Every altcoin is doomed to fail, and the BLAKE2b Bitcoin fork will be no different. Even if a new coin is founded on high ideals (and Luke Dashjr's BLAKE2b coin seems to be) those ideals are always trumped by human incentives.
People act to improve their situation. When a new currency launches into a world that already knows what real money looks like, almost nobody treats the new tokens as something to hold and use long-term. Instead, they treat them as something to extract value from. That simple fact of human action has killed every engineered alternative throughout history, and it is killing them still.
This is not about code quality, hash functions, or regulation. It's about praxeology, the study of purposeful human action. Ludwig von Mises put it cleanly: action is "will put into operation and transformed into an agency." It is the conscious choice of means to reach preferred ends under scarcity. Murray Rothbard added that we start from the undeniable fact that people have goals and select means to attain them. When those means include a newly created token that everyone already understands is softer than the hardest money available, the rational action is to dump it.
The Kirtland Safety Society
I was raised Mormon/LDS (though I'm not one anymore), so I grew up hearing about the Kirtland Safety Society. In 1836–1837, the early Latter-day Saint community in Kirtland, Ohio, faced heavy debts. Church leaders organized the Kirtland Safety Society as a way to help pay those debts and give locals (LDS or not) an alternative money they could opt into. They sold stock, printed notes, and put them into circulation as local currency. After the Ohio legislature denied them a bank charter, they reorganized it as an "anti-banking" company and kept issuing paper notes.
But the surrounding economy primarily valued gold and silver. Merchants, traders, and other participants intuitively understood the difference between hard money and paper claims on land and goodwill. Many accepted the notes at deep discounts or carried them straight back to the counter to demand hard money like gold and silver. Opponents accumulated notes and presented them in volume. Speculators and insiders moved assets. The Panic of 1837 tightened conditions further. Reserves drained, confidence collapsed, and by the summer of 1837 the notes were effectively worthless and the institution shut down.
A conspiracy was unnecessary. People simply acted on the knowledge available to them. A known, softer money, launched upon a population that already understands the principles of hard money, gets spent, discounted, and abandoned. The same pattern appears every time.
Bitcoin's Unrepeatable Start
Money takes root when it emerges from something people already trade and value, not when it is announced fully formed. Bitcoin satisfied that condition through what many call its "immaculate conception." The protocol appeared in 2009 with no pre-mine announcement to a retail audience, no marketing campaign, no central treasury, and almost no one treating the coins as valuable money for about the first year-and-a-half of its existence. Early participants mostly mined them by expending real electricity and hardware, or received tiny amounts in low-stakes experiments. Value accrued slowly among a small group of hobbyists for years before broader awareness arrived.
By the time the wider public finally noticed Bitcoin, the 21-million hard cap was already defended by accumulated proof-of-work and social consensus around its immutability. Switching costs and network effects had begun to compound. That sequence cannot be recreated on purpose. The quiet, leaderless bootstrap is a singular historical event.
Why Every Fork and Altcoin Can Only Fail
Once people understand the game, new tokens launch into a market full of actors who know exactly how to play it. In 2017, Bitcoin Cash handed existing holders an equal number of new coins, which most people sold for real Bitcoin. The same thing happened with Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Gold, and the long list of lesser forks. Liquidity, mining power, development talent, and brand recognition stayed with the original chain. The forks became thinly traded assets used mainly for speculation and exit liquidity.
Altcoins marketed as "the next Bitcoin" follow the same script. Founders and early investors receive allocations. Marketing creates temporary demand. Rational holders and traders sell the new tokens for the hardest, most liquid asset available: Bitcoin. The project becomes an unintended capital funnel driving value back into BTC. Creators spread hype, early buyers try to flip it, and smart money uses the token as exit liquidity. The incentives guarantee the outcome.
The BLAKE2b fork is the latest example playing out right now. After an earlier minority effort around BIP-110 stalled, supporters activated a hard fork that permanently changed proof-of-work from SHA-256d to BLAKE2b and imposed temporary tighter limits on arbitrary data. Existing holders receive the new coins on the minority chain. Because market participants are fully aware of the split, most do not adopt the new chain as money. They treat the coins as a free bonus to sell for more real Bitcoin. Hashrate, exchange support, liquidity, and cultural recognition remain overwhelmingly with the original chain. The fork continues as a small, separate network, but the economic majority ignores it. The incentive structure has not changed.
The Inescapable End
Mises observed that human action is always the attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one. When two monies exist side by side and one is clearly harder, scarcer, more liquid, and more trusted, the rational action is to move toward the harder one. Rothbard emphasized that action involves economizing means according to the actor's value scale. A newly issued or newly forked token ranks lower on almost everyone's scale than Bitcoin once both are known and tradable.
This creates a permanent trap for alternatives. Any deliberate launch or hard fork arrives with public knowledge of its rules, its distribution, and its relative softness. Participants therefore use it to extract value rather than to build a competing monetary network. Network effects never form around long-term holding because the creation process itself demonstrated that the rules can be changed and that free coins are available for the taking.
Bitcoin avoids the trap because its early history did not hand the world a known, engineered soft alternative. The incentives of miners (irreversible capital in specialized hardware), long-term holders, and node operators all align around preserving the existing scarcity and rules. Changing those rules or spinning up a competing chain requires overcoming an enormous coordination problem against the established Schelling point. As we've seen throughout Bitcoin's history, that reality has never changed.
Human nature has always been this way, and in all likelihood it always will be. Whether the instrument is paper notes backed by Kirtland land claims or a chain split with a different proof-of-work algorithm, people who understand the difference between hard and soft money will dump the softer one for the harder one. No team of developers, no charismatic founder, and no technical improvement can recreate the quiet conditions that allowed Bitcoin to bootstrap. In an open market where people are free to choose, they keep choosing the original.
That's why there will never be a "next Bitcoin," and why Luke's fork will never be Bitcoin. There is only BITCOIN (BTC), and everything else that gets used as exit liquidity on the way back to it.
My answer to today's poll on
@Satsman.
Bitcoin is money. It's meant to be earned, spent, and circulated.
You're free to lend it out for fake money that you can spend, but I choose to spend the real money wherever I can.
Sign up here to answer this poll:
Satsman
Satsman — Gamified Bitcoin Education and Daily Learning
Satsman is a gamified Bitcoin education platform based in Cyprus, EU, with daily missions, structured learning and promotional satoshi rewards.
Every Bitcoiner needs to listen to this audiobook, "From Poverty to Power", by James Allen, published in 1901.
Seriously.
If anyone is hiring, or know anyone else who is hiring, I could really use the opportunity for work.
Seriously.
I know something good will come my way, so I'm just putting this here in case that good thing comes through this.
A little about me:
- Many years of experience in customer service & community management
- Bitcoiner since 2015
- Bitcoin educator since 2018
- Bitcoin meetup organizer since 2021
- Worked for Bitcoin businesses since 2022
-Building a bitcoin circular economy since 2025
If you want to fix Bitcoin, or fix the culture in Bitcoin, without first fixing yourself, you're going to have a bad time.
Here's a great place to start:
"The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom," by Don Miguel Ruiz.
Great job, humanity.
We had 1 chance—just 1—to make decentralized energy money, and we blew it.
Our choices are: try to make a large, once-decentralized system decentralized again, or try to make a small, never-decentralized system decentralized.
My hopes aren't high for either.
Because people are people, getting something free of centralized control is extremely difficult, and maybe even impossible.
And because people are people, the moment a new crypto or Bitcoin fork appears, people jump on it and take control of it faster than you can say "shitcoin".
In 2009, Bitcoin was the only possible exception to this, since it was largely unheard of, Satoshi’s identity was unknown, and he later disappeared, never using his coins.
It's impossible to replicate that situation today. Now the cat is out of the bag, and the world is watching.
That's the real reason why even the best-intentioned altcoins and Bitcoin forks are guaranteed to fail: human nature gets in the way.
Bitcoin was able to fly under human nature's radar for a few years, but eventually even Bitcoin was captured.
What hope would a Bitcoin fork have?
Don't get me wrong: I was for BIP110, and I really, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 wish that "firing the miners" and simply switching to a new hashing algorithm could work.
If it somehow does, then I will literally cry tears of joy. I mean, this is my descendants' futures we're talking about!
The alternative to hard forking is to stay on "legacy" Bitcoin, work to make its mining decentralized again, and educate the shitcoiners using it about sound money and its importance.
It's the opposite of a quick fix, but at least its likelihood of success is slightly above 0%.
"But it's not about likelihoods," you might say, "it's about doing what's right."
I get that, and I agree. That's why I ran BIP110.
But IMO, fighting for decentralization on a large chain or on a small chain are equally good, so I'm left with considering likelihoods of success.
I genuinely hope and pray that Luke and those following him will manage to protect their small network from those who would take advantage of it, while also protecting it from their own natures and incentives.
But if they can, it would be the first time for that to happen ... ever.
I was wrong about the miners' incentives when it came to flipping the bit or not, so maybe I'm wrong again.
God, please prove me wrong. 🙏
In the meantime, I'll keep doing what I can to make things better, where there seems to still be even the slightest chance of success.
I'm going to turn a lot of new friends into enemies with this post, but here goes...
I was for #BIP110, and I still think it would've been best for Bitcoin. But it didn't get the hashrate it needed, so it's over.
And I will not be running or using the BLAKE2b Bitcoin.
As I see it, the are 2 types of Bitcoiners:
Type 1: Those who define Bitcoin according to a set of ideals
Type 2: Those who define Bitcoin according to market dynamics
I've long been a Type 1, and it seems to me that this dichotomy was the real cause of the divide in Bitcoin.
To the credit of other Type 1s, Satoshi seemed to be one. Granted, there wasn't a market back then, but he had ideals and embedded them in code.
To the credit of Type 2s, what is Bitcoin if it's not run by a free market? It can't be be one man's vision anymore, nor should it be.
We've seen the darker side of Type 1s before, though, with Roger Ver and others, and are seeing it again now. Such people are principled, honest, and genuinely want what they think is best for Bitcoin and humanity, even if it's not what other Bitcoiners want.
A major problem with Type 1 is that no two Type 1 Bitcoiners have the same ideals of what or how Bitcoin should be. Given enough time, if they refuse to change their views, there would be as many Bitcoin forks as there are Type 1 Bitcoiners!
We've also seen a darker side to Type 2s, with Core devs & others. Such people love freedom, want to try new experiments on Bitcoin, and will go along with whatever the market says, even if it's objectively bad for Bitcoin itself.
Given enough time, Type 2 Bitcoiners would allow Bitcoin to gradually turn into a new form of fiat. The masses that make up the market can be easily swayed with propaganda, so it's a mistake to think this can never happen.
How do we reconcile these two types?
If you stood alone in the knowledge and conviction of how Bitcoin ought to be, would it be right to fork off by yourself?
If the market wanted something obviously bad for Bitcoin, should you just shrug your shoulders and accept it?
And then there's the issue of capture. If devs, miners, and prominent influencers seem compromised to you, and to be working against Bitcoin's interests (and in this case, there's a lot of evidence to support that), then what should be done?
While I definitely see a lot of corruption and collusion in Bitcoin, I've come to realize that those are part of Bitcoin's market forces, as much as nodes, miners, traders, devs, and businesses in this space.
"All is fair in love and war," and nowhere is that more true than in Bitcoin.
So back to the issue of BIP110's failure and the hard fork as a response, I empathize with BIP110ers' Type 1 attitude of stubborn adherence to basic principles, but I also see the Type 2 points that anti-BIP110ers make about the market.
(Side note: I'm 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 an INFP. 😆)
Did BIP110 have at least as much node support, percentage-wise, as BIP148? Yes.
Were there a lot of Sybil nodes on both sides? Yes, but demonstrably much more on the Core side.
Did the miners collude against the nodes? Perhaps. It depends on what really happened with BIP148.
If the miners capitulated in 2017 because a minority of nodes threatening a UASF was enough to scare them into activating SegWit (which is what I thought I witnessed back then), then the only possibility with BIP110 is that they colluded against the nodes.
But if miners had another reason to activate SegWit, then maybe BIP110 failed simply because it didn't have enough node support, and SegWit was only activated because the miners wanted it, and the UASF runners (like myself) wrongly took credit for scaring the miners into compliance.
If that's true, then it's possible the largest mining pools have been compromised since even before 2017, and they just happened to align with the minority of node runners who were threatening a UASF.
Or they weren't compromised then and aren't now, but I find that hard to believe.
So, as a Type 1 who is sympathetic to Type 2s, I'm wondering: with colluding miners, complacent node runners, corrupted Core devs, a zealous Type 1 dev (Luke) leading the charge away from Core, a recently failed soft fork, and an upcoming hard fork POW change, what's to be done?
Hard forking won't solve anything. At best, it'll only delay the inevitable collusion/corruption that'll spring up on its network (which, being smaller, will happen sooner rather than later).
At some point, we have to stop, turn around, and fight the creeping rot head-on.
It's also important to slow down and remember what brought us to this point:
I don't want trash on my node, and spammers have no right to force me to store their junk. Simply not running a node isn't an option, since I use it for payments, and it helps decentralize Bitcoin.
I recently learned about Monetary Nodes, created by @MarketAnarchy21, which (to my limited and non-technical understanding) solves 𝘢𝘭𝘭 the problems with running a node, without needing any fork.
Where was this for the last several months? 😅
MonetaryNode.org
If I understand it correctly, running a Monetary Node would still allow others to do shitcoins on Bitcoin, but I wouldn't have to store any of it, and I'd still be able to run a full validating node.
If that's the case, then that's the technical side of the solution we need!
The other side of the solution is social/cultural. If Type 1 Bitcoiners keep doubling down on what they honestly believe Bitcoin should be, then get ready to see a lot more hard forks in the future, taking some of the best people with them, and ultimately failing each time.
If Type 2 Bitcoiners keep allowing the market to tell them what Bitcoin is, then get ready to see a lot more subtle changes that will ultimately destroy Bitcoin and make it fail in its purpose.
And if both Types keep this up, get ready to be divided and conquered much sooner than later.
So the solution I see is to first find out what Type of Bitcoiner you are, and then do all you can to see the merits of the other Type.
Bitcoin is not just ideal money, and it's not just whatever the market says it is.
𝗜𝘁 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵, 𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹.
This isn't a call to stop fighting and just "get along". It's a call to hash out our differences 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦, using tweets, videos, articles, and all communication methods imaginable, so we 𝘸𝘰𝘯'𝘵 resort to hard forks from Type 1s or market-driven aimlessness from Type 2s.
Getting Bitcoin back on the right track is not a sprint, like a hard fork, but a marathon.
The way I see it, the only way forward is a steep and arduous climb, as we fight against fiat mindedness one interaction at a time.
Anything else will ultimately fail.
Thanks for reading.
280
This battle, between the plebs and the state's infiltration of Bitcoin, is a microcosm of the larger war between Bitcoin and the fiat system.
However this battle goes, I expect it to be a smaller version of how the larger war will go.
"BIP110ers only have a few days to get the 55% miner support they need."
...siiigh...
No, that's not how any of this works.
We only have a few days until we start enforcing BIP110, whether miners like it or not.
Miners only have a few days before we start rejecting their blocks.
Today my wife and I celebrated our 20th anniversary. The last 2 decades have gone by so fast!
But still:
Today's Fact of the Day on
@Satsman: "MicroStrategy (now Strategy) holds over 500,000 Bitcoin ..."
And my answer to the Daily Poll:
Yes, "Self-custody matters".
Today's Fact of the Day on
@Satsman just casually gave free advertising for
@strike on a platform used by 31k+ Bitcoin learners.
@jack mallers, Strike may want to consider getting a week of more ad space here: satsman.com/corporate-sponsors
Just a suggestion. 😉
There seem to be 2 kinds of people who love freedom:
- Those who also accept accountability
- Those who try to reject accountability
This was always the difference with pre-2023 Bitcoiners and shitcoiners. It's the difference with the pro-#BIP110 monetary maxis and Coretards now.
Satoshi designed Bitcoin to be digital money that's inextricably linked to (and dependant on) reality. He understood that freedom without accountability isn't really freedom at all.
Vitalik created Ethereum because he wanted a system where he set ALL the rules, reality be damned.
Those with high time preference believe that Vitalik's version of "freedom", free from all accountability or connection to reality, is real freedom. After all, there's no one to stop you. You can do literally whatever you want. You are a god of your own little virtual universe.
But those with low time preference know that's a lie. They know that no one can escape accountability, and that's a feature, not a bug. They humbly remember that we live in a bigger universe, that accountability is the key to freedom, and that we ignore it at our own peril.
So now we have Vitalik-like, high time preference, (m)ETH heads, who call themselves "BiTc0iN MaXiS", screeching about "cEnSoRsHiP" when an extremely conservative soft fork (BIP-110) is about to make it harder for them to rule their little universes without accountability.
These useful idiots dump gigabytes of spam on your node, your property, where you're forced to store it forever without getting a sat for it. And if you shut it down, the network is centralized a little more.
But they don't care about that; they only care about getting their way.
"Run a pruned node"
"Your node doesn't matter"
"Just don't relay our spam"
"Taking Bitcoin back to how it was for 14 years is censorship!"
"You must hate freedom if you want Bitcoin to just be freedom money again."
They say they love freedom, when they really just hate reality.
They'd probably shake their fist at God for creating gravity while they fall from a cliff they just stepped away from.
They undoubtedly get SO frustrated when they can NEVER force 2+2 to equal 5.
The universe must hate freedom! It must be pro-censorship!
It's all so tiring. 🙄
But ultimately, such people don't matter. From Michael Saylor to that troll with 9 followers and a monkey jpeg avatar who just called you a retard, they're all the same. They've each chosen to touch the stove of accountability over and over again, rather than just humbly learn.
Bitcoin will continue to move forward and prove all the Peter Schiffs and the Elizabeth Warrens and the Dan Peñas all wrong.
And it will similarly prove all the Vitaliks, and the Andy Backs, and the Portland HODLs all wrong, too.
They can either get over themselves & profit, or... not.
Bitcoin is money.
Money is the foundation of civilization.
Fix the money, fix the world.
But burden the money, centralize control over it by discouraging the running of nodes, and dilute its functionality with other "use cases", and you break the money.
... and therefore the world.
Today's Fact of the Day and Orange Pill Poll on
@Satsman:
I gave my best answer for the Orange Pill Poll, but the *actual* objectively correct answer would be:
"The number of Satsman Soldiers." 😉
Here's the current number:
I stacked 21 sats from answering each of those questions, along with more sats from the Sats Price Discovery, and the SatsCypher and SatsStack games!
Learn Bitcoin and stack sats every day by signing up here:
Satsman
Satsman — Gamified Bitcoin Education and Daily Learning
Satsman is a gamified Bitcoin education platform based in Cyprus, EU, with daily missions, structured learning and promotional satoshi rewards.
Today's Fact of the Day and Orange Pill Poll on
@Satsman:
Nodes enforce Bitcoin's supply schedule, but also all other rules in Bitcoin's protocol. If you run a node, YOU are in charge of Bitcoin, and miners, developers, and exchanges work for YOU, full stop.
If you're not running your own node, then you're trusting a stranger's node to tell you what Bitcoin is and isn't.
I stacked 21 sats from answering each of those questions, along with more sats from the Sats Price Discovery, and the SatsCypher and SatsStack games!
Learn Bitcoin and stack sats every day by signing up here:
Satsman
Satsman — Gamified Bitcoin Education and Daily Learning
Satsman is a gamified Bitcoin education platform based in Cyprus, EU, with daily missions, structured learning and promotional satoshi rewards.
Today's Fact of the Day and Orange Pill Poll on
@Satsman:
I stacked 21 sats from answering each of these, along with more sats from the Sats Price Discovery, and the SatsCypher and SatsStack games!
Learn Bitcoin and stack sats every day by signing up here:
Satsman
Satsman — Gamified Bitcoin Education and Daily Learning
Satsman is a gamified Bitcoin education platform based in Cyprus, EU, with daily missions, structured learning and promotional satoshi rewards.
Today's Fact of the Day and Orange Pill Poll on
@Satsman:
The miners' economic incentives make it so they work for the node runners, not the other way around. This is why the only way for #BIP110 to fail would be for the miners to somehow ignore those incentives. It's not impossible, but it's incredibly improbable.
I stacked 21 sats from answering each of these, along with more sats from the Sats Price Discovery, and the SatsCypher and SatsStack games!
Learn Bitcoin and stack sats every day by signing up here:
Satsman
Satsman — Gamified Bitcoin Education and Daily Learning
Satsman is a gamified Bitcoin education platform based in Cyprus, EU, with daily missions, structured learning and promotional satoshi rewards.
Stack sats & share Satsman with precoiners to help them learn about Bitcoin while they stack their first sats.
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