INTERVIEW: "Bitcoin Pierre" on his return to the Church
God Bless Texas Bitcoiners
Pierre Rochard is co-founder of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute and Vice President of Research at the largest Bitcoin mining facility in North America.
On a February 2022 episode of John Vallis’ Bitcoin Rapid-Fire podcast, Pierre tells the story of his return to the Catholic faith.
Pierre joins the discussion just before the 77-minute mark.
Pierre’s reversion occurs in 2021. We are on a similar timeline — mine started in late 2021 with a full reversion to the Catholic faith I was baptized into as a baby a year later.
I’ve learned a lot from Pierre. Also, he retweeted my first Bitcoin article, connecting me with new friends. So I was ecstatic when I saw that he was faith public.
Here’s the first chunk transcribed.
I am intrigued by your comment of, “Do we take [a religion] off the shelf, or do we explores something new, discover something new, build something new?” And I am utterly convinced that by my faith in Christianity that we would just be reinventing the wheel by doing something new. But that’s kind of at a theological level. But at an institutional level, history is just full of reforming, counter reformation, of institutional renewal, of reform, and that seems uncontroversial that there’s going to be a reform. Due to perhaps hyperbitcoinization. [laughs]
And on the second part about my faith journey to where I am now, it’s definitely a long one. I was baptized Catholic when I was a little baby. And that has been a key part of me delving into specifically Catholicism within Christianity, though I have looked at other denominations within Christianity and I fall them all really interesting, though I definitely identify as a Catholic first and foremost.
But really, what happened a year ago, was I was listening to some new age music and staring out my window. And in hindsight the word for it was contemplation. I was contemplating that I personally do carry big bags of guilt for various things I’ve done over the decades of being here on earth. It’s very hard to go about one’s day without doing something that will make you feel guilty afterwards. [laughs] And this what this specific music seemed to be drawing out of me was that if I really wanted to live freely, I had to let go of those bags. I had to forgive myself. And I was kind of having cathartic moment with that.
And then I had this thought pop into my head. Just this phrase. “Jesus died for our sins.” And I found that to be bizarre, that this meme came to the forefront of my conscience. And that’s when I went to Wikipedia [laughs] and I looked up, “What was the Jesus story?” You know I had learned about it at a high level, but I hadn’t really done a beginning to end reading of Jesus’ life story, even in Wikipedia form. So I read through that, and by the end of it, I was like, yeah, now I understand it. Now I get it. I get what this is about and I’m a Christian.
I started ordering books of off Amazon, and started reading the Bible. And now I’m deep into it. Obviously after a year of reading I’ve only skimmed the surface it seems like still.