Welcome to crypto, where the daily news cycle happens 3 times/day.

There's no way a single person could ever keep up with the crypto news fast enough to even explain what just happened. I find that thrilling! In this case, I'm skipping right over to the current hot topic of the microsecond, and I am equal parts encouraged, annoyed, and unmoved by the reactions and first publishings.

So, here we go again, Michael Saylor continues to hit the top spot of interest in the crypto community with his Bitcoin maximalism. Many started to take notice when MicroStrategy announced acquiring $1.3 Billion of Bitcoin. Saylor also makes it a point to provide conferences, videos, and a constant stream of interviews about this decision. The fact he encourages others to add Bitcoin to their corporate structure, and instructs on how to do so, I think is a sign that this is not entirely about ego for him, but I don't know the guy.

What I DO know, is that the other side of equilibrium is Elon Musk, and sometimes his humor, carelessness, or misguided genius are hard to distinguish from one another. But, his first move I'm pretty certain was just narcissism in full-assault, as he almost immediately filed to acquire $1.5 Billion  of Bitcoin to Tesla. "HaHa, that's $0.2 billion MORE sucka"! Then, the Doge rampage, then the "Tesla is taking Bitcoin payments", then the beginning of the death of the rumor into news-cycle and SNL killed the momentum and people were confused, then Elon gets struck by the secret green police and stopped the Tesla Bitcoin payments.

The message of how kewl Elon was suddenly becomes "I'm too cool to care if I just permanently wrecked your savings account". The publications start doing their part of the propaganda and even the Pope is briefed on "what is a Tesla, I thought he died, like, a century ago, unless you mean the 90's rock band... and an immutable ledger does WHAT?" and suddenly we learn the entire world is going to self implode if a single block more of Bitcoin is mined.

Which brings us to the present.

Saylor hosted a meeting to get North American Bitcoin miners together to discuss providing disclosure on their energy use, and Elon was invited. Of course, the result is a new council of N. American miners who agree to let us know their energy use, and the press publishes the story that Elon gathers miners for a new coalition. As the Brits say: "Brilliant"!

That's the background. This is actually the story about how the crypto world responds.

First, die-hard cryptonians (I wish it were cryptopians, but the craptastic defunct exchange kinda ruined that for all of us) are appalled at the idea that anyone should have to tell anyone what kind of energy they are using to mine Bitcoin. Anything that has the mere distant whiff of centralization is to them, the end of freedom. I can get along with that, but isn't my concern here. This goes deeper than a surface-level fad of green energy concerns. The establishment is going to make good and sure that the future is a planned economy based on green jobs, and I'm sure that every time something green ends up being 10X worse for the environment it will get buried deeper than Atlantis and aliens, if either of them ever actually end up being "a thing".

lol.

There is another group of cryptonians who take the new council to mean, what I perceive, something much more extensive than what it is. They take this to mean a sophisticated gathering of miners will be pining for monopoly in all things gpu, green energy, and their entire public disclosure will be a virtue signal fest the likes of which we have never seen. I'm not sure they're quite getting the point. I truly believe we had a good hand of chess, where Saylor decided to grab control of the story that was headed to the outskirts of "let's ban Bitcoin, it's bad for muddah erf" and take things in a positive direction.

Nothing takes the wind out of the sails faster than assuming control over the story instead of running from it. Since he is the prominent name in buying Bitcoin as a hedge of protection against the devaluation of fiat, it makes sense that he has used his presence to join miners together to prevent distortions in reality, to make a myth of the myth that Bitcoin broke the world, to own the truth of what miners are actually doing, and to help the truth-factor of where the industry is heading, since it does actually benefit miners to improve energy efficiency.

I do not think we are witnessing an attempt at a grab for power, and the end of decentralization of Bitcoin. We've been living under that illusion long before any of us knew who Michael Saylor was. If you want to be concerned for the future of crypto, you want to see as many China-free mining operations pop up all over the U.S. and smart local governments finding incentives for this to happen. This is true for at least 20-30 other countries to do the same. No one should feel comfortable with the percentage of mining controlled by the CCP. That is a much bigger concern than trying to deflate the U.N. 2030 Agenda by a few pounds of pressure.

I am equally opposed to the idea that the Bitcoin network is actually decentralized at all, but that is another story I will revisit more times than you can say "Groundhog Day".

There are other concerns, and this is the part that bothers me the most; those who are embracing the council as a good and necessary thing, not because it places the messaging on a pro-crypto scenario, but rather because they really are worried about the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining and they believe it is high-time there be a Bitcoin N.A. Miner's Council to fully disclose their energy use. This is an extremely confused position from within the crypto community. Listen, there is plenty of room for all of us here, where people can choose their coins based on environmental integrity, PoW, PoS, PoH, purpose- goal- structure-, you name it. But, there has always been an underlying ethos tying us all to one another in alliance, that the purpose of crypto is to provide a freeing from the binds of historical greed and power.

The human desire for absolute power has destroyed one civilization after the next, and the ideals behind crypto are typically for something better for a wider range of people, efficiencies in systems, providing the under-served a better, faster, cheaper way to handle their own transacting, and a myriad of good things. The idea that we all need to spend more time under a microscope in order to prove that we are benefiting from decentralization is a threat, not as an activity, but as a frame of mind. The entirety of crypto is driven by a state of mind. Take that away, and it just becomes the next governmental playground and it is starting to happen quickly.

I would suggest that the true threats of centralization are government action against stablecoins, their own race to be the first to implement CBDC's while using regulation to try to limit the success and scope of the free-market's version of crypto, and the desire to control, KYC/AML and tax the life out of this fun new frontier. Again, it is inevitable, and the real question is whether the market we all know and love can survive that move against freedom.

The real threat to decentralization is not a self-reporting council to let us know how they're tracking on their energy use, it is the response that will come as a result, that it is simply not enough, that more compliance is needed, more governmental oversight, more regulation, more control, more carbon credits on the blockchain, more subsidies more incentives. This is where it will head, and there is no correct or incorrect move that individual alliances can make. The global governance cannot help but to do what it is designed to do, and it is the ultimate in centralization.

Some of the very best meaning, most intelligent crypto projects will take part in placing brilliant systems of data collection and data use on the blockchain, and the governments will find a way to use these inventions to entrap us, force people to share even more data that they wish were not used against them, and that data will be sold and resold while we lose freedom and don't earn a dime from the loss of it.

We will get taxed and double-triple taxed every time we accidentally guess correctly on a pump, and unless we find a more clever way than mixers and DEX to revolt, it is a brief road to the dying light at the end of the tunnel. This is not a doomsday message, but a reality check that we, as humans, always think we know absolutism in our creations and in our science, and if we learn nothing, we should know that there is always another way to get screwed... it's just how power works.

Those who not only desire control, but in fact control is the energy that THEY run on, will find the most unbelievable, underhanded, often insane means to grab more control. In this case, the best thing that can happen is for the top coins to continue to flourish and to show us all in confidence, that they are resilient to hacks, bans, extortion attacks, ransomware, dishonest exchanges, and above all, government manipulation.

The challenges are coming, they will be greater than what we have seen in the past, and the writing is already on the wall which coins are given a pass to move forward. The only question is how well we can all understand the actual challenges and join together in a centralized fashion, in unison, to voice our support for the decentralized processes we so adore.

And on that note, crypto Gordon Freeman, who politely says "if you don't care, then I don't mine"... for now, at this moment in time... out.