Freedom and autonomy, not Bitcoin

Over 10 years ago I started a journey into the unknown. I discovered that the so called "freedom" people and myself experienced in every day life was fake. You were free to serve and as long as you could find a way to exist within the existing framework of society, you would experience freedom, but only for as long as you would not search for the boundaries of that framework. In the same time I educated myself about the history of money, Bitcoin came into existence. Because of my interest in the topic I came into contact with the new protocol as early as 2011, but it took me until 2012 before I really figured out how to obtain those coins and how the network provided security without a trusted 3rd party.

Fees did not exist within Bitcoin back then. Because the number of participants in the network was so small all transactions would fit within the 1MB of data that is available each block. Another big difference to the workings of Bitcoin today is that Replace By Fee (RBF) was not yet implemented. Bitcoin served as digital cash because hiding your identity was fairly easy and the coins you held were in direct control of the owner.

A lot has changed since that moment. First of all, the number of participants grew substantially to a level in which the blockchain could not process all the financial needs of it's participants. At the moment of writing the Bitcoin mempool is about 250 MB and a Bitcoin transaction costs around 10$. Let me be clear, I think this is GREAT! It proves to me how Bitcoin provides for a service that people are willing to pay for and it also shows all participants how 1MB of data per 10 minutes will never be sufficient to provide everybody with the security a blockchain transaction provides. 

Instead of acknowledging this simple fact, the fact that 1MB will never be sufficient to scale to a global level, the narrative circulating within a large group of Bitcoin enthusiasts is that various second layer solutions will provide the required scalability to service the globe. In the eyes of these Bitcoin maximalists, everything but Bitcoin is a shitcoin and our addiction to debt is just a given fact we do not need to solve. Last week I spoke to such a maximalist during a FreedomRadio podcast. Tom van Lamoen, the leader of the Dutch Libertarian party told me how Liquid or Lightning will soon be able to provide everybody with the power of Bitcoin. When I told Tom Liquid will open the door to fractional reserve Bitcoin he was surprised and didn't know a federation of companies needs to be trusted in order for Liquid to work. The lightning network (LN) is only a connection between 2 participants and for it to work properly centralized liquidity hubs need to be established to provide for the liquidity in order for the LN to work properly. LN has the added disadvantage that all spending needs to be pre funded and every lightning transaction still requires 2 on chain transactions, which again will not allow it to scale to a global level. To top it off, Lightning requires the user to be connected to the internet 24/7 at risk of losing his coins if a disconnect to the network occurs, it requires a significant investment to open and maintain your channels, plus the user of Lightning needs to have technical expertise to avoid costly mistakes.

During the conversation I had last week it became clear to me how my goals did not line up with the goals of Tom. I am fighting for freedom and autonomy, Tom is not, he is fighting for acceptance from the old power structure to provide himself with an advantage over others. By the way, I want to congratulate Tom for having that conversation with me instead of just ignoring my arguments and in no way is this text an attack on him in person. Tom stands for a large group of people that only use Bitcoin as traceable digital gold for speculative purposes who are not after empowering individuals, but are just looking for an individual way to escape the debt cycle. Because these people only use Bitcoin as a story of value and not as a way to provide more autonomy or freedom they do not care about KYC regulations, they are completely used to showing their passport at any random moment the government requires them to do so. My fear for a future carbon tax on every bitcoin transaction that wants to participate in the traditional society was a crazy conspiracy theory but by remaining dependent on the traditional power structure I see at as just a matter of time before it is a given fact. 

It can be done different. We can introduce Bitcoin as the new standard in global finance today by decentralizing Bitcoin with use of multiple blockchains so it becomes useable on a daily basis for micro transactions instead of just being a speculative tool to gain an advantage within a debt based economy. A group of people can decide today they want all the advantages of blockchain technology and connect to the standard Bitcoin created by adding their own blockchain and use it as their layer 2 option to provide them with the ability of getting security from an affordable blockchain transaction. Just like the gold standard had for example silver or bronze to complement it, just like the Dollar standard of debt currencies knows a variety of different forms of debt currency, for example Euro or Dinar, that is also how Bitcoin could operate with a variety of complementary coins to empower itself, make it stronger, more decentralized, more useful, more cost effective and more available. I foresee that if we fail to get people to use blockchain for anything else but speculation purposes we will end up with an economic illiterate community which is captured by the most efficient control system the world has ever seen. We need to start building a network of people who use blockchain on a daily basis, on their own account, so that blockchain transactions become more useful. I have nothing against Bitcoin banks, I have nothing against ETF's (although they do have a huge risk of confiscating the underlaying asset), everybody should be free to use Bitcoin as they prefer and feel useful, but our aim should be to change the economic standard of this world and for that we need everybody to understand a new Bitcoin standard will allow us to achieve that goal.

"DIGITAL SCARCITY CAN ONLY BE INVENTED ONCE!" Another baseless claim from people that try to find every excuse available so they don't have to admit their flawed vision of reality. 10's of thousands of coins have been created since the start of Bitcoin, all utilizing digital scarcity, the argument how it can be invented only once can simply be proven wrong by looking at reality today, but instead of embracing that reality the psy-op that infiltrated Bitcoin got a lot of proponents blinded with phrases like: "Everything dies to Bitcoin" or "The market has decided". Sure, in the past 10 years almost all hyperinflating crypto inventions, that started at 0% of coins in circulation and are working their way in a fixed amount of time towards 100% of coins in circulation have not managed to outperform the best performing asset of the last decade, Bitcoin. Limited knowledge is my main argument to explain the decline in bitcoin value of most altcoins, but taking EFL as an example it has provided an excellent hedge against debt currency inflation during the short timespan the protocol is around. To tackle the other argument "The market has decided" I like to refer to today's "science", because "The science has settled" is the same kind of argument and most people today understand that's not how science works and the same goes for markets. Markets are deciding every day and just show a temporary state of being. What a lot of people fail to realize is that WE ARE the markets.

Shitcoins are not decentralized is another argument you often hear. Decentralization happens because of adoption and again, it is up to US to put our trust in alternative blockchains. Before I go any further I want to openly ask how decentralized Bitcoin itself really is. Most early adopters are young males from nations with a stable government. People that had internet available to them and could dedicate their time towards studying the topic without having to worry if they could provide themselves with food that evening. In my opinion Bitcoin is not decentralized at all, look for example how mister censorship, the previous owner of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, who censored any account the government told them to, is currently building a miningfarm so Ordinal transactions will be censored from entering the blockchain. The amount of developers that are working on Bitcoin today is very small. It's true many developers are working on implementing Bitcoin in their private business idea, but building on Bitcoin itself is only done by a limited group of people you can't become a part of. And let's not forget, Bitcoin was introduced by one single (group of) developer(s), Satoshi Nakamoto who ran the project like a dictator for over a year. We don't know his identity and because of that, nobody can prove that Bitcoin itself was not invented by a government body that is still holding 1M+ Bitcoins that can move at any given time. Taking all this into account, I believe it is fair to say Bitcoin is not as decentralized as some people like to believe and because decentralization happens because of adoption and the current userbase is already too large for Bitcoin to handle, it is unlikely Bitcoin will become more decentralized in the future. People, individuals, have spend their time and energy on the development of Bitcoin and have made the project what it is today. The same can happen to any other project, as long as people are willing to invest their time and energy into the development we can create anything we desire.

I was asked the question why I am bashing Bitcoin and the answer I provided in the discussion became the title of this blogpost. I am fighting for freedom and autonomy and if Bitcoin does not follow that path I have to speak out about that. The clash from the different goals people pursue. The most people who are in Bitcoin today entered the ecosystem after 2017. They have never experience feeless, immutable transactions. These people are not looking for a way to change society or the better, they just want to create a way for themselves to experience freedom within the existing framework. To achieve that goal these people are looking for recognition and if that means they have to give up on the pursuit of freedom and autonomy they are willing to do so. KYC regulations are only the first step, as mentioned before fractional reserve Bitcoin will enable larger adoption but it comes at a price. The price being that in order to claim your Bitcoin IOU you will have to pay a variable cost in the form of a transaction fee to provide you with the security a blockchain transaction offers. Today that cost is below 10$ and still affordable, even if you just stack sats once per month, but it is only a matter of time before that fee will rise to triple digits or more and again, this is not a bad thing. Nothing is free in this world and to those that say paper debt transactions are free, just take into account all the wars on this world that currently provide the security for the use of this paper debt. Just because the cost is not payed by the individual does not mean it doesn't exist. Freedom and autonomy are created by utilizing the service of a blockchain. This service is a public transaction which provides security for the user without the need of a 3rd party. By not performing a transaction on the base layer blockchain loses it's purpose and we are just building a different banking system that will have the ability to control society in a much more efficient way compared to traditional finance. 

A couple of months ago I started to write my new Go Fuck Yourself blogseries on this website, accompanied by a video series on Rumble. I have opened several trades on the komodo platform in an attempt to communicate with likeminded people. I have spread my message to the best of my ability and my vision has been rejected once again. Not with good arguments, I have not heard a single one, but instead, the rejection came from ego or a conflict of interest. The ego has more to do with the inability to admit ones own mistakes, the conflict of interest has more to do with work from the past. I understand it's not easy to change direction, I have done it a couple times myself and it takes courage, but I'm surprised and disappointed at the lack of arguments I receive to really prove me wrong.

My reality is simple, our biggest challenge today is to find a solution for the ever expanding debt cycle. It's not an easy task, because most people have 0 knowledge about it being in effect in the first place. They have never used anything else but debt currency in their lives for economic transactions and have not got a single clue about the history of money. Just using Bitcoin as store of value will not help us to achieve this goal, because every time you want to spend your coins in the existing economy you will be bound by the rules of the debt based economy. Instead of looking for recognition from traditional power structures I am looking to build a different economic model with Bitcoin as the new basis. This solution already works for me for a decade and is ready to scale to a global level. The only thing which stops the progress is people who are willing to participate. Just to name one example, I have contacted a broad variety of Dutch initiatives that are crowdfunding themselves by asking for euro or dollar donations from their audience. eGulden EFL has a limited amount of coins available to hand out to Dutch citizens, the current euro value hoovers around 1M euro, but none of the people I wrote had any interest to take on the challenge and try to educate people about the debt trap we are in. A lot of people today are able to recognize how governments worldwide try to use their power to influence the direction in which the narrative moves forward. We have seen it for example during covid or the narrative surrounding the arrest of Julian Assange, but a much easier example might be the endless wars I have experienced in my lifetime alone. Endless and obvious lies combines with dirty tactics like blackmailing has corrupted the world as we know it today, why is it so difficult for people to accept Bitcoin has been infiltrated in the same way, in order for the traditional power structure to maintain itself and become stronger?

I can't do anything else but conclude that with the direction that Bitcoin is heading, it is more likely to become a CBDC-like digital prison instead of providing individuals with tool to become more free and autonomous. I believe things can change, but only if people are willing to act, something that is not happening today. I will continue to speak out, but at the same time I have to accept my influence is miniscule and most of my arguments are neglected. I have not received any convincing answer of how 1MB per 10 minutes is going to provide freedom and autonomy for individual users and the arguments I did hear all came down to trusting a third party and accepting that the security of a blockchain transaction can't be utilized by everybody, something which I believe is completely false as I have tried to explain in this text.

I ask myself, how much worse does reality have to become before people are willing to give in? How many more wars need to be fought, how many more people need to go bankrupt, how many more restrictions will it take for Bitcoin believers to see the multicoin reality that is already available as option today? We do not need the traditional economy to serve us, we are serving the traditional economy and if we collectively change our behavior governments will have 0 power to stop us. It's all the will of people, that is why so much effort is spend on trying to manipulate their thoughts, but there is one thing I know for sure, something I have stated over and over and will repeat again now. In my lifetime the dollar will lose it's function as world reserve currency. Whatever comes next is up to us and that is why I keep on spreading my messages of which I am convinced it is a viable option that offers solutions most people will benefit from. Just like I spoke about Bitcoin 10 years ago to get the job done I speak today that Bitcoin needs help to implement itself as new global standard. Again, 1MB per 10 minutes will NEVER be enough to provide the world with all it's financial needs. On top of that, just one blockchain limits the creativity of people and does not allow creativity to flourish. I would like people to be able to use one of the most, maybe even the utmost powerful invention in the history of humankind, blockchain technology and I don't understand how the small group of people that understand the power of this invention today can see each other as the enemy, other then accepting that governments have succesfully infiltrated Bitcoin in order to delay or influence it's progress. 

We live in a very special time in which everything is a possible outcome. The decisions we make today will have massive influence on the upcoming decades to come. With use of blockchain we can decide to pay down all the government debt, if we want to. Pay back all that debt and make those central banks irrelevant by changing our economic model from centrally created debt to decentralized assets, if we want to. We can do it and it is up to us. I have explained myself well enough and if people want to see my reality come into effect there is just one simple step that will get everything done. A step that already proved itself 5 years ago when I was given the option to show that prove for a bigger audience and declined because of my doubt back then about my own capabilities. I have learned since then how small the group of people that understand these topics really is. I have learned that it is really a very small group of people that are able to influence the outcome and I am happy to this day I have waited to show my proof so I could grow stronger, but the proof of my theory was there. If you want my words to become more influential, just buy EFL, or any other communitycoin for that matter. Not only will the principle of fair value provide you with a healthy return over time, but you will also help to change the global narrative and empower the individual so they can use blockchain technology in their every day life and use it to obtain more freedom and autonomy. The choice is ours and I will patiently wait for the moment more people will understand they have to act in order to see the change they want to see.