Written by @ScarcityMan
Bitcoin was dealt a serious blow on 8/8 2026. It hurts because we know what was at stake, and what this means. It hurts because most of our enemies are too stupid and ignorant to understand they're rooting against themselves. It hurts because the suits don't care about bitcoin, and never did, and now we know this without a doubt. It hurts because the influencer class betrayed us, and bitcoin. And they were not as smart as we thought. Or they thought.
Sip the whiskey, fire the joint, hit the heavy bag. But then get back here and look at what happened with clear head and eyes. We only fail when we fail to learn from our mistakes.
For what it's worth, here's what I think about the current state of bitcoin:
- Bitcoin is a captured project and we were too late in reacting. We don't know the precise structure of the capture, but it's clear that Core, Strategy (Saylor), Bailey, most of the big mining pools, and a number of other key figures are part of it.
- Miners were almost certainly coached through this via backchannels. All the people wanting to "bet" in prediction markets knew something we didn't.
- Many influencers showed their true colors, possibly also backchanneled, especially ones changing their tune suddenly, without good reason, and without any willingness or ability to engage in debate over the actual principles.
- None of the arguments made by Core proponents and BIP-110 opponents made any sense and still don't. Some of it is stupidity. Some of it tribalism. Some of it is by anti-bitcoiners. But there is a weight in the space that we can't see, except by its gravitational influence. It has warped a great many minds around it. We don't need to know what it is to know it exists.
- The main chain is unsalvageable. Let the suits and scammers and spammers have it. It will turn into etherium and become irrelevant. Not tonight, but eventually. We are early. We are few.
- We are not so few. 20% of the network went all in. It grew from 0% on the principles and merits despite overwhelming opposition from nearly every imaginable corner and entity. That's how we know it got where it did on merit. This wasn't David vs Goliath. This was David vs a legion of Goliaths. And yet, we nearly won. Perhaps if we'd had more time. Perhaps if just a few influences hadn't turned their backs on us. Maybe if Saylor hadn't been quite so evil. We'll never know how close we came.
- I would rather start fresh on a clean coin with the 20% of you who went all in on this than remain with the 80% on the cucked coin. One of you is worth a 100 of them. I believe if we did this, we would eventually outgrow them, the same way we grew support for BIP-110: on the strength of the principles and merits.
The mission hasn't changed. We still need to fix the money. Satoshi almost one-shot this whole thing from nothing. But the one thing he didn't foresee was the corruption of the developers.
We know this can work. We almost got there. I have taken the orange pill and I can't go back inside the fiat matrix now. Let's regroup and figure this out while there's still so many of us riled up. Sulk today, but sober up tomorrow, and lets get back to work.
LFG
