I've been building a very advanced liquidity tracker and a few other models. It's a lot of work but it's been fun. Basically finance + logic + conspiracy theories. The type of stuff that nuked my Substack from search engines. I was getting search engine traffic up until I wrote my One World Government article 😂 ( https://controlplanecapital.com/p/rivalry-between-countries-is-curated ). Ever since I started doing a deeper dive, I've been shocked to learn how blue-pilled financial analysts are (they are incentivized to be blue-pilled). From time to time, I watch the more popular youtube analysts on 2-2.5 speed and man, they are absolutely clueless, or at least pretend to be. Even the darlings of Bitcoiners — most are absolutely clueless. Often, when they are right, they are right for the wrong reasons (assuming the stated reasons are what they believe in).

Governments love humiliation tests. A humiliation test is a small, pointless obedience drill that trains you to nod first, think later. It's not about the content. It's about proving the system can make you do or say something you know is dumb, petty, or disproportionate — and you'll do it anyway. 1) What humiliation tests buy the system A) Dominance proof: "If I can make you do something obviously unnecessary, I know you're safe for the serious stuff". B) Sorting mechanism. Humiliation tests are filters: - People who refuse: marked as "difficult", "non-compliant", "not a culture fit". - People who swallow it: marked as "safe", promotable, eligible for sensitive roles. No need for ideology diagnostics; a few small, dumb asks tell the system who will bend when it matters. C) Precedent for escalation. Once you've complied with something you privately saw as bullshit, the system has: - A precedent: "You agreed before; this is just more of the same". - A leverage point: your prior compliance can be used to shame future hesitation. 2) What it does inside your head Humiliation tests weaponize cognitive dissonance: 1. You do the thing (sign, chant, click, recite) because saying no is costly in the moment. 2. You feel the internal conflict: "That was dumb / exaggerated / dishonest". 3. To reduce that tension, your brain updates the story: - "Maybe it’s not that bad". - "Maybe they're right". - "I'm not the kind of person who just submits for no reason, so this must be reasonable". You move from "I complied under pressure" to "I basically agree" to protect your self-image. Each petty concession burns your doubt and rewrites your narrative a bit more in their favor. Humiliation tests are small, symbolic and public. Over time, the people remaining in key positions are those who've repeatedly signaled: - "I will override my own judgment and self-respect to keep my place in the system". That's what the system wanted all along. When something feels petty, compulsory, and performative, assume it's not about the surface issue. Ask: - "What larger narrative am I validating by doing this?" - "What future request does this make harder for me to refuse?" - "If I comply now, what will my next self be forced to defend, to avoid admitting I caved here?" That's the real permission you're being asked to grant.

Defaults decide outcomes. They are soft law. Most people live inside them and call it "choice". At scale, safety/ease beats sovereignty unless the latter is defaulted into UX. Opt-out vs. opt-in can 5–10x adoption with no persuasion. This is how governments and platforms steer behavior at scale. Defaults lower cognitive tax and social risk — so people call them "convenient" while locking into long-term paths (payments, news feeds, storage, wallets). He who sets the defaults: - defines what "normal" looks like, - defines what "consent" is presumed to be, - defines who has to spend effort and social capital to deviate. For most people, "My preference" = "whatever the default made least painful". Defaults are the main interface of coercion that still looks voluntary. Governments and platforms don't need to ban competitors; they just set defaults so that exiting them is slow, confusing, or socially suspicious. If you care about real agency, treat every default as a deliberate bet against you, unless proven otherwise. Assume defaults serve: - the platform's revenue, - the state's control and stability goals, - and only incidentally your convenience. Design your own personal defaults instead of accepting whatever someone selected for you. If you're not actively setting or resisting defaults, you're not "choosing", you're being routed.

In one of Bitcoin Mechanic's videos, he said "Nothing survives the normie, and the normie is coming" Fuck dude, this is so true 😂

What made me sell most of my Bitcoin a few months ago

What made me sell most of my Bitcoin a few months ago

I am not bearish on Bitcoin's fiat-denominated price. I am bearish on Bitcoin's odds of becoming mass MoE, and I am pricing the coordination tax.

My goal with this Substack was to open-source most of my Bitcoin research and with this article, I have achieved my goal.

I rarely get surprised by anything anymore, but a while back when I started researching AI governance, it shocked me how many institutions are actually aware of where the world is moving without divulging much information. 1) How many market participants already know about the AI governance regime (rough estimates): - High-level "AI governance is coming" awareness: ~60–70% of institutions. - Deep understanding (admissibility, provenance, attestation, court-survivable artifacts): <10%. - Positioned in mispriced bottlenecks (T&D, transformers, legal-evidence tech, attestation silicon): ~5%. 2) How coordination happens without a "smoking gun" Standards + perimeters. - Standards (NGOs, fora, regulators) emit the same verbs: attest, revoke, trace, prove, rollback. - Perimeters (banks, clouds, app stores, ISPs, card networks) flip Acceptable Use Policies; law becomes optional. In other words, financial institutions read the standards, and people don't. That's what's reflected in financial markets, not the media screaming "AI bubble" which is a very surface-level take. Just to give you 1 example (of many), look at EU's AI Act (

Shaping Europe’s digital future

AI Act

The AI Act is the first-ever legal framework on AI, which addresses the risks of AI and positions Europe to play a leading role globally.

) . And before you say "it's just the EU". It's not, it's also the US and the entire world. The US governance template (de facto global) is also being rolled out. - The NIST AI Risk-Management-Framework plus the Generative AI profile (NIST-AI-600-1, Jul-2024) is the check-list legal, audit, and vendor teams are implementing (regardless of DC politics). It maps controls for provenance, evaluation, and traceability. So a large share of institutions knows AI governance is coming — you see it in dated laws, Cloud Solution Provider SKUs, silicon roadmaps, enterprise console updates, and financial markets. I have to admit, it is a well-kept secret. While the plebs are busy food fighting, governments are rolling out the next regime. More context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/why-we-arent-in-an-ai-bubble-top

I've been doing some research on the biggest mistakes we Bitcoiners made as a community — and obviously we got very complacent over time. Instead of listening to podcast hopium and alienating people with "have fun staying poor" narratives, we should've focused on game theory and patched up at least some of the holes. It was always inevitable that Bitcoin was going to get attacked, and things like having close to 100% of nodes run on a single implementation was just silly in hindsight. People are doing more harm than good when posting charts of hashrate going vertical without the context that 2 pools (Foundry and Antpool) are close to 50% of hashrate and for more than 98% of cases, pools, not miners decide which transactions get added to the blockchain. You had most of the Bitcoin community cheering price over payment share; we welcomed ETFs as victory. Paper share rose, self-custody fell. The entire community also cheered Square's surveilled "Bitcoin payments" where every payment generates identity-linked transaction data: buyer, location, device, and amount. All transactions flow through Square/Cash App's KYC/AML perimeter, meaning both sides of the payment are verified. That data fuels risk scoring, fraud models, blacklist propagation, and targeted marketing. Exactly this surveillance value is Square's enduring moat, not the 1% fee. We just got too complacent. I'd say the 5 main mistakes we Bitcoiners made are: 1. Letting arbitrary data compete with money on the base layer (witness discount abetted it). For Medium-of-Exchange you need predictable fees; underpriced junk data is a Denial-of-Service subsidy. 2. Treating privacy as an "expert mode". That guarantees surveillance wins by default. Make privacy invisible and automatic. 3. Under-investing in operational safety (backups, recovery, liquidity UX). Normal users pick custodians when scared. 4. Relying on norms over policy. In a low Gross Consent Product world, policy beats culture. If your mempool policies are naïve, adversaries will price you out. 5. Ignoring perimeter levers (app stores, banks, clouds). If you don't plan redundant routes, the other side will plan your failure. The uncomfortable truth is that Bitcoin's defense can't be "hope users pick hard mode". Defaults decide outcomes. If Bitcoin wants to be mass Medium-of-Exchange, privacy, finality, recoverability, and predictability must be invisible and automatic — and the perimeter must be treated as hostile by default. Until then, paper wrappers will dominate, regulators will "clarify", and L1 will be priced as store-of-value with supervised access, not as everyday cash. The good news: all of that is fixable — but only if it's designed, not preached.

The only thing I am bullish on in regards to Bitcoin is its fiat-denominated price (which is a weird thing to say). Old regime: retail perps set price → parabolic tops, −70% to −85% busts, halving-clock "3 years up / 1 year crash". New regime (post-ETF): CME + ETFs + dealer gamma set price → longer, flatter upcycles, faster but shallower draw-downs (−30% to −55%), macro/liquidity > halving, mean reversion > parabolas. We're already ≈31% below the ATH with constant stop-hunts and very little leverage. Instead of the Bitcoin is "arbitrary data storage" movement, I would've liked to see changes that (1) harden fee predictability, (2) make privacy and self-custody defaults, and (3) blunt perimeter levers. In other words, changes that keep Bitcoin useful as money. However, these are exactly the changes that Bitcoin's developers aren't prioritizing. Instead, we're letting arbitrary data compete with money on the base layer. For Medium-of-Exchange you need predictable fees. Underpriced junk data is a Denial-of-Service subsidy. I was excited about these changes that improve Bitcoin as money, but then I started digging into what Bitcoin Core has been up to and at this point, I'm like "Just stop changing things. You're making everything worse." 😂 More context:

How Bitcoin's developers are attacking its Sovereign/Monetary use

Cheaper witness, friendlier data-paths, RBF normalization, relay policies favoring deep pockets, and node-operator liability drift tilt Bitcoin tow...

David Bailey's company $NAKA missed quarterly earnings filing and their losses exceed $80 million. Meanwhile David Bailey's rough comp estimate exceeds $9 million a year 😂 The other execs are also absolutely crushing it. The only ones who aren't crushing it are Nakamoto's shareholders as the stock is down ~99% from the recent top. There is probably a lesson to be learned from this. Try to stay away from obvious scams. Also, David Bailey absolutely knew this was going to happen and continued to promote the stock. Nakamoto's PIPE investors got in at $1.12 with no lockup and bought ~455M shares and then dunked on retail while David Bailey and co promoted the stock on all kinds of Bitcoin podcasts.

1) A while back I wrote how Michael Saylor's role in Bitcoin was to: - normalize paper exposure (MSTR), - push "BTC = Store of Value (not Medium of Exchange)" narratives, - refuse to normalize Proof-of-Reserves that would discipline the entire paper stack If Larry Fink was tasked with this job, he'd probably get a lot more pushback. https://controlplanecapital.com/p/why-microstrategys-best-days-are 2) Jack Dorsey's role seems to be to normalize permissioned, surveilled "Bitcoin payments" with Square. With Square, every Bitcoin payment generates identity-linked transaction data: buyer, location, device, and amount. All transactions flow through Square/Cash App's KYC/AML perimeter, meaning both sides of the payment are verified. That data fuels risk scoring, fraud models, blacklist propagation, and targeted marketing. So the surveillance value, not the 1% fee, becomes Square's enduring moat.

Square’s Bitcoin payments: Supervision, Tax clarity, and Compliance hooks

Square’s Bitcoin payments framework is usable, cheaper, and governable. It delivers the appearance of mass adoption while ensuring supervision, t...

3) I also wrote about how Bitcoin Core's developers have been attacking Bitcoin's sovereign/MoE use for a very long time now. From the outside look in, Bitcoin Core is a well-oiled machine. There's barely any dissent. It seems they all embrace the "Bitcoin is arbitrary data storage" narrative. They are solving the problem no Bitcoiner knew they had: "How to store your pictures on other people's computers".

How Bitcoin's developers are attacking its Sovereign/Monetary use

Cheaper witness, friendlier data-paths, RBF normalization, relay policies favoring deep pockets, and node-operator liability drift tilt Bitcoin tow...

4) 99.9% of Bitcoin influencers seem completely captured or delusional. I tried listening to a bunch of different podcasts recently and 5 minutes in, I end up wondering if I'm taking crazy pills or something. So what's the lesson? The lesson is don't trust, and verify. Do your own research and don't be a sheep. People prioritize their own interests, not yours. Some people are corrupt, most are fallible, and some are both.

I wonder how many Bitcoiners have a good understanding of who holds the actual power and who sets the rules. And this is a topic I'll have to write about but I already alluded to it in (

How Bitcoin's developers are attacking its Sovereign/Monetary use

Cheaper witness, friendlier data-paths, RBF normalization, relay policies favoring deep pockets, and node-operator liability drift tilt Bitcoin tow...

). And namely, governance activations show who sets the rules. Past upgrade processes (e.g., BIP9, BIP8, "Speedy Trial") revealed that miners and coordinated developers can accelerate or block changes faster than ordinary users can veto. So power concentrates among aligned institutional actors. Net effect: - Technical ideals matter less than coordination leverage. - Future upgrades will likely follow similar political dynamics. 1) What actually happens in upgrades: - Rule changes need coordination. To activate, you need miners to mine the new rules, big pools to signal, exchanges/custodians to accept deposits, wallet/infrastructure teams to ship updates, and users to run them. - BIP9/BIP8/“Speedy Trial” are coordination levers. They set thresholds and timers that, in practice, let miners + core devs + major infra decide when something flips on — or stalls. 2) Who really has leverage - Miners/pools: Control signaling and block production. If they don't play ball, activation drags. If they coordinate, it can move very fast. - Core maintainers & lead devs: Control what's merged, what binaries ship, and which activation method/warnings land in the "standard" client most people run. - Exchanges/custodians/Payment-Service-Providers: Control where coins flow. If they choose a side, liquidity follows them. That decides practical reality more than forum votes. - Ordinary users: Matter in aggregate, but only if they can withhold liquidity or hash in a coordinated way — which is rare. 3) Why this concentrates power - Coordinating thousands of small users is hard; coordinating a few dozen institutions is easy. - Activation schemes with time windows and thresholds reward actors who can move in lockstep (pools, large infra, top client maintainers). - "User veto" exists in theory (run your own rules), but without miners and exchanges you're on a minority chain with no liquidity. 4) What this means in practice - Technical purity loses to coordination. The "best" design doesn't win; the most coordinated coalition does. - Messaging is part of the game. Activation method choices ("Speedy Trial", LOT=true/false, flag days) are politics encoded in software defaults. - Future upgrades repeat the pattern. Expect negotiations between dev leads, pools, and big venues; users mostly ratify by upgrading after the fact. 5) Bitcoin's upgrades aren't decided by abstract ideals — they're decided by who can coordinate miners, code, and liquidity fastest. That's why power tends to cluster with aligned institutional actors, and why future changes will follow the same political playbook. States would like to keep their monopoly on money issuance and aren't fond of permissionless money. Bitcoin's survival and adoption, as censorship-resistant money, depend on whether its most committed users can detect, coordinate, and counter inevitable policy, market, and social attacks. This is tough to do if you're oblivious to what's happening. It doesn't help that Bitcoin mining is awfully centralized (

Bitcoin's mining centralization problem (Hashrate ≠ Freedom)

Hashrate ≠ freedom. Templates = freedom. Until miner-templating is common and censorship correlation breaks, rising hashrate is mostly optics.

). The solution of course is a more vigilant community and more decentralization everywhere: - miner-selected templates (DATUM/Stratum V2), - more viable client implementations, - privacy and self-custody defaults and better non-custodial payments UX, - routing around perimeters (App-store independence, Cloud independence, ISP resilience, etc), - routine, verifiable Proof-of-Reserves across custodians (anti-Paperization).

Is Bitcoin sliding into a Bear market: My 12-month predictions https://controlplanecapital.com/p/is-bitcoin-sliding-into-a-bear-market

Started doing more research on how Bitcoin Core's developers have been attacking its sovereign/Medium-of-Exchange use a while back and it's wild. The post became too long for email just from covering: 1. SegWit (BIP141): The “Witness Discount” and Block-Weight Accounting 2. Taproot (BIP340–342): Easier Complex Scripts and Data Embedding 3. Liberalized Data-Carrier Policies (OP_RETURN and “Standardness”) 4. Replace-By-Fee (RBF): From Opt-In to Broad Default 5. Relay and Mempool Settings that favor Large Players 6. Legal-Risk Externalities shifted to Node Operators 7. Increased Block Weight → Centralization Pressure 8. Convenience Defaults: Assumevalid, Pruning, and Checkpoints 9. Deprecation of Non-Standard Scripts 10. Fee-Market “Purism” — No Priority for Payments 11. Lightning Network Bias — L1 as Settlement Only 12. Governance Activations Show Who Sets the Rules 13. Quiet Merchant De-Feature: BIP70 Payment Protocol Deprecation 14. Removal of “Priority by Coin Age” & Free Relay (historical) 15. Dust Limits & MinRelayFee Floors as Gatekeepers 16. Core v30: OP_RETURN/data-carrier expansion (policy) 17. Core v30: RBF ergonomics tilt further to replaceability (wallet/API surface) 18. Core v30: Multiple OP_RETURNs per tx Have written this in as simple as possible terms for non-developers. Will post later when done.

Why Bitcoin is in a Lose-Lose situation with the BIP-444 Soft Fork

Why Bitcoin is in a Lose-Lose situation with the BIP-444 Soft Fork

BIP-444 presents Bitcoin with a coordination dilemma where both branches tilt the network away from sovereign Medium-of-Exchange and toward sanitiz...

Bitcoin Core's attack on Bitcoin's user base is fascinating. As a programmer, one of the first things you'll learn is to create useful abstractions and not leak implementation details onto your user base. This is crucial if most of your user base is non-technical. TL;DR - What happens when implementation details leak to a non-technical crowd When core developers narrate mempool policy, witness discounts, inscription paths, version bits, OP_RETURN limits, and soft-fork mechanics to a mostly non-technical user base, governance "leaks" without ceding control. Users inherit responsibility (anxiety, vigilance costs) but not power (they don't run code audits, write policy clients, or operate pools). In a low Gross Consent Product world, this leak is useful to the Controllers and intermediaries because it: - Expands the social attack surface (narratives, panic, brigading) while concentrating technical leverage (maintainers, pools, relay policy, app-store distribution). - Raises the "cost of being sovereign" (time, knowledge, operational burden), pushing the median user toward paperization (ETFs, custodians, on-ramp wallets). - Creates manufactured "consent cycles" — public comment drama around esoterica (v30 defaults, policy limits) that legitimize changes after the audience tires out. Leaking implementation details to the masses doesn't democratize Bitcoin; it socializes worry and privatizes control. In a low Gross Consent Product regime, that's a feature: it nudges users toward policy-safe defaults while maintaining the narrative of openness. Expect rising paper share, falling realized volatility, steerable settlement via pools/relays, and Medium-of-Exchange throttled in favor of stablecoins/CBDCs. It goes much deeper and I'll cover this in more detail later.

The new "OpenAI is asking the government for a bailout" narrative is hilarious. This of course implies that OpenAI is not the government. Well, OpenAI is actually the government. https://controlplanecapital.com/p/public-facing-elites-using-myth-making