Hello Cryptonians (again, that failed online Ponzi-exchange PnD factory took the fun out of saying "cryptopia" so...),
It's hard to carve out the time for new posts, but I'm reminded every once in a while that there are individuals who value my insights and that means the world to me. So this post is dedicated to you!
Intro: Welcome to the facade
I'll get right down to it: I think we live in critical times. There is a facade building around us and I think I have a bit of a sense of what it is about. We ALL know that world conditions haven't restored to some sense of normalcy after a cascade of pandemic-like conditions unfolded. Along with health concerns came a lot of fear about how world governments handled response to those conditions.
Today, it seems scary concepts like rapid inflation, job loss, almost militant knee-jerk response to emergencies, radical government excesses are just common place.
We adjust.
As we adjust to 300% spikes in daily costs, we're told things have returned to normal. There's a cognitive dissonance. But, as humans, we all share some fundamental instincts in common. We gravitate towards familiarity and comfort. We see or hear scary things and then we're lied to that things are normal, and we want to believe it. But, there's a facade.
If we're all true to ourselves, we will see that things aren't normal. It isn't comfortable. The world is changing.
That same world that isn't equipped to deal with health crisis' or tightening spending keeps turning to old solutions that we all know don't work, while there are global shifts away from the dollar into even more devilish standards (and that's a tall order!).
What is the facade?
The facade is the dissonance that we can act as if things are normal while costs are extreme, leaders are corrupt, powers are centralizing and re-aligning a "western" standard to an "eastern" standard with alliance to Russia and the CCP. If there's one thing (ok, I've had a lot of them that have come true over and over) I can guarantee, it is that a standard based around a digital yuan will NOT be the same...nor will it be better, if there isn't a better balance focused on the power of the individual.
Let me bring this all around to crypto. As you probably know, I'm leaning very heavily towards Bitcoin and dare I say maximalism. But, I also do so with my own thoughts and my own standards. As much as I am a willing critic of ALL things crypto, that also includes Bitcoin.
Within the same concept of there being a facade around our hearts, minds, and spirits, there is a facade among every encampment of maximalism in different crypto projects. There are NFT-heads, Ethereum-maxis, obviously Bitcoin maxis, and for this split-second Pepe and memes in general. It's hard to pretend that NFTs are an important movement of art and media, taking them into the future.
It's hard to pretend that anything important will elevate from the introduction of Pepe coin into the world. But, it is possible to live under that illusion...or delusion, if it made you money, or if you entered with the hopes of making money and are currently 98% under like most early believers.
Take down the facade
If you know me, you know that I often like to poke fun, be snarky or ironic, and sometimes I will take the bate and get annoyed at readers with Communist leanings or just truly ignorant types that need to hear a small piece of truth. But, even those things I do because I'm weird, and I care. I care that EVERY person has the right to pursue what they believe is true, or what they think is right. To the same extent, I should have the freedom to follow what I believe is truth and say what I wish. Within that truth is my faith in God, as a Christian, who can go on at length about the hypocrisy of the church and the failings of denominationalism because I DO believe the truth sets people free, and truth builds a fire within your belly to expose lies in your own camp.
I believe in people's rights to think they are right, even if I strongly disagree with them. That comes with the fact that if I know history has taught us that what they think is destructive and is built on a lie, like "Communism hasn't ever really been tried before" yeah I'm comin' at ya like a pit bull. Because I love you and don't want you getting lost in a facade.
Hey, others have taken the lies and foolishness they see in religion and politics and said "hey" it's ALL b.s. Their belief becomes the temple of unbelief (as opposed to disbelief). Often the facade is that somehow by embracing science, which often updates, changes, and even pulls an entire about-face, is in contradiction to true faith, one doesn't realize the sheer energy and faith it takes to believe in not-believing in something.
You Can't Handle the Truth!
The same is true in crypto. So, here are some very unpopular facts:
1 Bitcoin is the OG: the white paper was a phenomenal step forward for all humanity. There's a reason it comes across as faith or something bigger than just a mining or economic tool to true believers. It is truly significant.
2 Despite Bitcoin still being a BIG deal and being the first to succeed of its kind, there are still other projects. Being a maxi, which I sort of am...shouldn't mean a disconnect from reality. Whether someone likes it or not, NFTs do exist. So does Ethereum. And Pepe. This is important because:
3 Even Bitcoin could become corrupt or be reduced in prominence if we don't learn from mistakes of others and mistakes of the past.
4 Even Satoshi did NOT expect Bitcoin to be all things to all people. I shall elaborate in the next section.
Let Bitcoin Be Bitcoin
I am borrowing from an episode of a show I admire from the past. I am not a liberal. I'm not even a libertarian or conservative. I am a free thinker with faith who sees human flaw in ALL man-made political institutions. I do have conservative leanings and align with some libertarian ideals, and I do believe in the non-emperialist, non-evil-colonialist foundational principles of a Republic that allows for the best of Greek governing philosophies with a representative construct that is meant to protect us from the virality and anarchaic and centralist dangers of flat-out democracy. With that disclaimer I love the wit and quality of the show West Wing.
West Wing was a show from brilliant thinkers and writers that I see evidence of caring about elevated ideas that I just happened to largely disagree with. Because the efforts seemed pure, and in many ways were much more centrist than Left-leaning (though often wrong in my opinion), and having an understanding of who the writers were, I see in the writing a reach for greatness and idealism. The goals seem to be to inspire, to care about fellow humans, and to make the US a place that others would want to emulate. Sad how far we've fallen.
So, there is an episode titled "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet" and it was about setting the president loose from his chains to simply be himself; unashamed, politically incorrect, honest, and whether that was the greatness he possessed or the unpopular things he said or did, so be it. He was going to succeed or fail being true to himself.
Let's super-impose that on Bitcoin.
STOP trying to make Bitcoin everything that everyone wants it to be. Here's the thing that makes me crazy (ok, probably a lot of other things come first, but...)
Bitcoin doesn't HAVE to knock out all of the banks and all of the credit cards and PayPal and...and...and in order to succeed. It simply has to perform under challenging world conditions and exist as an option. EVERYTHING else can work itself out. Does it need to handle more traffic? L2 and sidechain solutions are GREAT projects to work on. Do people want to be able to use it on other platforms like ERC20s or whatever comes next? Cool build that project.
Each of these things will come with their own challenges, and maybe there are other brilliant minds that have better solutions than what Lightning currently offers. But, love it or hate it, you have to admit it is pretty cool it even exists. It means people see enough value in resolving P2P payments without a central platform, enough to find a way to build greater networks and traffic while reducing fees.
If there are protocol or safety issues at play, then we have 2 foundational levels that point the way towards solutions. Before Bitcoin, we didn't have that. So, that's a LOT of progress in 12 years.
But, Ethereum should be an example of how trying to be everything everywhere all the time is riddled with problems. Hey, maybe PoW really is a problem. Maybe it does back up against the consumption of more energy resources than we have. But thus far the evidence suggests that it can greatly resolve and impact the environmental footprint in positive ways while also needing to inspire greater processing efficiency. But, the underlying concept is incredibly valuable. That idea is that proving something valuable should come at a cost in order to protect it: that should matter.
Meanwhile, Ethereum has given in to many pressures, a lot of social justice and virtue signalling, and that comes from the top and front and center. Vitalik is completely sold on these concepts, and models ETH in his image, after the idea of longevity, posthumanism, and extending truth to mean all things to all people. He believes men should make babies and a myriad of other things that takes the world in a new direction while still not having a clear path to solving the current troubles of high fees or chain congestion. There are plenty of people who think that is the right thing to do. I personally don't agree.
What I hope you'll notice is that I'm not an Ethereum-denier. I believe it exists and Vitalik had some brilliant ideas. While it offers some positives, unfortunately it also opens the doors to absolute rubbish. So be it. That is the world.
To the same extent that I fully accept Bitcoin isn't perfect, I hope ETH fans can be honest to themselves and accept that staking is about as hypocritical as anything that has yet to present itself in crypto. The idea that everyone should have access to something, or a token should serve all people equally while not choking mother earth, suffers under the weight of the idea that to participate in PoS ETH you have to have 32 ETH locked up. Add to that the milestones and projections are so highly centralized ETH can literally become whatever the central authorities in AND outside of the ETH org desire.
This should be something that makes Bitcoin superior no matter what. There should not be any way for humans to influence protocol and mining away from the core concept of decentralization. This is both Bitcoin's strength and its weakness.
Just like Litecoin needs better marketing than "met too but better", Bitcoin does NOT need to emulate other popular fads or trends. In fact, there are now thousands and thousands of tokens that can do whatever any cult of followers wants. ANY coin or token can be an ERC20 competitor. ANY coin can find better ways to run an NFT ecosystem.
It is mindblowingly stupid, and I mean unashamedly STUPID with a capital UPID to try to do these things with Bitcoin. It lowers the importance of the OG down to things that are SO likely to fail, and to fall under even heavier weights of political power struggles. It shows me just how little maturity there is in the space that people think Bitcoin needs to be anything other than the one trick pony that got us all here.
Is it not clear by now that people who think Bitcoin is old boomer tech are NEVER going to turn to Bitcoin to be the next big thing?
So, why tilt at their windmills? It is SO amateur hour to do ordinals and inscriptions (yeah, I know they are the same thing), BRC20s and all the rest. It has all the markings of YouTube scammers leaping on the bandwagon and I hate it.
We could be destroying a chance at freedom and literal billions of dollars of potential prosperity for people with a freedom mindset who have sacrificed EVERYTHING to take a chance on Bitcoin, bc of dumb fake monkey pics and placing them permanently on an incredibly important freedom-chain.
The Bottom Line
Take down the facades: in your life, and in crypto.
The world isn't looking too pretty right now, and pretending that it does can eventually hammer away at the foundation. Let Bitcoin be Bitcoin while ETH and thousands of others struggle down a crooked path to find their identity in something else. Some of those might be something cool. Most of them dare I say prove the naysayers right: they give crypto a bad name and give governments a leg to stand on to come in and regulate the life out of it.
Whether we like it or not, we're all going to be expected to bow down to the gods of facial recognition and CBDCs and it won't be decades; it's a matter of years now. Would you be willing to risk one decentralized OG that can handle a limited capacity at L1 while offering a dozen other paths to things like Lightning, for stupid fly-by-night schemes that actually are money laundering and run the risk of placing horrid illegal material on that precious blockchain permanently, incriminating everyone running a node? Apparently there are some idiots in the programming world doing precisely that, and what's worse: the network allowed them to do so.
Be true to yourself and live for truth. I believe I know what that means and it often is painful, but often sobering and a peaceful revelation. In the case of crypto, there are some things that matter more than fighting for your camp. We need a way to transact without trusting a 3rd party, when all of the 3rd parties are corrupt and do not have our interests at heart. Everything else, be it art, music, literature, or stupid monkey pics, comes second.
The future is going to come at us faster than you can imagine. AI and ML are changing the game. First through mimickery and automation and efficiency, and then immediately going after our jobs, and then our humanity. It isn't a time to be unsure whether humankind matters. We're all humans. THAT's our thing. That's our tribe. Get it?
As long as humans are human, we need something like Bitcoin, and of utmost importance, we need to let Bitcoin be Bitcoin.
And on that note, crypto Gordon Freeman...for now...out.
