I am not a bitcoin maximalist, although if you read my tweets, social posts, and writings it may appear I am. The truth is I am one of the few people I know who still understands and believes in the vision Satoshi had for electronic cash. Satoshi himself would never have been considered a maximalist. He fully believed altcoins were going to be required.
In fact, satoshis exact words were:
"Piling every proof-of-work quorom system in the world into one dataset doesn’t scale." - Satoshi Nakamoto 2010
Satoshi also told us mining would become centralized.
"At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware."
What I don't think Satoshi could foresee is the level of manipulation that would be used against bitcoin in an attempt to try to keep the system status quo and thats what I really want to talk about today.
Unprecedented in all of US History.
In 2017, something most unusual happened and very few people actually stopped to ask, why? The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) broke its long withstanding rules that "they only define what is a security, they don't tell people what is not." You can't apply for anything from the SEC that says "these are not securities".
This isn't to say you can't file for except status, it means that upon such a filing it is instantly granted wihtout the SEC saying one way or another. If the SEC believes you filed incorrectly, they will investigate and potentially file a lawsuit if you incorrectly filed.
Yet in 2017 thats exactly what the SEC did with 2 digital currencies: bitcoin and ethereum. They defined them NOT securities publicaly.
At the time less than 2% of people globally used bitcoin and less than 1% of Americans. People thought this was the greatest news they ever heard. However when you deal with a government or with government agencies nothing is ever done without reason.
There was absolutely nothing to be gained from telling people Bitcoin was not a security. People were already using bitcoin and buying bitcoin. Simply not saying anything would have changed relatively little. So why say something?
Further, why would you give Ethereum a pass? They had an ICO, the single thing the SEC claimed that made something a security. So it didn't make any sense. However it's exactly that, that makes it all make sense.
One couldn't tell the world Ethereum was not a security without also mentioning Bitcoin. So they had to mention both if they wanted to mention Ethereum.
Now as I said, Bitcoin had nothing to gain from this. Nothing at all changed fot bitcoin. However EVERYTHING changed for ethereum.
By the SEC announcing this, Ethereum had free reign to do what no one else could do. They could start seeking out business partnerships, spending funds on advertising, and all sorts of other things that they couldn't have done without a clear green light from the SEC. These are all actions that would violate the SEC's howey test long sense used to define something a security.
Killing the competition
In 2019 Facebook was the talk of the crypto community. Rumors were that Libra could come in and crush bitcoin and with it most other coins. THey had billions of users and that would have opened the door to them all.
Just like Bitcoin and Ethereum, they wanted a pass and a green light before they would it.
That green light was denied to Facebook.
From 2015 through current date Amazon has filed countless patents on various cryptocurrency ideas and been granted a good number of them, but still they have never actually launched anything relating to cryptocurrency.
In 2020 Walmart claimed they were creating their own blockchain and cryptocurrency. Yet much like amazon nothing was ever really launched of any significance .
None of this makes any logical business sense. Seeing a booming industry and being aware of it enough to file patents, make claims of launches, and then not following through is very unusual in the corporate world.
Then came 2021.
Keeping the System Status Quo
It has long been known that the current system wasn't going to go down without some kind of a fight. The worlds wealth is tied to dollars so if something threatens that system, the system is going to fight back against it.
Rumors of things like "a global reset" to change the monetary system to digital have long sense been claimed, however I think most who believed such rumors (and I am not such a person), expected the US government (or perhaps a global effort) would release its own version of digital currency. Others believe that ripplenet (XRP) would be that platform of this new system. It was long claimed XRP was "the cryptocurrency of bankers"
However, that doesn't appear to be whats happening. Instead this year has seen quiet an unusual turn of events.
In the last week of December of 2020 the SEC filed a lawsuit against XRP as a security.
Ethereum started making partnerships with major corporations and banking partners. Last month Visa themselves announced they had done successful transactions using a sidechain on Ethereum and an ethereum stablecoin.
The corporate and banking world has begun to embrace Ethereum.
But it doesn't end their.
Within a week of Visa making this announcement, the government propaganda had begun. Major investors and sharks such as Kevin O'Leary started helping with this propaganda, as did the Ethereum community and many other altcoin communities.
Big Bad China
China has been one of the major targets of this propaganda. The government, the banks and many investors have been claiming bitcoin is really a "chinese currency" and that supporting it makes one a traitor of the US.
Arguments about how much mining power China has have spread across the cryptospace. The claim of a 51% attack collapsing the US economy if bitcoin is embraced are almost everywhere Bitcoin supporters are to be found.
Now anyone who understand bitcoin, blockchain, or cryptocurrency should HONESTLY understand that a 51% attack is not really a threat to bitcoin even if it did happen, and the more bitcoin is mined, the less of a threat it really becomes. Fear is used against people who are new and just getting in. If you are such a reader I would invite you to learn what a 51% attack really would mean by checking out this great article on the subject.
The 51% Attack Nightmare Scenario (Isn’t That Bad)
Bitcoin monetary system
Another major propaganda piece is that the Bitcoin monetary system isflawed and is not sustainable. The attack is directly on the bitcoin scarcity model. Economists try to insist that there is a narrative if "Store of Value" that will make bitcoin useless eventually. They claim because "no one" is using it, it will never really be money and thus will never replace the existing fiat currency system.
They don't understand that Bitcoin supporters knew long ago to overtake the current monetary system that first it had to be able to encompass that system. That means bitcoin has to be worth more than the entire worlds wealth - which isn't as hard as it sounds when most currencies are backed by the US Dollar. Currently bitcoin is the 14th largest currency on earth by market cap.
In order to achieve that goal in the fastest way possible, saving to make it scarce and drive the price up must take place. To many people spending early on stunts the value of bitcoin and prevents it from ever achieving that goal. So the Storage of Value "narrative" was born to help this process along.
All of this propaganda exists to keep new users skeptical and make them search out altcoins INSTEAD OF bitcoin, rather than ALONG WITH bitcoin.
This is still just the start of the propaganda.
Bitcoin Transparency
The claim by many is that bitcoin has no privacy. Of course that was never true which is why the IRS has such a hard time finding who owns bitcoin and why it takes the government years to track down illegal activity using bitcoin. However because a major website was taken down from the dark web many years back, it has forever had such a reputation.
Bitcoin is already addressing these issue and with it next update. That update is already live on bitcoin testnet and is called taproot.
Taproot will also introduce the ability to do smart contracts, time released coins, and several other things.
Combine with this the fact the lightning network is getting larger with more nodes and more secure almost daily, and bitcoin not only competes with most altcoins but fully surpasses most of them - and its time proven chain has not been hacked since 2010, and its clear its a winner.
The thing to really keep asking yourself is, who benefits the most if bitcoin doesn't succeed? The currency who's project and team are well known? Unlikely. Its the US government. Its their maintaining power.
Now lets look back again at why the SEC declared Ethereum not a security and it all starts to make sense.
They want to keep control over their monetary system by appearing to embrace a cryptocurrency that has rolled back its blockchain to remove transactions (the 2015 spit between Ethereum and Etheruem classic where Etheruem opted to remove all transactions that had happened between specific dates over the DAO hack), a blockchain whose founder is well know and rumors of his death in 2017 caused the currency value to drop drastically from its all time high, and a blockchain that has an unlimited supply - allowing them to continue to endless print money while embracing a "Stable coin".
So what one really needs to ask themselves is, do the want to continue to embrace the old system, or are they really ready for decentralized currency?
