There are so many stupid sayings in Bitcoin that teach people to be lazy and compliant. “Everything is good for Bitcoin.” “Bitcoin is inevitable.” “No one can change Bitcoin.” They all mean the same thing… relax. Do nothing. Bitcoin will protect itself.
That creates a “free-rider problem”. Everyone benefits if Bitcoin stays decentralized and censorship-resistant, but only the people who actually defend those properties pay the price: time, money, risk, public conflict, reputational attacks.
Everyone else waits, assuming they will get the protection either way.
Combine that with social engineering that makes dissent personally costly, anyone who challenges recognized authority is mocked, isolated and made socially radioactive, until even associating with them feels embarrassing to the weak minded and people begin policing the boundary themselves.
And then there are people who anthropomorphize - almost deify- Bitcoin, as if it has agency, a survival instinct and some supernatural ability to protect itself. If you’re excited about bitcoin and used to stupid arguments from fiat land it’s easy for the brain to do this.
Free-riding produces passivity. Social punishment makes it self-enforcing.
Meanwhile, defending Bitcoin is a diffuse interest. Exploiting it is concentrated, coordinated and highly profitable.
That is how a small organized minority defeats a large passive majority.
I want people to really think about how stupid and downright insane the phrase "Everything is good for Bitcoin" is.
It's a technology that seeks to separate money from state and prevent the entire parasite class from stealing almost everything from >99% of the planet.
This means there is huge incentive by the most powerful people on earth to destroy it by any means necessary.
And Bitcoin is not magically immune to every one of their tactics.
The most successful to date has been infiltration and subversion and it is everywhere for those willing to look.
BIP110 is an expression of an uncaptured network, and its opposition was purely and revealingly concerned with the artifacts of that.
Do we need large OP_RETURNs or upgrade hooks for a new op code before Sep 27? Or OP_IF in taproot or an address type not used in over a decade?
No - we just don't want upgrades from non-technical, non-economic users that lack consensus as that cannot be *permitted*!
So now we are left with the "Bitcoin is permissionless, so you have to let people turn it into file storage" bros becoming irate that we are leaving, once again without permission.
The unsalvageable dumspter fire that we spent the last three years fighting, in public, for no-brainer upgrades to, is captured.
This has been demonstrated, again clearly to everyone willing to look, as it has become impossible to make progress unless working within the appropriate political channels rather than operate forthrightly in public.
That is just another fiat system. Decision making was deferred to captured industry players.
Those entities are incapable of doing what is required to separate money and state as they require the state's permission to exist.