Bitcoin does not exist in a vacuum. It does not exist outside the flow of time. We cannot just sit on our hands and do nothing while chasing the perfect, flawless, no downside improvements to this network and protocol.
The real world does not stop.
Yesterday the most powerful nation state on the planet officially instituted a Strategic Reserve of Bitcoin. We are past the point of no return on a path now. Governments are here, they are paying attention, they are actively participating now. The level of that participation will not shrink, it will not be reduced, it will only grow from here.
We do not have time to keep fucking around treating this project as a toy, an academic curiosity, or an intellectual puzzle. It needs to scale, now. The counter narratives to neuter Bitcoin due to its lack of scalability are not just already here, they are massive. They have support from huge swaths of this ecosystem.
“Bitcoin isn’t for spending, it’s for saving.”
“If you need to transact, just use stablecoins (that are centralized, censorable, and seizable).”
“Bitcoin is collateral.”
We are sleep walking into a future where Bitcoin is a neutered useless toy. Where it provides no privacy to anyone. It provides no censorship resistance or sovereignty to anyone. Where it is a useless hunk of lead to anyone outside of a white listed and surveilled system.
Governments aren’t going to just sit on their thumbs while we bicker and waste time until we find the perfect solution to scalability, and then go “Sure things folks, we’ll get right on activating that.” They will fight it tooth and nail. They do not care about you, your freedom, or your prosperity. They care about their own power. They will not support things that degrade their power and influence over you.
“Sorry, we have to have our guys look at this first, we’ll get back to you.”
“This seems risky, we can’t allow some internet nerds who want to tinker to put at risk the value of a strategic national asset.”
“Nope, this seems like it will enable things the last few years of regulation decided were illegal.”
The world doesn’t give a shit that you don’t have the perfect move or course of action available, it will not sit on its ass and wait for that option to become available to you. It will keep moving forward, it will keep removing and limiting the options available to you. There is no pause button.
It’s time to stop fucking around and acting like Bitcoin is some intellectual exercise, it is a real thing in the real world. And it happens to be the only thing that will give us any chance of the future not being a dystopic nightmarish hellhole.
This isn’t a game, and it’s time to stop pretending like it is.