"Solutions?" is a great question. For most people the solution is "be more Amish". Focus on what actually matters: - your health, your family, your community, your skills, your adaptability, tools, machinery, weapons, self-sufficiency, gold, silver, Monero (if you need digital cash - most don't), land that produces food, energy, local services, cattle, etc. As I've outlined in this article (

Bitcoin will fail as mass, non-custodial Medium-of-Exchange

When we look at the past 5-10 years, Bitcoin’s trajectory is quite clear. Capture goes up, freedom goes down.

), finding solutions that turn Bitcoin into mass, non-custodial medium-of-exchange is extremely unlikely because of the Coordination tax. The Coordination Tax is how the Controllers manage Bitcoin (smaller scale), but also how they manage society (larger scale). The Coordination Tax in society is the recurring total cost of getting large numbers of humans with different incentives, different information, different risk tolerances, different time horizons, and different status games to act as one organism across time. In Bitcoin, you have 3 stacked systems: - S₀ Protocol: consensus rules, Proof-of-Work, supply. - S₁ Policy: relay/mempool defaults, mining templates, wallet behaviors. - S₂ Perimeter: banks, clouds, app stores, ISPs, payment networks, tax law, PR. Security: S₀ is math; S₁/S₂ are sociotechnical (having both social elements (people, culture, organizations) and technical elements (machines, technology, processes)). The Coordination Tax in Bitcoin: recurring human + legal + distribution cost to keep S₁ (Policy)/S₂ (Perimeter) aligned with S₀(Protocol)’s ideals. There is an Attacker asymmetry: One cheap perimeter tweak (Acceptable Use Policy line, bank heuristic, pool template) can shift millions. Defenders must hold all fronts, all the time. You'll find yourself in endless civil wars, e.g.: - Core v30 — Inscriptions / spam vs “art” - Taint, “clean UTXOs” & compliant-Bitcoin vs grey-Bitcoin - Node liability & “publisher” / CSAM / sanctions content - Quantum-resistance, key-rotation & “lost coins” - Paperization & “wrapped Bitcoin” vs base-layer Bitcoin - Protocol ossification vs “surgery to survive” - Blockspace & “digital cash vs data chain” (the rematch) Many in the Bitcoin space are stuck in a sunk cost fallacy. This is exaggerated due to the low fiat price (compared to last year). Many will be cured once the price recovers. Bitcoin could still go up in fiat terms, but as far as freedom money goes, the battle is already lost. The solution is to try to spend most of your time on things you can control, instead of arguing with bad faith/brainwashed actors in this rotten space. The battle was never meant to be won because Bitcoin was likely created by the government to act as a digital decoy for physical gold. I've written about this here:

Why I think the government created Bitcoin (and a few predictions)

Why I think the Controllers created Bitcoin and more importantly my predictions for how the next few years unfold.

TL;DR in a screenshot: Bitcoin as mass, non-custodial MoE wasn't really a winnable battle. View quoted note →