Had the crypto community, or the bitcoin community - particularly the bitcoin maximalists, actually spent their time arguing for "Here's what we would like out of a monetary system." as compared to "You must adopt our system, which will make me extremely rich, or it's all going to collapse and you're all going to die." which is a summary effectively of what they've said. You know, we might have actually made some progress to say, "Here are the important components of a digital currency and a system that is based on instantaneous settlement, etc. that has the potential to include all of the control features." But if you behave as a bunch of anarcho capitalists and effectively say there's no role for the state in currency provision. There's no role for the state in policy setting. The state is naturally going to create currencies or create tools that fight back against that in their creation process. As a result, the CBDCs that are being proposed have significant control features and significant capability to effectively strip away the privacy of individual transaction histories, individual behaviors, etc. that, candidly, I value very very deeply. - Mike Green, market strategist, on Macro Voices

There is a co-hort of individuals in tradfi who have had very successful careers and see the macro landscape pretty clearly, but completely miss the mark when it comes to bitcoin. Mike Green is one of those individuals. Mike and others like Ben Hunt and Erik Townsend believe that bitcoin is directionally correct in the sense that they recognize it is time for the incumbent monetary infrastructure to be replaced by or upgrading to something capable of being integrated more seamlessly into our increasingly digital world. However, they think bitcoin isn't the answer because... they weren't able to put their input in when it was being designed, and the government wasn't either.

These types view bitcoin as some anarcho capitalist pipe dream that has no shot in succeeding because the government won't allow it to. What they don't realize is their half baked idea that the public and the government should have a collaborative discussion about the design of the digital currency of the future that we all decide to use is the pipe dream. No amount of collaboration with the government and the Federal Reserve would result in a digital currency that respected liberty and kept central planners away from the levers of control. It's very ironic because they believe that bitcoiners are naive to think bitcoin has a snowball's chance in hell at succeeding against the government. The reality is the Mike Greens of the world are naive to believe we are dealing with rational actors who have our best interests at heart. Bitcoin is the only way that we get a monetary system for the digital age that can't be corrupted by central planners.

And another thing the Mike Greens of the world don't understand is that bitcoin has already succeeded. Every ten minutes a new block filled with peer-to-peer transactions that respect the rules et dictated by the full nodes protecting bitcoin's monetary and consensus policy is processed. People the world over are transacting and saving in bitcoin without any permission from the government.

Yes, the governments of the world may have plans to issue their own CBDCs, but they will have to compete with bitcoin. And, yes, governments may try to ban bitcoin but that is impossible. And if your government is trying to ban bitcoin while forcing you into the yoke of a digital slave coin, you shouldn't be blaming bitcoiners for not negotiating with said governments over the design of an acceptable digital currency, you should be questioning whether or not that government deserves your respect and obedience.

The governments and central banks of the world have royally screwed up the global financial system and the fiat currencies that fuel it. Why would we work with them to create the solution to the problem they created? How could we trust them to do the right thing? How could we trust that they wouldn't put in backdoors that give them undue control? The answer to all of the questions above is, you can't. The only way out of the mess these centralized predators have created is a free market solution that completely cuts them out of the decision making process. Well, that's not entirely true. The governments and central banks are free to run their own full nodes to signal what they deem to be the most appropriate consensus rules, but they'll have to make sure their aligned with the rest of the network unless they want to fork off the chain.

And the line of thinking that bitcoiners are somehow holding the world ransom and forcing everyone to adopt bitcoin or else we'll somehow collapse the global monetary order is some truly desperate grasping. Bitcoiners adopt bitcoin because they have determined that it is a better form of money compared to centrally controlled and mismanaged fiat currencies. The collapse of the fiat system is baked into its design. Bitcoin exists as a lifeboat to escape the chaos of that collapse.

Bitcoin is a response to the inability to trust the central predators to properly maintain the monetary system. The sooner the Mike Greens of the world internalize this and ditch their pipe dreams of some sort of collaborative conversation with governments about the correct design for a digital currency the sooner we can begin fixing the problems they created for us.

Final thought...

This rag brought to you from 40,000 feet above the ground as I travel to Miami.