Keep asking why.

How it works

Why ask why five times?

The five whys is an old habit of careful thinkers. When something is true, ask why. Then ask why of the answer, and keep going until you reach something you can inspect. The habit has a useful side effect: it shows you the exact layer where an explanation stops being a fact and becomes a choice. Bitcoin’s design is rich in such choices, because it was assembled from a short list of worries about trust and then built, step by step, to answer them.

How to read a shaft

Each shaft begins with one question about one design decision. Pressing Why? opens the answer a layer lower. The background deepens from white toward midnight, the gauge on the left fills, and the ledger of answers keeps one line for each reply. On narrow screens the ledger sits below the shaft; on wide screens it rides along beside it. At depth five you reach the floor: the trade-off the design accepted, stated plainly, together with the question it leaves open. Rise one level steps back up, and Reset the descent returns you to the surface.

Everything works from the keyboard. Tab to the Why? button and press Enter or Space; focus moves to the new question so you can read straight on. If your system asks for reduced motion, the page changes instantly instead of gliding.

What this site claims, and what it does not

Every statement here is limited to long-established facts about the design: the paper published in 2008, the genesis block of January 2009, SHA-256 proof of work, a block target of about ten minutes, a halving every 210,000 blocks, the cap of 21 million, and the unspent-output model of accounting. There are no prices, forecasts or adoption figures, and nothing here is advice. The site takes no position on who is behind the name on the paper. The question it asks is why the design looks the way it does.