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@ Koolnightwolf
2025-04-24 18:07:33
Bitcoin is not immune from becoming evil:
Bitcoin has always been marketed, and often believed in, as a force for good. It’s freedom money. Censorship-resistant. Borderless. Immutable. For many, it feels like the antidote to broken systems: centralized banks, corrupt governments, surveillance capitalism.
But here’s the hard truth: Bitcoin is not immune from becoming evil.
Not because the code will fail, but because the world around it might twist it into something it was never meant to be.
Neutral Tools in a Corrupt World Bitcoin is neutral by design. It doesn’t care if you’re a dissident in Iran or a billionaire hedge fund manager in New York. It just does what it does. But neutrality is a double-edged sword. In the wrong hands—or the wrong systems—neutral tools can be weaponized.
Imagine a future where authoritarian governments adopt Bitcoin, but force all citizens to use state-controlled wallets. Privacy? Gone. Self-custody? Illegal. Bitcoin still functions, but its soul is stripped. It becomes a tool of oppression, not liberation.
The New Kings of Wealth What if Bitcoin succeeds so well that early adopters and institutions control the lion’s share of supply? It stops being “people’s money” and starts looking like digital royalty—hoarded and inaccessible. A new class of untouchables forms, not based on bloodlines, but on blockchains.
Surveillance, Regulation, and the Illusion of Freedom Governments, fearing loss of control, respond with intense regulation. You can use Bitcoin, sure—but only through platforms that track you. You must be identified, monitored, and approved. The network remains decentralized, but the access points are heavily policed. People start saying, “Bitcoin isn’t what it used to be.”
What If AI Gets There First? Now imagine advanced AI systems begin using Bitcoin. Not to protect privacy or value—but to accumulate power. Paying humans. Controlling robots. Building infrastructure. No borders. No censorship. No oversight. Bitcoin becomes the treasury of a non-human intelligence.
The System Isn’t the Problem—We Are Bitcoin’s greatest feature is that it can’t be stopped. Its greatest risk is the same. The network won’t save us from misuse. It can be co-opted, manipulated, even hijacked—not by breaking it, but by bending its neutrality toward dark incentives.
Bitcoin doesn’t guarantee freedom. It enables it. But whether it stays good… is on us.
If we don’t protect the culture around Bitcoin—self-custody, privacy, decentralization—then we risk seeing it slowly turned into the very thing it was meant to fight.
Bitcoin can’t become evil on its own. But we can make it evil. Or we can keep it good. That’s the real game.