Myth of the first block (poem)

Before the ledger, before the chain,

Before the trust that rusted thin,

There was a weight no name could claim,

A quiet pressure closing in.

Kings clipped coins and inked decrees,

Banks rewrote what numbers meant,

Time itself was bent with ease,

And debt outlived the innocent.

From crowded ledgers, cracked and false,

From borders drawn in borrowed ink,

A question formed without a pulse:

What cannot lie? What will not blink?

No face to praise, no throat to blame,

No door to knock, no hand to break,

The maker lit the code like flame

And walked away for fire’s sake.

A block was born, not forged by might,

But bound by time and shared consent,

Each mark a wound, each sum a sight

Of value earned, not merely meant.

They laughed. They banned. They called it fraud.

They burned its name in court and code.

They swore it dead by threat and law,

Yet still it walked its narrow road.

For every strike that sought control:

A rulers wish, a bankers plea.

No mouth to bribe, no throat to hold,

I saw this too, it happened, see?

And still it hums beneath the noise,

A song that counts, a clock that never sleeps.

Not built on fear, nor force, nor voice,

But what the many choose to keep.

HODL