The number of eyes on bitcoin grew tremendously since 2009. The number of people who understand sound money and how bitcoin fulfills that void in world economics did not grow much since 2009. You can use node count as a metric for estimating the number of individuals who see the need to separate money from state. If you include core nodes, there are 100,000 people max out of the worldwide population of 8.3B who understand the need for sound money. The number of people who truly understand what makes bitcoin special is likely somewhere between 10-20k worldwide. This shows that while bitcoin was known to the general public, we failed in educating the masses about what is purposes and promises are/were. This is why a proof of work change can be so powerful for us. It buys us time. It not only preserves bitcoin as a sound money, but it provides a method of resetting whenever the powers at be sabotage sound money. We rug them every time. Between 2009 and 2026, we can say that we saw the number of people understanding the need for sound money grew from a few cypherpunks on a remailing list to 20-100k individuals worldwide. That's impressive, but it is a long way off from separating money from state. This is likely a generational war for good money. The way I see it, is that it isn't the chain that defines bitcoin, but the principles laid out in the whitepaper. If any chain ceases to uphold the principles of sound money bitcoin was designed for, it ceases to be bitcoin and a new chain or new fork is required. This is a feature, not a bug. It rugs spammers, scammers, and suits every time they attempt a hostile takeover. It may set us back in terms of "fiat value," but who cares? I sure don't. I care more about the morality of the matter. The beautiful thing that we learned today is that there is a massive demand worldwide for a money that is stateless (because what we learned today is that there exists no such thing). This is a massive opportunity for any of us willing to stick with it in the long run. I see a lot of people talking about monero, but in my opinion this is a massive mistake. It includes a tail emission (inflationary), which is a weapon of fiat and Keynesian economics. It should be treated as a hostile money as well.