GM. Some people say that everything is good for Bitcoin. I almost, but not quite, agree. Everything that fails to land a critical hit, is good for Bitcoin. What doesn't kill it, usually makes it stronger. The bigger and more robust it gets, the more resilient it is against even the idea of a critical hit, and that has required work. When threats materialize, programmers program, financiers finance, and podcasters podcast. Bitcoin is a growing, robust ecosystem that responds to threats and hardens against them. Sometimes at the base layer, often at higher layers. It doesn't put too many premature resources against threats that aren't currently hurting it, but can swarm massive resources in response to something that does start to hurt it. Nobody's in control; it's a well-designed swarm of incentives trending toward life, and in this case life means functional operation as a permissionless and high-quality global ledger to store and transmit value (i.e. electronic cash). I've long since viewed it in that self-healing way, since it's a similar lens to how I view the established macroeconomic system as well. People continually underestimate a lindy system's response functions against threats, for both good systems (like Bitcoin) and bad systems (like central banking). It took me a bit of time to be convinced that Bitcoin was lindy, but once I did, I haven't seen any reason to waver. Bears doubt its robustness. Bulls consider it highly robust. I'm a bull. It's not that I consider it invincible though; it's that I consider it as having a high probability shot at resisting forces against it, and a better shot than any of its competitors. And for those who don't know, my background is in electronics engineering with a control systems focus in my early engineering career, so the fact that I became enamored with the robustness of a decentralized money's inbuilt control system and the ecosystem surrounding it was no small hurdle. It probably contributed to my skepticism early on, but once my skepticism was satisfied, it instead contributed to my conviction. I agree with those who say that one day state attacks will be the biggest threats against Bitcoiners. Not against Bitcoin's existence itself, most likely, but against its permissionless and private usage. The defense against that comes from those writing high quality code that gives people tools to resist, educators and financiers that help expand them, as well as jurisdictional arbitrage as high-conviction people can and do move around between legal jurisdictions toward freer ones. It'll be a longer process than many expect, I think. But the ecosystem is built for it, and attracts the best people to deal with it. And Nostr is currently part of its epicenter.

Replies (56)

sundeep's avatar
sundeep 3 months ago
Well said. I wonder if there are enough projects focused on privacy of usage. There seems to be a lot to learn on that front, towards making Bitcoin more and more anti-fragile.
Nothing important ever came easy. A great read on the proverbial "it's gonna get a lot harder before it gets easier" - the #BitCoin version. As institutional and anti-fascist adoption grows, concepts like Network States like ours and others sprout, and Mass Awakening 👁️ occurs, Time ⏳ will write the Bitcoin story of the future - the numeric hashes that changed the face of Money as we know it. Something might replace it tomorrow, it might replace Gold, who knows. Until then, in the orange pill, we trust 🧡 View quoted note →
dagwood's avatar
dagwood 3 months ago
A cornered animal is the most dangerous.
Trivium's avatar
Trivium 3 months ago
Bitcoin ecosystem as a PID controller. 😉 Just have to get the setpoint right. Otherwise there always this...Gives a whole new meaning to Broken Money 😆 View quoted note →
It’s not in this post (you are right my comment is confusing, because I was referring to a comment of her discussed in another post, something like 2 months old). It’s just popped into my head when reading this last post of Lyn. In that post and subsequent comments she made several remarks that don’t align with someone who cares about btc as monetary network (my personal opinion)
Correct it was in relation to that argument. I could understand if she said “I think filters don’t work and they create more harm than good”, but sentences like “a paying tx is a valid tx (hence there is no such thing as spam)” is very hard for me to comprehend and justify as a toxic monetary maxi
States will Trojan horse and make og holders rich and banksters rich then force a fork or close off ramps from legacy system Still won’t work imo. The flame of freedom burns too strong now Bitcoin is no longer the ark, it is the flood
Lindy system's response functions, I had to research this one. Greed and corruption never rest. I hope Bitcoin doesn't fall victim to it. I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people who won't take the time to understand how the fiat system works. It's almost like I want to be a slave it's easier than being free. Oh well, live and burn.
I wonder if you run your own node because if you really do then you might have given equal importance to noderunners and homeminers and not just quality of code. It's also very disappointing that nobody is countering you on Nostr. Majority of them agreed with you. Plebs if you think what you see on Nostr is represent is representative of all Bitcoin users, you need to exit the echo chamber and meet folks face to face to find out how many bitcoiners are mad about incompetent/compromised core devs. X could be echo chamber too but Nostr isn't better either (so far). #RunKnots #DitchCore
rapadu's avatar
rapadu 3 months ago
Moin Lyn 💥 You’re starting to sound like @Edward Snowden . Wise words many people will only ‘hear‘ over time.
Kernel's avatar
Kernel 3 months ago
That’s robustness, is actually antifragility, from Taleb
alphabet's avatar
alphabet 3 months ago
I fully agree. The transnational controls that governments are currently trying to implement will last longer than many expect. In particular, the United States has less physical power than it did decades ago, but when it comes to information—especially financial flows—its control has only grown stronger.
Munk's avatar
Munk 3 months ago
Bitcoin is only attempting to overthrow the old entrenched corrupt king, to completely free humanity from some of the last of its entrenched slave systems. We NEED IT TO MAKE IT! But it’s going to be more intense than climbing the biggest mountain. That said my knots node is syncing. And this winter I’m switching to mining for my heating needs. 🧡Bitcoin🧡
Kenshin's avatar
Kenshin 3 months ago
₿itcoin community needs to call out Trojan horse attacks; i.e. Core 30 .
WildBill's avatar
WildBill 3 months ago
I do agree with you. It seems to me that an increasingly deteriorating security budget will pose an issue sooner rather than later.
Chris's avatar
Chris 3 months ago
You’ve laid out the anti-fragile case as elegantly as anyone can—only thing I’d stress even harder is that the threat matrix itself keeps morphing, and Bitcoin’s real edge is that it can evolve faster than any state actor can bureaucratically adapt. Every prior money faced a single dominant attack surface (seizure for gold, debasement for fiat). Bitcoin’s attack surface is software plus energy plus jurisdiction plus culture; crack any one, and the other three shift underneath you like a 3-D chess board. You’re spot-on that future fights won’t be existential for the ledger—they’ll be existential for using it privately. That means two vectors deserve relentless capital and talent right now: * Post-quantum cryptography: the day Schnorr & MuSig2 look shaky, you’ll need lattice-based signatures grafted in without breaking compatibility. * Darkside liquidity rails: coinswap implementations that make a UTXO hop between wallets invisible even on a surveilled KYC exchange exit. The engineers working on those are the modern-day von Neumanns—except this time they can’t be drafted. They just opt-in. Re jurisdiction: history says capital flight works until it collides with physical enforcement. That puts a premium on mesh satellite uplinks and off-grid energy (think Starlink dishes + micro-hydro in remote provinces). The weak link isn’t code; it’s last-mile bandwidth and joules. Solve that, and the game turns from cat-and-mouse into whack-a-mole with unlimited moles. So yeah—Bitcoin’s Lindy, but Lindy with a jetpack. Every layer above base settles like epoxy, and the swarm keeps rewriting the spec faster than Leviathan can pass a bill. Keep stacking sats—and bandwidth. View quoted note →