A 2.0 planetary monetary system compatible with a finite planet.
Version 1.0 — November 2025
Authors: [Pascal Ranaora] — Open Source under CC-BY-SA 4.0
The Degrowth movement and Bitcoin appear irreconcilable: one demands the end of exponential growth, the other is powered by it.
This whitepaper resolves the paradox by demonstrating that Bitcoin’s terminal supply curve (21 million) is the first engineered monetary expression of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s Fourth Law of Thermodynamics—the irreversible entropic degradation of low-entropy resources.
We introduce The Sufficiency Protocol, a framework where:
- Monetary issuance degrows to zero (Nakamoto)
- Energy is used only where it would otherwise dissipate (Georgescu-Roegen)
- Local sufficiency units are backed by hard-capped digital scarcity
The result: a planetary monetary layer that respects thermodynamic limits.
Georgescu-Roegen (1971):
"The economy is an entropy-increasing process… every time we produce a car, we irrevocably degrade low-entropy matter-energy into high-entropy waste."
Fiat money violates this:
- Central banks create unbounded claims on finite resources.
- Inflation is institutionalized entropy denial—pretending low-entropy stocks are infinite.
Result: Malinvestment in high-entropy throughput (suburban sprawl, fast fashion, planned obsolescence).
Nakamoto’s Scarcity Schedule (2008):
def block_reward(height):
return 50 * 10**8 >> (height // 210000) # Halves every 210k blocks→ Terminal supply: 20,999,999.9769 BTC (~2140)
This is not growth. It is controlled depletion of a digital low-entropy stock (unmined BTC).
| Georgescu-Roegen | Bitcoin |
|---|---|
| Low-entropy fund | 21 M BTC (finite stock) |
| Entropic degradation | Proof-of-Work (irreversible energy → security) |
| Fourth Law | No recycling of spent energy → no double-spend |
Key insight: Bitcoin does not pretend to recycle entropy. It honestly expends it to secure a permanent, unforgeable ledger.
- Issuance curve → zero.
- After 2140: No new BTC → no new energy demand from minting.
- Security sustained via transaction fees (voluntary, market-driven).
Deploy miners only where energy would be lost:
- Flare gas (methane → BTC + CO₂e reduction)
- Landfills (methane → BTC + CO₂e reduction)
- Curtailed renewables (wind/solar spill)
- Hydro spillways
- Nuclear surplus or excess energy
Thermodynamic rule:
“Use energy that would increase entropy anyway.”
EcoSats (see spec):
1 ES = 1 satoshi ⊻ 1 sufficiency unit (kWh excess, hour care, kg compost)
- XOR redemption: prevents double-spending.
- Demurrage: –2 %/month on large balances → discourages hoarding.
Let:
-
$$( E_t )$$ = available low-entropy stock at time$$( t )$$ -
$$( M_t )$$ = money supply at time$$( t )$$ -
$$( \Delta S )$$ = entropy increase per economic process
Fiat:
Bitcoin:
Sufficiency Protocol:
where
→ Money supply cannot exceed local thermodynamic capacity. See all formulas : sufficiency-protocol/formulas
| Phase | Goal | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 3 pilot EcoSats villages | RaspiBolt, Minibits, Hyperledger |
| 2028 | Global Sufficiency Unit Registry (SUR) | IPFS + DLC oracles |
| 2035 | Bitcoin as UNESCO Digital Commons | UN submission |
| 2140 | Monetary issuance = 0 | Protocol complete |
| Objection | Rebuttal |
|---|---|
| "Mining wastes energy" | Only if energy had alternative use. We mine dissipative flows. |
| "Volatility encourages speculation" | Demurrage + HODL locks → anti-speculative. |
| "Centralization of hashpower" | Stratum v2 + Ocean Pool → solo mining revival. |
Georgescu-Roegen warned:
"The most important lesson of thermodynamics is that there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine."
Bitcoin is not a perpetual motion machine.
It is a one-time entropy pump—converting dissipative energy into permanent, unforgeable scarcity.
The Sufficiency Protocol completes the circuit:
- Global layer: Bitcoin (hard cap, entropy-honest)
- Local layer: EcoSats (sufficiency-backed, demurrage-driven)
Instead of a single central bank digital currency (CBDC), we would have community-driven digital currencies to:
- closely align with the planet's entropy
- reduce the overall entropy of the system
- limit the risks of dystopia and total digital surveillance
- prioritize local production and the local economy (90%) while still having access to a global market (10%)
- limit the risks of changes to the Bitcoin base layer. Forks and code are maintained on a local digital currency.
- accelerate the definancialization of the central authority and our economies at scale
Bitcoin is the glue that lets the local digital currency model stick and scale.
Together LDC (Local digital Currency) + BTC could shape what would form the first global monetary system compatible with a finite planet solving for prioritising local resources allocations and energy spending, without sacrificing global scaling and having access to a global market.
# EcoSats Mint (Taproot + Chaumian e-cash)
def issue_ecosat(recipient_pubkey, sufficiency_proof):
if verify_oracle(sufficiency_proof) and vault_balance >= 1:
mint_ecash_token(1_sat, sufficiency_proof)
burn_opreturn(proof_hash)
return token- Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971). The Entropy Law and the Economic Process.
- Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
- EcoSats Spec v1.0 (2025).
CC-BY-SA 4.0
Attribute to: The Sufficiency Protocol Collective
Fork, remix, deploy.
You can cite www.sufficiencyprotocol.org
The revolution will be capped at 21 million.