For a long time I avoided writing this post.
When Bitcoin was roaring upward, anyone criticizing it was dismissed as bitter, jealous, or “coping”. When number-go-up becomes the only metric that matters, dissent sounds like heresy. No one wants to hear about first principles while their portfolio is doubling.
Now that Bitcoin is in a bear market, the dynamic flips. Any criticism will be written off as panic, sour grapes, or hindsight rationalization. So be it. This isn’t about price. It’s an autopsy.
Bitcoin didn’t fail. It was repurposed.
Bitcoin, at its inception, was not about getting rich. That statement alone will irritate a large percentage of readers, which tells you how far we’ve drifted. It was about changing the financial structure of the world. It was a noble vision, a very idealistic one, somewhat utopian even. Possibly naïve.
Satoshi Nakamoto did not publish the white paper to invent a casino chip or a speculative asset class. Bitcoin was conceived as a decentralized currency, one that did not require trust in banks, governments, or financial intermediaries. We all repeat "decentralized" ad nauseam, but it's worth thinking about what that actually means.
It was explicitly designed to sit outside the existing power structure.
The goal was independence.
The goal was resilience.
The goal was exit.
It was not “early retirement”.
Then something happened. The first cohort of Bitcoiners got rich. Not comfortable. Not independent. Rich. And just like that, the narrative shifted.
Bitcoin was no longer something you used. It became something you held. Something you hoarded. We even changed the tag line. It was now "a store of wealth". It became something we stared at while refreshing charts, waiting for the next pump, trying to time our next buy or sell to optimize how much money we could make.
This is where the original sin entered:
envy
Not the crude kind. No one calls it envy. We upgrade the vocabulary. We call it aspiration. We call it “life-changing gains”. We call it “financial freedom”.
But the psychological engine is the same. Everyone wanted what the early adopters had. Instead of buying Bitcoin in the hopes of changing the world, we bought it with reassuring cries of "it's still early", hoping to be the next Bitcoin Millionaires.
And once that desire took hold, Bitcoin’s trajectory changed permanently. Because if the goal is wealth extraction, decentralization becomes a liability.
Bitcoin does not rise on ideology alone. It rises when capital flows in. And once the community collectively decided that “number go up” mattered more than independence, the next step was inevitable: invite Wall Street in.
After all, who has more capital than Wall Street?
ETFs. Custodians. Institutional wrappers. Regulatory blessing. All of it marketed as “adoption”.
But it wasn’t adoption. It was assimilation. Think the Borg. Bitcoin wasn’t transforming the system — it was being absorbed by it.
And the most damning part? This was not forced. It was welcomed.
It was celebrated.
We all watched the charts when the first ETF appeared and were completely overjoyed. "This will bring Bitcoin to the masses" is the lie we told each other, as our eyes were plastered to the charts and we drooled while watching the numbers climb. Because what we really meant was: "this will push the price higher."
Because everyone wanted to be rich.
At this point, Bitcoin is no longer meaningfully independent from the financial system it was meant to bypass. It trades in correlation with risk assets. It reacts to Federal Reserve policy. It is held in custodial products that recreate the trust structures it was designed to eliminate.
The rhetoric still invokes freedom, but the mechanics tell a different story. Bitcoin is now financialized.
That doesn’t make it useless. It doesn’t make it worthless. Hell, I'm still heavily invested in it, and will continue to be.
But it does make it something fundamentally different from what it was meant to be. The idealism long ago gave way to greed. Or... let's say capital gravity.
People ask why Satoshi disappeared.
No, it’s not because his name was Epstein. That rumor being pushed by journalists may be the dumbest thing of 2026 so far. So far, mind you. I'm sure Trump is working at the moment on topping it.
His disappearance is often framed as myth-making. Some figures, like Michael Saylor, elevate him into a near-religious figure who vanished so Bitcoin could “win”. I'm still not quite sure what exactly that means or what Saylor is smoking.
But I’ve never found the disappearance mysterious.
If you created something to liberate individuals from centralized power and watched it slowly morph into just another vehicle for wealth concentration — why would you remain involved? Why would you stick around?
The coins attributed to Satoshi that are now worth billions remain untouched. That fact is often treated as trivia. I think it’s the most honest statement in the entire Bitcoin story. I see it as a statement. He didn’t want the money.
That may seem shocking and absolutely ridiculous to most people because to people who want to be rich, it is inconceivable that anyone who not want that. But let me repeat: He didn't want the money. Not everyone measures success in dollars.
He wanted to change the rules. He wanted to change the world.
And once it became clear that the world wanted riches more than freedom, that the very people he was trying to help would immediately give up on the dream as soon as wealth became possible, he walked away.
This is the uncomfortable part.
Bitcoin wasn’t corrupted by outsiders. It was corrupted by its own community: by people who said they believed in decentralization, but believed in personal enrichment more. Wall Street didn’t storm the gates. The gates were opened.
And once that happened, Bitcoin stopped being a rebellion and became a product.
None of this means Bitcoin goes to zero. None of this means another bull run won’t come. There likely will be one. And it will likely exceed prior highs. Price cycles will continue.
But philosophy has already shifted.
Bitcoin today is not an independent currency fighting the system. It is part of the system. A volatile part, yes, but still integrated, still governed by capital flows, still shaped by institutions far larger than any individual holder.
That doesn’t make you foolish for owning it. It doesn’t make you immoral. It just means we should stop pretending.
Bitcoin didn’t fail. We changed the goal. And we shouldn’t be surprised that we arrived somewhere different.
What do you think? Am I being too harsh? Am I nuts? You probably all think I'm nuts. Watching the price of HIVE drop to 7 cents must have gotten to him, eh? @azircon, send me one of the funny videos you've come across in your Japanese language study to cheer me up!
Look, I'm not saying I'm getting out of BTC, ok? If anything, I am buying more while it's low. I kind of think it might go lower, but I'm buying on the way down with the expectation that it will eventually go back up. I've just been disappointed for a long time that the revolution seemed to have quietly fizzled out and disappeared as people decided being rich was more important.
I know I'm not the only one who has started to feel something has been lost. @ericvancewalton has expressed similar feelings, as has @bozz. I'm sure others have thought it as well.
Again, I am remaining here. Just as I remain invested in the US stock market. We have to survive in this modern world, and playing the markets remains one of the best ways to do just that. But I am sad that something has been lost.
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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. |