Bitcoin is Young
Don't panic and don't crash out.
For those who were aligned with BIP110, let's take a breath.
Bitcoin is too important to give up because we lost one battle. This was not the first L we've taken and it will not be the last. Bitcoin is a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to free civilization from the parasite of usury. How easy did you think that was going to be? If you get demoralized and leave, you are ceding the network.
When I was much younger, I got demoralized about the chances of the cypherpunk mission ever succeeding. Everything was going the wrong way and smug, derisive people seemed determined to enslave themselves. So I shook my head and turned my back.
It took me a long, long time to get back on the field. I was cynical and very slow to take Bitcoin seriously. I regret my lack of faith, deeply. I shirked my mission. I'm ashamed of it. If you give up on Bitcoin now, I think you might regret it too. The fight isn't over and you are needed. If you are one of the few who understand what this fight was actually about, you are greatly needed.
Bitcoin is young. Very young. The fight has just begun.
I supported 110 for two reasons. The immediate issue was stopping network abuse by shitcoiners and spammers. But the deeper and more critical point was, and is, about capture. Capture is the greater threat. The greatest threat.
I felt and feel that repudiating the facilitation of spam by captured and misguided Core devs is critical. Anything accomplished by capture needs to be reversed, resoundingly, as a deterrent to further capture. Capture is a motte-and-bailey game. The counter-move is to crush the motte. When they take an inch, we should take back a mile. Every time.
Both are fights that will never end and we won't win every battle. Vigilance and perseverance are prices of freedom.
It's legitimate to say "if Bitcoin fails we will build another money and try again." Absolutely. But we are nowhere near that, IMHO. Demoralization is poison. Don't take the poison. This network is still ours to lose. Or they wouldn't be attacking it like this.
The usury system still rules the world and is very, very good at subversion, corruption and demoralization. That is the very essence of its power. Betrayal will lurk around every corner. Resistance is going to be insanely hard. It's going to take patience and the willingness to level up. It's a mental and spiritual war. Hold the line.
And this was not a total loss. We got a lot of new information. Many masks have come off. And the machinery of capture has revealed itself, which is even more important.
What did we learn?
Who gets it and who doesn't
Who many of the actual bad actors are
That some of our thought leadership is less than stellar
How vanishingly few Bitcoiners really understand what Bitcoin is
That miner centralization and dev capture have neutered the UASF
That culture, tribal politics, and dev funding are attack surfaces we need to defend vociferously
Maybe we already knew a lot of these things on some level, but I think more of us have a better sense of the sophistication and scale of what we are facing now. I certainly see the picture more clearly. And I'm not going anywhere.
I know it's hard to watch these people who didn't get it gloat and troll. It's discouraging to have the very people you are trying to help mock you for your effort and celebrate their own usurpation. But that's always going to be the way. They know not what they do.
To the brave ones who poured their hearts into this, thank you. @Dathon Ohm @Luke Dashjr @Bitcoin Mechanic and many others. We all owe you a lot and anybody who doesn't see that you were trying to defend the network and everything that makes it important is missing the plot. If you decide to build another network, I get it and you have my support too.
But I'm not ceding Bitcoin. This is far from over.
To the well-meaning who took a different position, I still think you got this wrong, but we are still brothers. I will keep an open mind and I hope you will too. Bitcoin is young. We've never had anything like it before. And we are all still learning.
The bad actors and shitcoiners who would sell humanity's chance at freedom for personal gain will only wreck themselves in the end. Pray for them. They're still trapped in fiat, playing a negative-sum game that nobody wins. Bitcoin is a truth machine and we're not going to let it fail.