How Elites Hijacked Bitcoin
From Cypherpunk Dream to Corporate Scheme
Ever since I read “Hijacking Bitcoin”, I have lost my zeal as a Bitcoin evangelist. It has been the biggest reason why I haven’t blogged much lately.
Bitcoin promised us freedom from the evil banking cabal which has ruled over us since the days of Babylon. This is what drew me to this space in the first place.
Yet today I witness the same cabal (Blackrock, Fidelity, etc) shilling Bitcoin through ETFs. Social media is flooded with normies who couldn't care less about self-custody or decentralization—they are in it solely for NGU.
Is this the future Satoshi Nakamoto tirelessly worked towards? Fuck NO!
Libertarians, anarchists, and conspiracy theorists were Bitcoin's early supporters. Now, these voices have been marginalized in mainstream Bitcoin discussions, drowned out by a sea of profit-seekers.
Reading “Hijacking Bitcoin” opened my eyes to how elites captured Bitcoin via Bitcoin Core and their control over social media.
Here’s a timeline of how it happened
2008-2009: Satoshi Launched Bitcoin
In 2008, amidst the chaos of the global financial crisis, Satoshi Nakamoto unleashed Bitcoin. He designed as a decentralized, peer-to-peer system. In January 2009, he mined the Genesis Block.
2010: The 1MB Block Limit—A Band-Aid Solution
Fast forward to 2010. Bitcoin was gaining traction, but with popularity came problems. To fend off spam attacks, Satoshi imposed a 1MB block size limit, a temporary fix to ensure the network's stability.
Who was behind this spam attack?
2011: The CIA Connection and Satoshi's Disappearance
In late April 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto emailed Mike Hearn, stating he had "moved on" and Bitcoin was "in good hands with Gavin Andresen (the lead Bitcoin developer)."
Just four days later Gavin Andresen, announced that he was going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at the CIA headquarters in June.
Months later, during a podcast, Andresen revealed that his last communication with Nakamoto was informing him about the upcoming CIA talk. Andresen speculated that this presentation may have influenced Nakamoto's decision to disappear from the Bitcoin scene.
2011: The Year of Mysterious Departures
Hal Finney was the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto. This occurred on January 12, 2009, just days after the Bitcoin network launched. Many in the Bitcoin community speculated that Finney might have been Satoshi himself.
Here’s where it gets interesting. He was diagnosed with ALS in August 2009, just months after Bitcoin's launch. Then in 2011 around the time ‘Satoshi’ retired, Hal officially retired from PGP Corporation in early 2011 due to his declining health.
What a coincidence!
Apart from Hal Finney and Nick Szabo, Len Sassaman is considered one of the potential candidates for Satoshi. On July 3, 2011 Len Sassaman died. His wife reported that it was a suicide.
The coincidental timing of Hal Finney's retirement, Satoshi's disappearance, and Len Sassaman's death in 2011 is indeed noteworthy. Could it be that CIA had something to do with either of these 2 coincidences? Irrespective of whether CIA had a hand in this, Satoshi's departure left behind a giant loophole which elites used to capture Bitcoin.
The 1MB Loophole: Bitcoin's Trojan Horse
The key is the temporary 1MB block limit Satoshi put on Bitcoin to combat spam. This seemingly minor technical detail ended up becoming Bitcoin's Trojan Horse, opening the door to centralized control.
Think about it: How could a simple size limit lead to the hijacking of a revolutionary technology? Who benefits from restricting Bitcoin's growth? And most importantly, how did the elites exploit this to reshape Bitcoin's future?
I'll leave you to ponder these questions. The answers might surprise you – and they're crucial to understanding Bitcoin's journey from a cypherpunk dream to a tool of the very system it was meant to replace.
I will answer these questions in Part 2 which is coming soon…
Good thoughts. Though, I think Satoshi would be proud to see how far Bitcoin has come. The point if it being decentralized means anyone can join along, and that includes traditional finance. I'm sure he understood that if it got big enough this would be inevitable, and maybe even necessary if we wanted it to become big enough.
The Elites highjacked it by turning a utility token into a damned investment. That put it beyond the affordability of the people it was meant to help.