Ah, the Wild West. John Wayne, The Man with No Name, Billy the Kid, Jesse James.
Frontiers has a way of capturing the imaginations of young and old. Cowboys, outlaws, and gold prospectors. A land of opportunity and harsh cruelty. It’s merciless, but I can’t resist it.
Bitcoin was once such a frontier. The early days were rife with fraud, “criminals” and underground markets. The internet underbelly was the first to embrace it. It was an agora filled with strange and unknown characters. It flourished as a counterculture where there were no rules or regulations. There is no government to protect you from yourself. No KYC or AML required – just your name, PGP key, gravel, and Web-Of-Trust. Fortunes were made and fortunes were lost. A beautiful chaos where only the authority of the Bitcoin blockchain reigns at the top. It’s truly anarchy.
Along the way, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists stepped in, and the siren song of mass adoption beckoned the legal community into our territory. Fast forward ten years and the prospects for a new world where the individual is at the center look bleak. Markets are institutionalized, businesses are regulated, and consumers are now “protected.” Dissent has been replaced by dogma. Tradition and sovereignty were traded for religion, seduced by the promise of gold and dollars. The bold dream of an underground economy has disappeared.
That is, until they began to look overseas to the Far East, where a new frontier had emerged.
wild wild east
I have not the slightest confidence in a man who has no irredeemable petty vices. – Mark Twain
As I boarded a plane to Hong Kong last week, it was interesting to remember the timeline that got me there.
Some would argue that after the famous block size wars of 2017, the sun began to set on China’s Bitcoin empire. That golden child, Bitmain, and his inner circle then suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Bitcoin users. Some people have not been able to recover financially from this ordeal. surely, ban on blanket industry A few years later, I put the final nail in the coffin. Miners were expelled and exchanges were closed. Regions that were once giants in the ecosystem have retreated into the shadow realm.
These dynamics have put many market players in an awkward position. While NgU maximalists in the West were steered towards the KYC market, Chinese Bitcoin users had to turn to unregulated crypto platforms to meet their needs. His two forks that will set the tone for years to come.
For better or worse, the consequences of this divergence were clearly demonstrated at Bitcoin Asia 2024. Indeed, there was full vaporware on display everywhere you went. At least some of them are probably scams, or will go viral to the point where they are indistinguishable from scams. Most were stupid ideas. But what was noticeably missing? Centralized exchange booths and regular fiat operators. A new frontier!
Of course, the usual suspects are already trying to throw blame and shame everyone involved.
You have to understand that a huge amount of energy has been spent cleaning up Bitcoin over the past decade. Venture capitalists and Western entrepreneurs have rolled out the red carpet to make legal companies feel at home here, but the cumbersome Chinese market is making them rather uncomfortable. Their ideological boundaries have been breached. Degen crosses in unison, challenging common his NgU tropes. Foreigners are declared nuisances because they do not comply with statutory principles.
They are losing the story game, feeling out of control and scared.
Yin and Yang
What is the strictest law of our existence? Growth. – Mark Twain
For myself, I have chosen to embrace the new chaos. At a time when the noose of regulation is tightening around our necks, the return of the prodigal brethren of the East is a welcome return. Perhaps a moderate amount of anarchy is just what the doctor ordered to cure rampant compliance disease.
I can’t say exactly what will happen, but I will know the change when I see it. Although these are unpredictable times, the excitement about the possibilities of a new technology era centered around Bitcoin is palpable. I have not seen such strong interest in Bitcoin development from this part of the world in over a decade. I think it’s pretty cynical to assume that nothing good can come from that.
The “Bitcoin L2” category has grown so quickly that most people now think it’s all just a scam.
Almost all of them are scams.
But going from “no one is trying to build on top of Bitcoin” to “most of these new Bitcoin projects are scams” is an incredible progression.
Bitcoin is back.
— Zach Voell (@zackvoell) May 13, 2024
Likewise, the appetite for leveraging Bitcoin capital is unprecedented. While some may scoff at this concept, the Bitcoin native’s financial market outlook has awakened a sleeping giant, and there is no putting him back in the bottle. Beyond the surface, this speculative rush is bound to involve lies, fraud, and deception, but Bitcoin was by no means immune to them.
One thing is certain: we are far beyond the point of no return. Bitcoin culture as we once imagined it is outdated. It was a vision destined to crumble. It’s too empty and too narrow. The pendulum swung too far.
Like many complex systems, Bitcoin needs to be balanced. For better or for worse. East and West. Yin and Yang.
As we enter this new cycle, going against the forces driving it seems futile, if not misguided. Bitcoin hasn’t changed and no one is trying to change it. On the contrary, the world around us is evolving, and rather than fighting this energy, it seems wiser to channel this energy into something productive.
When traveling on wind, manned windshield, manned windshield
