Your Pastor Now Accepts Bitcoin: Why That Should Worry You
(ANALYSIS) It begins, like so many bad ideas, with good intentions.
A well-meaning deacon. A tech-savvy youth pastor. A quiet QR code printed on the back of the bulletin. Another on the church’s homepage, nestled innocently between a Bible verse and a donate button.
“We now accept crypto,” it reads. “For your convenience.”
But convenience is a slippery word. So is currency. And when the house of God begins accepting offerings minted in the murkiest corners of the internet, we should ask ourselves: What, exactly, are we sanctifying?
More churches, in America and beyond, are accepting crypto, tokens that may have been stolen, speculated on, or siphoned through criminality. It’s legal for churches to accept crypto, but is it ethical?
The answer is no.
As someone who’s covered the cryptocurrency world for major outlets, I’ve seen firsthand how this industry works. Behind the slick branding and utopian PR lies a chaotic ecosystem fueled by hype, anonymity and flat-out theft. Exchanges collapse overnight. Scams run unchecked. Coins with no purpose skyrocket in value, then vanish. Billions evaporate — and with them, lives and livelihoods.
We’re not talking about isolated incidents. The sheer scale of deception is staggering. Take the collapse of Terra/LUNA, for instance, a so-called “stablecoin” that vaporized $40 billion in a few days. Or the spectacular implosion of FTX, run by Sam Bankman-Fried, a convicted felon often compared to Bernie Madoff.
Crypto has quietly normalized financial ruin on a scale that would’ve triggered congressional hearings in any other industry. And the regulators? Mostly asleep. Even President Trump is now cashing in on the madness. The $Trump and $Melania coins have been marketed as symbols of patriotism, but they’re classic pump-and-dump schemes. Designed to lure in loyal supporters while giving crypto insiders control over the supply, they inflate the price, then dump and disappear. It’s not about decentralization. It’s not about democracy. It’s marketing spin wrapped in the flag. The sales pitch is populist. The profits still go to the top.
Now, that same rigged system is bleeding into the church. This is unacceptable. Crypto contradicts nearly every core tenet of Christian stewardship. Let’s start with accountability. Crypto thrives on the opposite. Its genius, if you can call it that, is its disintermediation. No banks. No names. Just keys, hashes and an endless tangle of wallets.
You don’t know where the money came from, and unless you’re willing to spend hours trawling block explorers and forensic audit tools, you probably never will. Now, I ask you to picture a church, an institution that’s meant to be above reproach, building ministries, buying equipment or paying staff salaries using funds that could’ve been stolen from an exchange, laundered through a mixer, or traded for fentanyl in another hemisphere.
And yet churches will defend it.
“It’s just another method of donation,” they say. “We accept credit cards. What’s the difference?” The difference is that crypto isn’t a payment system. It’s an ideology. One built on libertarian fantasies and a foundational distrust of institutions — including, ironically, churches themselves. Which brings us to the next contradiction: greed.
Scripture doesn’t equivocate on this. Christ didn’t offer tax-efficient strategies, say, “Sell your possessions, except Bitcoin” or tell the rich to diversify their portfolios. He told followers to walk away from wealth, not repurpose it.
Of course, I’m not saying everyone needs to sell all their possessions and live like an old-school monk. That’s not practical, and it’s not the point. But we should be honest about what Jesus preached and what the gospel of crypto preaches.
By design, crypto glorifies hoarding. It celebrates those who bought early and watched the price explode while others were left holding the bag. It fetishizes volatility. It builds entire cultures around the idea of exploitation.
What happens when the bull market ends? What happens when the crypto tithe a church proudly accepted last month is worth half as much today? Or one-tenth? Will they issue refunds? Of course not. The donor might be anonymous, but the damage is real.
Worse still, this tech has turned fraud into an aesthetic. In crypto, even the scams come with merch. “Rug pull” is when project founders disappear with the money. It’s become a joke, a meme, part of the culture. So has “exit liquidity,” the phrase used when you buy in just as someone else is cashing out. “Paper hands” mocks anyone who sells too early or shows hesitation. The very language of crypto is steeped in irony, deception and nihilism.
And churches, places once built on trust, sacrifice and mutual responsibility, are now embracing the darkness.
They’re not just accepting donations. They're adopting a mindset — one that values hype over humility, gain over grace, and speculation over service. When the altar begins accepting tokens mined in misery, it’s not just the money that changes; it’s the message.
The very idea of tithing — of giving to God what is already His — is rooted in the belief that money is not neutral. It shapes us, tempts us, and reveals who we serve.
This is not about rejecting technology. This is about resisting moral drift. It’s about remembering that not every innovation is an acceptable invitation. The church should be discerning enough to see that just because crypto is legal doesn’t make it righteous. If God’s messengers hope to offer moral clarity in a disoriented age, they can’t do so while pocketing digital currencies that may be soaked in sin.
John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. He covers psychology and social relations. His writing has appeared in places such as UnHerd, The US Sun and The Spectator World.