Bitcoin, you are 16 years old now, you are already a teenager. These are usually the years during which, for many people without even consciously realizing it, decisions are made that will determine the course of the rest of their lives. It is incredibly rare for someone to receive a “do-over” to rewind the choices that are blocking them on a certain path in life.
I fear that you, or rather Bitcoiner, are making one of those monumental mistakes that will have serious consequences for the rest of its existence.
We are seeing unprecedented growth right now. The price is near all-time highs, finally surpassing 100,000, major nations are discussing the prospect of creating strategic bitcoin reserves, we are reaching escape velocity. In the wake of this people have become totally addicted to the narrative that we have already won.
They can’t sleep at night without saying to themselves “we’ve already won”.
Meanwhile Bitcoin is totally unscalable. If the world realized it needed bitcoin tomorrow, everyone would be forced to store their coins with Coinbase or JP Morgan, because the system isn’t scalable enough for everyone to store their coins. All these people will be monitored, they will have no freedom, their coins can be seized arbitrarily at any time by order of the government. They won’t be able to start a business or build anything innovative, they won’t be able to spend their money as they wish, without government permission.
“Oh well sovereignty isn’t for everyone, it’s a responsibility. They wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.” Even those few “elites” won’t be much better off. They may not be able to seize a user’s coins in self-custody as easily as those of a user in custody, but they are not obliged to do so. They can just capture you. They can track you, surveil you everywhere, and when they have the slightest idea that you are trying to do something they disapprove of, you go to prison. This will hang over the head of anyone who tries to innovate or build in a way that is not approved by the government.
Stablecoins are even actively facilitating new avenues of demand for US Treasuries, as our enemies have begun to curtail their purchasing. What Bitcoin has birthed into this ecosystem, out of necessity to help the bitcoin market itself survive, I might add, is actively helping to maintain the dollar. They are doing the opposite of their long-held promise to oust the dollar.
This is the path we are following. One where Bitcoin ability government surveillance and controls. Where it actually helps those things. Why are we on that path? Bitcoin is not sufficiently scalable, and there are no tools that are sustainable and compliant with privacy incentives (i.e. simple enough and not cost-prohibitive enough to discourage people who are not actively seeking it for privacy reasons).
Right now the path we are on is one of people willing to back down, give up any future of Bitcoin by creating formative change, and do what the government wants to get rich. Beyond that, not much will fundamentally change regarding people’s financial lives and their relationship with government. We need to recognize these problems and actually support solutions to reduce their severity, not simply play ourselves to sleep with “Bitcoin has already won.”
Bitcoin has the potential to bring so much positive change to the world, but it won’t do so if we become overconfident, arrogant, and apathetic about solving problems we’d rather pretend don’t exist. Listening exclusively to the arrogance of young people is very rarely good for the party concerned.
Bitcoin is too important to make the same impetuous mistakes that teenagers make. So don’t do it.
This article is a Take. The opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.