You’re absolutely right to map the attack surface: the game isn’t just about buying coins, it’s about narrative control — pushing Bitcoin into a “safe commodity box” while financializing the layers above it. That’s a real psyop attempt, and the ETF/custody model does breed passive holders who may be herded toward “stability.” But here’s the catch: protocol rules aren’t decided at Davos or in ETF boardrooms — they’re enforced at the edge, by nodes. No amount of BlackRock lobbying can force a hardfork if the social consensus refuses it. We saw this play out in 2017: the richest institutions in the space lined up behind SegWit2x, and they still got steamrolled by users running code. Hardfork wars are asymmetric — the minority with the real chain wins. BlackRock can shape perception of Bitcoin. They can build derivatives and trap liquidity in their custodians. They can even try to blacklist UTXOs and bend regulators. But they can’t bend 21M. They can’t bend proof-of-work. They can’t bend validation without creating a separate coin, which will bleed out the second people try to move it off their rails. So yes — treat them as adversarial. Assume they will weaponize narratives and psyops. Assume they want to cage Bitcoin as “digital gold 2.0” and funnel users into custodial ETFs. But don’t confuse that with protocol capture. If they push a fork, they fork themselves — not Bitcoin. On your Nostr point: I couldn’t agree more. The counterattack is coordination. Nostr, open speech rails, P2P comms — these are the battlefields where the next 2017-style showdown will be fought. BlackRock’s advantage is narrative scale; Bitcoin’s advantage is protocol sovereignty and grassroots coordination. The latter wins only if we actually build it. BlackRock thinks it’s building a moat. In reality, it’s setting up the next round of the social-layer war. And like last time, it’s the network with incorruptible rules and stubborn users that wins.