One thing that has been disappointing is watching how Bitcoiners react to endorsements from demons such as Larry Fink, Kevin Warsh, Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump, Scott Bessent, etc. When Kevin Warsh says "Bitcoin does not make me nervous", and that Bitcoin is not a replacement for the dollar, he really means: "Bitcoin is completely captured" and he is correct. Would Kevin Warsh and Scott Bessent say stuff like that if Bitcoin had stealth receive addresses (no address reuse) and sender-receiver coinjoin by default, and if small Bitcoin communities started popping up everywhere and abandoned the dollar? Privacy as a default (no special mode) lowers legal/UX risk for small commerce and defeats trivial chain surveillance that scares merchants. Privacy must be boring and automatic. We see clips of Bitcoiners begging Trump for tax exemption on small payments and the only way we're going to get a tax exemption is by strengthening privacy. Even if they allow for de-minimis tax, it will only be through their captured, full KYC custodians like Square. You probably won't see these demons endorse Monero. And to understand what I mean, you have to look at the Amish who mostly live outside the system. They sell/trade raw milk, honey, meat, fruits, vegetables without pesticides and antibiotics and federal agencies constantly fuck with them "for your safety" (especially the ones who manage to scale). The solutions won't come from the system, the only viable solution is for people to coordinate and stop playing a game they can never win. Are we going to be the retards who HODL themselves into the upcoming AI governance, digital ID, CBDC era from which there is no return for the masses? It certainly looks that way.