The most committed users of Bitcoin weren’t the guys who stayed on Core v29. They weren’t the guys sliding into your comments calling you a retard, a mask enjoyer, or a “knotzi.” They weren’t the podcasters with affiliate codes and sponsored ads. They weren’t the devs who “fixed” bugs by updating the documentation. They weren’t the failed exchange managers lobbying miners through back channels. They weren’t the suits, the affinity scammers, the backdoored-wallet shills, the media outlets, or the spooks. The most committed Bitcoiners were the ones who ran an alternative Bitcoin node for the very first time because they smelled the rot. They were the users who started mining for the very first time, committing real money and accepting the loss in sats. They were the guys who spent hundreds of hours educating plebs about what makes Bitcoin valuable in the first place. They were the guys who disregarded their own reputations and risked complete social ostracization because they believed this was the right thing to do. Now some of these guys are forking off to try to salvage what remains of the idea called Bitcoin. I will join them. They will call us shitcoiners. They will call us brainwashed. They will call us every derogatory name they can think of. Soon, they will forget about us. Meanwhile, their Bitcoin holdings will be slowly diluted until fiat starts looking appealing to them again. Maybe then they will understand what gives Bitcoin its value: the people who made it actually decentralised. By then, it may be too late for them to exit the system. It will have become a prison with invisible bars, and the prisoners themselves will be the jailers. We see the bars. We also see a crack in the wall that’s still loosely guarded. Because nobody has seriously thought someone might attempt to use it as an exit. So we’re attempting a prison break while we still can. Not everyone will make it. Maybe none of us will. The odds are stacked against us. But who would have thought in 2009 that Bitcoin had any chance at all? We’re forking off because we see no other path forward for true freedom money. This isn’t virtue signalling. It’s self-defense. There is an opportunity cost to everything. And for us, the opportunity cost of remaining on a captured chain has become too great to pay. This is not an appeal to join us. Nor is it a waving of the white flag. Everyone buys Bitcoin at the price they deserve. We’re buying it at zero.