This space suffers from a problem of inverted perceptions. What makes Bitcoin valuable in the first place is its decentralized nature. The fact that it is a distributed system, without a central point of control, without a central point of influence, not even with a central interface point for the users. This is the source of its resilience and reliability. Without this feature, without the ability to simply download a piece of software and interact with it, there is truly no value to be found.
At that point, it is fundamentally no different from a banking database. No one can be guaranteed access if someone (the operator) wants to take it away, and no core properties like the supply limit or the inflation rate can be guaranteed if someone (the operator) can change them on a whim.
Many people in this room at this point are applauding the erosion of these properties. They advocate solutions like ETFs and other custodians as a way to drive up the price and increase their own fiat-denominated wealth. They attack those who work to and advocate for solutions that do not compromise Bitcoin’s core value propositions, portraying them as ghosts who “risk what makes Bitcoin valuable.”
It is a complete inversion of reality. The Spooks are Heroes, and the Heroes are Spooks.
Saylor does literally defending custodians as a superior path to adoption than self-custody. He compares people who build and sell self-control tools to FUDsters and fearmongers, or “paranoid crypto-anarchists.” Painting the people building the tools needed to defend and preserve Bitcoin’s core properties that give it value in the first place. He completely ignores the dynamics that led to gold and its role as sound money that melts away over time as governments meddle and manipulate it.
They achieved this because all the gold was in the hands of custodians and no one owned it themselves. No one used it directly; everyone chose to use paper substitutes instead that were separate from the precious metal itself. Bitcoin could largely suffer the same fate. Whether it is paper bitcoin diluting market demand, or custodians gaining outright influence over the consensus process and outright changing rules to suit their own needs and desires.
Bitcoin is a social consensus system, the nature of which is entirely determined by actors participating in the system. The size of these actors, their own individual nature(s), the vulnerability to government interference, how many of them make up the majority of economic activity (more is better, less is worse), all these things play a big role in how Bitcoin will evolve and exist as a system.
Many people in this space applaud short-term actions that threaten its long-term resilience as a neutral and decentralized system due to perceived short-term benefits in the form of price appreciation and economic profit. Developers who work diligently and with little gratitude to maintain the core properties that give them value are attacked as spies and government agents, while corporate properties and actual spies who attack these properties are hailed as heroes.
The world in this room is turned upside down.
This article is a To take. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.