system” that Duchamp claimed to have perfected. The bonds appeared genuine, complete with detachable dividend coupons and corporate statutes, but were conceptualized as art objects. The company’s chair was represented by Duchamp’s female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, with Duchamp himself serving as the administrator. The theoretical investors treated these sheets as art objects, leaving every coupon uncut and revealing that value is not intrinsic; it is a social contract sustained by trust, scarcity, and rules. Duchamp once humorously paid a token interest before abandoning the gambling venture, reminding observers that the belief structure surrounding an object often eclipses any cash flow it might yield.

Dada’s irreverent dismantling of logic and value systems laid the groundwork for future artistic—and even financial—insurgents. Later, Cypherpunks and Bitcoin advocates would contest the equity of the financial system; the Dadaists had already derided the so-called rationality of polite society. They exposed the idea that what society accepts as valuable—whether a piece of art, a bond certificate, or fiat currency—might simply be a shared fiction upheld by authority. In Dada, the prototype of Bitcoin’s ethos emerges: if Duchamp illustrated that a urinal or satirical bond could be deemed “art” through collective consensus, Bitcoin posits that a piece of code can be recognized as “money” through similar agreement.

Notably, Dada was inherently international and decentralized. Its artists — such as Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, and Hannah Höch — were dispersed across Europe and the U.S., yet interconnected through manifestos, magazines, and mail. This early 20th-century art network operated independently of state or museum control—effectively forming a proto peer-to-peer network of creative exchange. In the manner that Dadaists communicated ideas and manifestos across borders, one can glimpse the later ideal of a decentralized, censorship-resistant communication system.

ZERO: Constructing with Rules

By the late 1950s, Europe’s postwar avant-garde sought a clean slate. In Düsseldorf, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene founded ZERO (1957), who were later joined by Günther Uecker. To them, “Zero” represented not nihilism but a reset—a means to discard the subjectivity of earlier modernism and construct art anew based solely on light, rhythm, and repetition.

ZERO’s creations were precise and reproducible: Piene’s “Lichtballette” utilized mechanical projectors to choreograph moving patterns of light; Mack crafted mirrored reliefs and spinning discs to induce optical vibrations; Uecker covered surfaces with dense arrays of nails, encoding the act of hammering as a serial procedure. The artistry resided in the process—the timed flicker, rhythmic rotation, and grid of repeated forms.

Moreover, ZERO was never an exclusive group but rather an international network, linking to parallel movements in the Netherlands (Nul), France (GRAV), and Italy (Azimut). Exhibitions and collaborations transcended national boundaries, operating more like a decentralized platform than a singular “school.”

In the context of Bitcoin’s lineage, the ZERO movement offers two salient insights. First, the reset: initiating from “zero” to construct a system governed by explicit rules echoes the symbolic reboot represented by Bitcoin’s Genesis Block. Second, the emphasis on time, repetition, and seriality foreshadows a culture attuned to protocols—where outputs occur at fixed intervals and cumulative sequences are significant.

Network Art: From Mail to Fluxus to the Internet

While ZERO explored rules and serial processes, other artists in the 1960s began to focus on communication itself as a medium. Their works transformed art into a distributed process, shared across various individuals and locations, beyond the control of galleries or state authorities.

One notable form was Mail Art, spearheaded by Ray Johnson in the early 1960s. Small drawings, collages, and notes circulated through the postal system, establishing an “Eternal Network” of participants. Open to everyone, this mode of communication acted as a decentralized gallery, free from curatorial oversight. In regions such as Eastern Europe and Latin America, Mail Art effectively navigated censorship, demonstrating how a simple network could resist centralized governance.

In parallel, Fluxus artists, led by George Maciunas and an expansive international circle, asserted that anyone could produce art. Their performances, event scores, and “fluxkits” were cost-effective, reproducible, and often humorous, designed to evade traditional collecting and institutional ownership. Fluxus embodied the essence of art as open-source action: participatory, irreverent, and propagated through informal networks of friends and collaborators.

By the 1990s, these foundational ideas migrated online through Net Art. Early internet artists utilized chatrooms, email, and websites as platforms for collaborative and interactive works, which were ephemeral and resistant to traditional notions of collectability. Net Art transformed the network itself into the artwork.

Mail Art, Fluxus, and subsequently Net Art all regarded the network itself as a stage. Letters, performances, and websites bypassed the gatekeepers of museums and markets, illustrating that exchange can be free, horizontal, and self-sustaining. Bitcoin builds upon this fundamental intuition, being validated by the network rather than institutional endorsement.

Conceptual Art and Algorithmic Thinking: Bridging Ideas to Code

By the late 1960s, avant-garde art underwent a radical transformation: the object itself ceased to be central. In conceptual art, the focus shifted to the idea or instruction. Sol LeWitt articulated this shift in 1967, declaring that “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” His “Wall Drawings” consisted of sets of directions—lines, arcs, grids—executed by others. In this framework, authorship resided in the rules rather than the crafted product. This realization was profound: art could function as a protocol, a system that anyone could enact.

Simultaneously, some artists began to translate this principle into practice. Algorithmic art literalized the concept by converting imagined rules into actual computer code. Vera Molnár, for example, programmed early plotters in the 1960s to generate abstract line drawings. These works were produced rather than manually drawn; their originality resided in the algorithm itself. She described her method as a machine imaginaire, where systematic variation yielded surprising forms.

Viewed collectively, these two practices signaled a cultural transformation. Conceptual art redefined the work as the instruction instead of the object, while algorithmic art demonstrated how this logic could be realized in code—precise, repeatable, and detached from the creator’s hand. Bitcoin synthesizes both aspects: it embodies a conceptual protocol—rules stipulated in advance, akin to a score—and operates as executable code managed by miners and nodes, who fulfill the role of LeWitt’s assistants or Molnár’s machines: they do not innovate; they adhere to instructions. This heritage has sensitized audiences to perceive systems and protocols themselves as creative and valuable. Without it, the notion that an immaterial construct such as Bitcoin—a framework of rules enforced by code—could embody real value would be considerably more challenging to comprehend.

Avant-Garde Time: On Kawara and Hanne Darboven

If conceptual and algorithmic artists converted rules into art, others during this same period focused on time as their organizational framework. Few bodies of work present a more striking analogy to blockchain than those of On Kawara and Hanne Darboven.

Beginning in 1966, On Kawara created date paintings—plain white text on monochrome canvases—within his ongoing “Today Series.” Each artwork had to be completed on the date it represented; if not, it would be destroyed. These paintings were often stored alongside a local newspaper, serving as an analog timestamp. Concurrently, Kawara meticulously logged every person he encountered (“I Met”), every path he traversed (“I Went”), and the times he arose each morning (“I Got Up” postcards), along with telegrams declaring simply: I am still alive. The culmination was a strict, cumulative chronology of existence: day after day, block after block, a sequence demonstrating that life had indeed occurred.

Hanne Darboven, operating in Germany, took this exploration further. From the late 1960s, she developed numerical systems that translated calendar dates into endless handwritten sequences of sums, columns, and grids. Her installations sprawled across entire walls—hundreds of pages filled with notations symbolizing days, months, and decades. Darboven effectively turned the passage of time into a literal numeric record, an unbroken timeline devoid of narrative beyond the sequence itself.

Collectively, Kawara and Darboven illustrate how time, repetition, and documentation can yield both substance and meaning. Their work anticipates precisely what Bitcoin later encapsulates. Each block on the chain functions like a Kawara date painting: a timestamp affirming that the system remains alive. The sequence of blocks mirrors Darboven’s endless grids, discrete time units aligned to construct an immutable chronology. In both instances, meaning emerges not from any isolated entry but from the entirety of the accumulated sequence. Kawara and Darboven rendered visible the notion that even the simplest act of marking time can acquire depth when repeated and preserved.

Systems and Power: Institutional Critique and Currency Interventions

While certain artists delved inward into rules and time, others in the late 1960s and ’70s turned their focus outward, exposing the concealed systems of power—financial, political, and institutional. Their endeavors vividly illustrate how art presaged Bitcoin’s inclination to circumvent authority.

In New York, Hans Haacke set out to unveil the influence of money and power on culture. For his 1971 project “Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real-Time Social System,” he utilized public records, maps, and photographs to document the distressed properties of a significant real estate network in the city. Scheduled for an exhibition at the Guggenheim, the project was canceled six weeks prior to its opening, regardless of the lack of a direct link between the landlords and the museum. The cancellation itself underscored Haacke’s assertion: institutions are never neutral, and attempts at transparency may be perceived as too discomforting for public display.

In Brazil, during a period of dictatorship, Cildo Meireles devised a subtler yet equally radical strategy. His “Insertions into Ideological Circuits” (1970) embedded dissenting messages within everyday exchange systems. On Coca-Cola bottles, he silk-screened political slogans that became visible only when refilled; these bottles subsequently reentered circulation. In his “Banknote Project,” he stamped queries such as “Who killed Herzog?” (referencing a murdered journalist) onto currency, then reintroduced those notes into the economy. The system—Coca-Cola’s distribution, the state’s monetary supply—became the medium for critique. Meireles illustrated that even currency could serve as a carrier of counter-authority.

The resonance with Bitcoin is unmistakable. Meireles’s stamped banknotes presage the notion of embedding messages within the financial system itself—an idea echoed in Satoshi Nakamoto’s Genesis Block inscription (“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”). Both artists recognized that systems are inherently ideological. By integrating new content or exposing concealed structures, they illustrated that authority could be challenged not merely through slogans but by repurposing the system itself.

Bitcoin amplifies this artistic lesson to its fullest extent. While Haacke revealed concealed structures and Meireles embedded messages into currency, Bitcoin does not merely critique the existing system; it establishes a new one. It embraces Haacke’s demand for transparency by ensuring every transaction is publicly visible on the blockchain and embodies Meireles’s spirit of subversion by creating a parallel currency beyond state control. That which once constituted artistic interventions has now expanded into a global protocol. It is not merely a metaphor regarding money but a functional redesign of the currency system itself.

Bitcoin as the Cultural Outcome

When observed collectively, these movements outline a narrative that reveals deeper connections than may initially appear. Futurism celebrated the rhythm of machines; Dada dismantled institutional authority and demonstrated how value hinges on consensus; ZERO embarked on a new direction based on light, rules, and repetition; Mail Art, Fluxus, and Net Art transformed networks into the intrinsic work; conceptual and algorithmic artists shifted focus from objects to protocols and code; On Kawara and Hanne Darboven characterized time as a measurable and cumulative entity; while Haacke and Meireles exposed systems of power or quietly intervened within them.

Each of these artistic experiments rehearsed notions that Bitcoin later entrenched in its code: decentralization, rules superseding rulers, value resting on consensus, transparency as a form of truth, time as structure, and the use of systems themselves as instruments of critique. None of these ideas spontaneously emerged in 2009. For decades, artists had been exploring analogous territory—whether through paintings, instructions, mail networks, numeric grids, or altered banknotes—long before these intuitions were articulated in code.

Notably, this exploration does not undermine Bitcoin’s technical innovation. The proof-of-work mechanism remains the foundation that ensures the system’s integrity, yet it does not elucidate why individuals opt to engage with and safeguard it. Therefore, it is a misrepresentation to regard Bitcoin solely as a financial tool or to dismiss its cultural significance as a peripheral narrative. Bitcoin also serves as a cultural artifact, shaped by a historical lineage of challenges to authority and experiments with rules and systems. An appreciation of art is not a prerequisite for recognizing this. What Bitcoin embodies is not an isolated breakthrough but rather the culmination of concepts deliberated for over a century. Acknowledging this history does not weaken Bitcoin’s innovation; rather, it roots it in a more expansive cultural narrative. Bitcoin is not a mere byproduct of algorithmic coding but the latest chapter in a century-long endeavor to conceive systems that transcend authority, incorporate time into structure, and establish that value ultimately derives from collective agreement.

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