Interactive ranking
Sort the principles.
Bitcoin's design rests on principles that pull against each other. Put them in the order that matters most to you. The result is a reflection exercise, not a recommendation, and no order is the correct one.
Your order
Seven principles, one order.
Drag a row by its Drag button, or keep focus on that button and press the Up or Down arrow key. Each row also has Move up and Move down buttons. Home and End send a row to the top or the bottom.
The principles are listed in their starting order. Turn on JavaScript to reorder them with drag controls or buttons. The descriptions are readable either way.
Starting order. Drag or move a principle to begin.
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Fixed supply
The protocol caps total issuance at 21 million coins. Raising the cap would take a rule change that node operators choose whether to adopt.
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Self-custody
Coins are controlled by a private key. Whoever holds the key can sign a transfer, and no bank, platform or government has to approve it.
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Public verification
Anyone can run software that checks every block against the published rules. Nobody has to take a copy of the record on trust.
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Censorship resistance
A valid transfer cannot be blocked by a single company or authority. It can still wait in line when blocks are full.
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Final settlement
A transfer buried under enough blocks becomes very costly to reverse. The protocol has no built-in chargeback.
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Energy-backed security
Miners spend electricity to find valid blocks. Rewriting history means redoing that work, so the expense is what makes rewriting costly.
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Slow, deliberate change
Upgrades need broad agreement among node operators, miners and users. The slow pace protects the rules, and it also makes them slow to change.
Where they collide
Every ranking gives something up.
These are the pairs of principles that most often decide how a ranking comes out.
Final settlement against undoing mistakes
A payment buried under enough blocks protects the person who was paid. It also means a sender who was deceived cannot take the payment back through the network. Ranking these two is a choice about who bears the cost of a mistake.
Self-custody against recovery
Holding your own keys means no one can freeze your coins. It also means no one can restore them if the key is lost. The design that keeps intermediaries out keeps help out too.
Censorship resistance against fast intervention
A valid transfer cannot be stopped by a single operator. The same openness means the network cannot pause itself while a scam is moving through it.
Fixed supply against flexible policy
A capped supply makes issuance predictable and easy to audit. It also means the network cannot respond to a crisis by creating more coins.
Ranking these principles does not tell you what to do with money. This page is not financial, legal, or medical advice.