Bitcoin and People in Crisis

Chaotic by Design vs. Corrupt by Design

There is a psychological paradox in Bitcoin adoption. You’d think that in a world breaking apart, people would turn to Bitcoin. But they don’t because they think it’s just another manufactured scheme gamed by deep pockets. To them, Bitcoin looks like the very system it claims to resist. It has wild volatility, jargon, hype, and rich people pumping it. The media only covers it during crashes and bull runs. To the average person, this looks like a casino. Rich bros getting richer.

And people aren’t wrong to be skeptical. Is apolitical money even real? Every monetary system shapes power… and power is political. Even if rules are neutral, their outcomes are not. Money decides who gets what, when, and how. Any widely adopted money becomes part of geopolitics whether it wants to or not. Bitcoin may be apolitical in its design, but it’s deeply political in its impact. It’s hard to tell the difference between a system that’s chaotic by design (Bitcoin) and one that’s corrupt by design (Wall Street).

Bitcoin’s signal is long term. But the world is more short-term than ever. It asks people to think for themselves, delay gratification, take responsibility. That shit is hard. If only people turned to Bitcoin in times of crisis… but they don’t. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it’s hard to trust anything after you’ve been betrayed by everything.

But here’s the good news: it’s still here. And in a fractured world, we’re watching Bitcoin’s anti-fragility in real time.

You might wonder… if centralized control over mining is rising, and nation-states are stockpiling BTC, doesn’t that go against the whole point of Bitcoin? Is it being gamed by deep pockets?

The truth is: Bitcoin’s decentralization is multi-layered. Mining centralization ≠ network control.

If a few large companies or even countries control most of the hashrate, could they in theory collude to censor transactions or attack the network?

Well…

Bitcoin’s incentive structure is so brilliant that it economically rewards miners for playing by the rules.

Mining is open to anyone in the world. No permission needed. If it becomes too centralized, there’s incentive to join and restore balance.

Miners can leave a pool if it misbehaves. And it’s guaranteed: if a pool starts acting against Bitcoin’s interest, miners will bail.

Hodling BTC ≠ Controlling BTC

Miners are like lawyers proposing new cases (blocks).

Nodes are like judges who approve or reject each case based on the law (Bitcoin’s rules).

Even if the US held a massive BTC reserve, it wouldn’t give them special powers. BTC in cold storage isn’t governance. Unlike traditional finance, wallet balance doesn’t buy you a vote. If they dumped all their BTC at once, they’d crash the price — but hurt themselves too. They can hoard it, but they can’t stop others from using it.

Bitcoin’s consensus is global, not national.

The rules — block size, difficulty adjustment, issuance — are enforced by full nodes, not miners or holders. These nodes are globally distributed. If a world leader wanted to reverse a transaction or ban a wallet, they literally can’t unless the global node network agrees.

That’s the genius of Bitcoin’s design: decentralization by consensus, not control.

So yes, mining may centralize — but Bitcoin is built with game theory to punish bad behavior, to stay global, to be programmatically resilient.

What is consensus in Bitcoin?

Consensus means the majority of nodes are running the same rules and only accept blocks that follow those rules.

Now, imagine an evil rich government offers $$$ to node operators to install modified Bitcoin software… maybe one that allows printing 10,000 new BTC to fund a war.

Or imagine they spin up 100,000 fake nodes running this version to outnumber honest nodes.

They’ll fail. Why?

Because Bitcoin isn’t majority vote. It’s not about node count, it’s about node behavior. Fake nodes are spam. The real chain lives on, because wallets, exchanges, and users trust the honest one.

Consensus is voluntary, economic, and rule-based ( not controlled by money or numbers).

What if a world leader tries to buy out node operators to force a rule change?

Problem 1: they don’t even know who runs the nodes. They’re pseudonymous and globally distributed.

Nodes are individual judges, not a parliament. Bitcoin is powerful because everyone has veto power.

Let’s imagine a government runs 1 million fake nodes that accept a block printing 10,000 extra BTC. The rest of the network rejects it. The chain splits.

Now we have:

Real Bitcoin (limited supply, global consensus)

Government Bitcoin (inflationary fork, mostly ignored)

Even if the fake fork has more nodes, it doesn’t have our agreement. Bitcoin only works when independent actors keep agreeing on the same chain.

Real-world example: Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash in 2017. Some big companies wanted bigger blocks, changed the rules, and forked. But the original Bitcoin had more miners, devs, wallets, users, and exchanges — and it won. BCH? Technically alive, culturally irrelevant.

Bitcoin’s consensus is reflected in behavior, not votes.

Miners may propose blocks. Pools may coordinate them. But full nodes decide which blocks get accepted.

So if miners propose a block that creates 10,000 extra BTC?

Honest nodes reject it. That chain dies.

Why won’t most nodes just accept the government's fork?

Because most full node operators are long-term Bitcoiners (devs, builders, institutions) all financially and philosophically invested in Bitcoin’s credibility. They want Bitcoin to remain scarce. Breaking the 21 million cap would destroy that trust, tank the price, and nuke Bitcoin’s core promise as hard money.

Even if a government bribed them? The value of the bribe wouldn’t be worth the destruction of the asset.

Bitcoin’s value is the rules: fixed supply, transparency, neutrality.

Break the rules, you break the trust. Break the trust, and the system collapses.

But what about volatility? If the price is so manipulatable, how is this system better?

Yes, governments can pump and dump. They can spread FUD. They can manipulate price, in the short term.

But they can’t:

Freeze your wallet

Censor your transaction

Print more coins to fund themselves

Bitcoin is volatile, but that’s the cost of monetary neutrality.

Fiat systems are stable because central banks suppress volatility with rate changes, money printing, and interventions.

Bitcoin trades in an open, global, 24/7 market with no intervention. That’s what makes it volatile — but also real.

Volatility is the side effect of freedom.

Every early-stage monetary asset is volatile. Gold was volatile for centuries before it stabilized.

As Bitcoin adoption increases, liquidity improves, usage spreads, volatility decreases. Price manipulation becomes harder.

We’re watching Bitcoin’s anti-fragility in real time.

Real talk…

Apolitical money isn’t a fantasy; it’s an asymptote. Something we aim for, to reduce human fragility. We may never fully escape politics, but Bitcoin lets us opt out of some of it.

It doesn’t ask for ID. It doesn’t care about borders. You can opt in or out, no permission required.

But what about privacy?

Money privacy isn’t just a technical detail. It’s a philosophical stance.

Why is privacy scary? Because it makes crime harder to trace, and it challenges state control.

So the question is: do we want selectively private money?

Not everything should be visible. Not everything should be hidden.

We need money that allows:

✅ Privacy by default

✅ Auditability when needed

✅ Consent over disclosure

✅ Resistance to coercion

That’s what ZK tech, MPC, and privacy layers are trying to solve.

Bitcoin today is:

Pseudonymous (your address isn’t your name, but it can be linked)

Permanently visible (everything’s on-chain, forever)

Traceable (tools like Chainalysis exist for a reason)

It’s like doing your finances on a public Google Sheet with a fake username.

Bitcoin gave us borderless, uncensorable, permissionless money. But it didn’t give us private money. That’s still being built.

When people say “crypto has no intrinsic value,” it’s like saying “Linux had no value” in 1995 because it didn’t generate revenue. You’re missing the infrastructure layer.

The intrinsic value of crypto isn’t token prices. It’s the systems it enables:

🛠 Bitcoin: A money system where no one can change the rules on you

🧾 Ethereum: A programmable financial layer open to anyone

🏗 Blockchains: Infrastructure for ownership, identity, coordination, and value exchange beyond traditional gatekeepers

So the better question isn’t “Is this valuable?”

It’s:

What are people building and who gets empowered when it works?

Is there gambling? Yes.

Exploitation? Yes.

But also: financial inclusion. Censorship resistance. Programmable markets.

Bitcoin isn’t behaving like gold. Or stocks. Or a safe haven.

It’s behaving like something we’ve never seen before.

And that’s the point.