On Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cardano

Opens November 30th 2023 from Abu Dhabi to elaborate on his AMA statements about the absurdity of US securities law and an all-time high in maximalism.

Recalls the early collegial days with no altcoin market, GPU and CPU mining, buying Bitcoin through PayPal and BitInstant, and Satoshi praising innovations like Namecoin.

Satoshi stayed anonymous because of the legal ambiguity of issuing a currency, citing the Liberty Dollar and Ron Paul silver coins that fared poorly.

The fact maximalists deny: on day one Satoshi had 100 percent of the hash power and total control with no fair launch, as Hal Finney's struggles to run a node showed.

Asks why every altcoin with those same facts is always called a security, centralized, and a scam while Bitcoin is exempt.

Bitcoin went from a collegial community to a cult where everything else is a scam and its builders are criminals, statements Max Keiser and others make proudly.

A sole operator controlled Bitcoin for a non-trivial time and likely holds 8 to 10 percent of supply, and mocks the argument that a security cannot register because it is unclear who would.

Asks if Ethereum is a security who registers, and whether it would vanish if the foundation or Vitalik disappeared, concluding it is sufficiently decentralized, the SEC's own standard.

The standard is not equally applied or objective, leaving assets simultaneously a currency, commodity, and security with no clarity.

People innovating in zero-knowledge cryptography, consensus, BFT, proof of stake, and decentralized storage are all branded criminals by maximalists.

You cannot have a working relationship with a group that calls you evil criminals whose only purpose is fraud.

Bitcoin companies actively lobbied Congress to criminalize all altcoins, which he confirmed from lawmaker staff who met the same influencers.

Every open-source project, Linux with Linus Torvalds or Clojure with Rich Hickey, starts small and decentralizes over time, and Bitcoin was no different with a sole miner and architect.

Wonders what financial arrangements Satoshi made, since a side deal to fund two years of work would resemble an ICO or pre-sale, unknowable because he is anonymous.

Argues the powers who want CBDCs are comfortable with Bitcoin because it is controllable, lacking smart contracts, DEXes, oracles, algorithmic stablecoins, and on-chain DAOs.

Bitcoin's resources are exogenous, so most users leave assets on regulated exchanges and light wallets, and ASIC mining centralizes to fewer actors bound by big data centers.

Governments tolerate volatile gold and still institute tyranny, but smart contracts and a programmable ledger are a genuine threat because non-Bitcoin chains can replace sovereign functions.

Decentralized chains can become marketplaces, national ID, voting, education, credential, supply-chain, and medical-record systems with fair rules, which is the threat to the world order.

Warns that ETFs and BlackRock give institutions power over forks, since if all the infrastructure picks chain A it wins even when 90 percent of the community wants chain B.

Diversifying consensus matters and that Cardano invented Minotaur multi-resource consensus combining proof of work and proof of stake as a fallback, which maximalists dismiss.

Laments the constant drumbeat of insults and misses when the industry remembered why crypto was created, a distrust of centralization symbolized by the 2008 banking-crisis reference in Bitcoin's genesis block.

Most Bitcoin holders today know nothing of the philosophy and treat it as just another asset, so the libertarian core has dissolved.

Cardano is a net benefit to Bitcoin, a case study for responsibly adding smart contracts by extending UTXO where Simplicity and BitML struggled for years, and that Satoshi would have used it.

Cardano native assets were inspired by the colored coins Satoshi discussed, that Bitcoin script was dialed back after the inflation bug, and that NIPoPoWs could give Bitcoin efficient side chains and light clients at no security cost.

He financed the Edinburgh Decentralization Index to objectively measure decentralization across layer ones like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Algorand, and Polkadot.

Says if Bitcoin is the hallmark of decentralization that is the number to aspire to, and Ethereum's shifting security status should be measurable rather than politically decided.

As an American he takes no pleasure watching his nation declare war on an industry that would liberate it, missing a multi-trillion-dollar revolution.

Compares it to the US making Silicon Valley, Microsoft, or Apple illegal in the 1970s, warning that an offshored crypto industry will never come back.

A fading Denver with homeless encampments and worse crime, part of a systemically poorer, sicker, more fragmented America with record-low trust in institutions.

A bitcoiner, an Ethereum person, a Cardano person, and a Ripple person are 98 percent similar, all using wallets, keys, and consensus, like dialects of English, yet fight constantly.

Criticizes clipping a two-hour AMA into rage-bait, arguing that being your own bank requires the maturity, integrity, and accountability the industry still lacks.

The altcoin space should just be one crypto and blockchain industry that treasures its differences, with rivalries like the Chiefs versus Broncos rather than calling the coach a criminal.

Institutions are capturing the industry via OFAC recommendations, the broker definition, a non-custodial wallet tax, mining-carbon scoring, and unbanking, replacing 2009's rebels with 2008's culprits.

Says what unites the industry far outweighs what divides it, and united it would be powerful enough to go from don't be evil to can't be evil and protect freedom of Association, Commerce, and Expression.

Warns society is close to CBDCs paired with AI and social credit rationing your gas and purchases by grievance hierarchy, which is not hypothetical since policy papers describe it.

Klaus Schwab's you-will-own-nothing framed as climate necessity is pursued by China and could reach the US in 10 to 20 years, just as two-weeks-to-slow-the-spread became vaccine cards at Starbucks.

The social contract of constitutional republics is unraveling and must be renegotiated, which is the whole point of the blockchain industry: a new social contract that preserves liberty against technocratic tyranny.

He never mentioned Cardano once when testifying before Congress because it was about representing the whole industry, asking whether you are here for that or just the gains.

Such opportunities come once a century as an empire dies or after a great conflict, a rare window to change things for everyone that should not slip away.

Reflects on a demanding decade, envying Satoshi's anonymity yet valuing the many people the publicity inspired, a double-edged sword.

Believes Cardano and Ethereum will endure while Bitcoin loses its luster and relevance, but insists none is wrong and all bring value worth learning from.

Admires the innovative but grueling Bitcoin work by Lightning and Blockstream, comparing upgrading an unforgiving Bitcoin to fixing the Hubble telescope in space, brain surgery with oven mitts.

Bitcoin effort inspired Hydra, extended UTXO, and Cardano native assets, which he published to flow back upstream, never calling those builders criminals.

Asks only for the same dignity and respect across the aisle, recognizing the industry has far more in common than before and should work together to take its power back.