I started buying, and almost exclusively hodling, BTC in 2017 after discovering Natoshi Sakamoto’s white paper. I recall being mystified about the new-to-me concepts of cryptocurrency and the blockchain.
Of course, it initially all seemed like nebulous BS made out of thin air, similar to the current fiat dollar system. But after reading through the BTC white paper at the time, the idea of having a decentralized medium of exchange that could not be printed ad infinitum and continuously devalued (as is the USD), it was just too good to not take a bet on.
I bought a couple of BTC in 2017 at about $700 each (today’s value is approx $70,000), and continued to buy very small increments over the years, ultimately learning to transfer and hold my crypto in a hard wallet. I learned enough about the security issues to manage my wallet and keys off of the exchanges.
Mandy and I made a very enjoyable trip to El Salvador last year because I wanted to see how BTC could work in real practice (being that it is legal and promoted there for commerce, as well as taught about in their public schools). BTC use had not expanded significantly throughout the public, but there are pockets around the country, primarily on the Pacific coast, that are active in that ecosystem.
I have had great hopes for crypto in general, to some extent, but specifically for BTC because of its anti-inflationary, decentralized promise. However, for years I have had some concern that there could be government interference, regulation, legislation, intelligence agency infiltration, criminalization, etc. But the risks seemed worth taking for a potential new technology that could be freeing to society. The idea was, and remains, revolutionary.
In addition, BTC seemed to be a fire escape for when the USD hit its next crisis, if not hyperinflationary collapse. Having an off ramp from dollarization and creating a diversification of assets into a safe haven are extremely appealing. Mandatory, actually, in my opinion. Precious metals serve that function, as well, as a store of value, but are also challenging because of the difficulty of transacting with them directly and with storing them in appropriate depositories. Metals also don’t travel easily with you to El Salvador. They are not very portable.
Alas, my remaining optimism for BTC was finally overcome today when a number of possible BTC problems crystallized into a multi-hour Darkhorse podcast with Dr Bret Weinstein and guests Steve Patterson and Aaron Day. I am going to listen to them again, and highly recommend them to you, but a few of the points that seem overwhelming:
- By about 2011, the BTC project had been captured internally by a few core project developers and an admin.
- The admin sunk the non-profit foundation then passed it off to MIT, which employed those core developers that aligned with the capturing admin. MIT works on Central Bank Digital Currency, the opposite of the decentralized currency that BTC represents. (Also, MIT has significant USGov and intelligence ties which cause concern.)
- The admin was the moderator on the primary BTC forums and censored dissent of his actions and contrary ideas.
- This same admin was instrumental in disallowing the expansion of the BTC transaction rate to scale up as designed in the white paper, keeping it throttled to 7 transactions per second. There was also a move to cap the block size to 1 MB. These seem to be very purposeful sabotage moves. He then started or invested in third-party businesses which would serve as financial mediators to increase transaction rates at significant profit, essentially offering the size and speed that BTC could have done on its own if expanded as designed. Now, those functions were siphoned off at great profit.
- These acts helped destroy the peer-to-peer, low transaction cost design and made the transactions dependent on rent seeking, third parties.
- This has become clear because this admin guy was an Epstein island friend and shared emails with the island guy which were recently forced to be released by Congressman Thomas Massie’s legislation.
- US and global regulatory and legislative mandates have stripped BTC of its relative privacy and forced it into a typical financial transaction framework that can be tracked.
I think there is more to be added, but this is the basic setup for the demise of BTC as designed. The project was hijacked and captured early on by corrupt individuals, government intervention, and corporate parasitism. Through no fault of its own, and contrary to its specific framework, BTC cannot now become what it had the promise of being: a decentralized, direct peer-to-peer, low transaction fee, digital currency that is immune to central bank or other devaluation.
I have to admit that I could have sold BTC at almost $125K and now, obviously, wish that I had. But, at the time that it hit its high last October, I still held a lot of hope in the project while remaining uninformed of many of these now revealed details.
I started my BTC journey in 2017 (not an early adopter, per se, but early enough to ride a significant gain), and I now end that journey in 2026, selling it all. Nine years. It was a good ride, Mr. Nakamoto. You have a fantastic idea, and a moral one, at that. But, practically nothing survives the consumption of government, corporate, and globalist capture. Those dirty people just spend all their waking hours scheming how to take other people’s property. We spend our time working and taking care of our own business. That makes it hard to compete with the bad guys.
Mr. Nakamoto, you woke up a lot of people to the failings of our fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking systems. We’ll keep looking for the exit ramps to those systems. Thank you for your contribution.