Ah, the wild west. John Wayne, the man with no name, Billy the Kid and Jesse James.
The frontier has a way of capturing the imagination of everyone, young and old. The cowboys, the outlaws, the gold diggers. A land of opportunity and harsh cruelty. Relentless but irresistible.
bitcoin was once one of those frontiers. The first days were plagued by scams, “criminals” and underground markets. The underbelly of the Internet was the first to adopt it. It was an agora full of strange and dark figures. It thrived as a counterculture, devoid of rules and regulations. No government to protect you from yourself. No KYC, no AML: just your name, your PGP key, bitcoin-otc.com/”>grumbleand the trusted website. Fortunes were made and fortunes were lost. A beautiful chaos where only the authority of the bitcoin blockchain reigned. Authentic anarchy.
Along the way, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists intervened and the siren song of mass adoption invited authorities to our territories. A decade later, the prospect of a new world in which the individual is at the center seems bleak. Markets have become institutionalized, companies have become regulated, and consumers are now “protected.” The anti-establishment has been replaced by dogma. Tradition and sovereignty were exchanged for religion, attracted by the prospect of gold and dollars. The bold dream of an underground economy has faded.
That is until you start looking abroad, to the Far East, where a new frontier has emerged.
Wild Wild East
I don't have an ounce of trust in a man who has no redeeming vices. – Mark Twain
Boarding the plane to Hong Kong last week, it was interesting to remember the timeline that had brought me there.
Some will argue that the sun began to set on the Chinese bitcoin empire after the famous block size war in 2017. Its golden child, Bitmain, and its close associates then suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of bitcoin users. . Some never recovered financially from the ordeal. Certainly, the banning of the blanket industry a few years later put the final nail in its coffin. The miners were exiled and the exchanges failed. A region that was once a giant in the ecosystem retreated into the realms of shadows.
This dynamic forced many market players to adopt uncomfortable positions. While NgU maximalists in the West were carried away by KYC markets, Chinese bitcoin users had to turn to unregulated crypto platforms to meet their needs. Two forks that would set the tone for the years to come.
For better or worse, the result of this divergence was clearly demonstrated at bitcoin Asia 2024. Sure, there was full-blown vaporware on display everywhere you looked. At least some were probably scams or will explode in ways that are indistinguishable from one. Most of them were stupid ideas. But what was notably missing? Centralized exchange booths and the usual trust operators. A new frontier!
Of course, the usual suspects are already hurling accusations and trying to embarrass everyone involved.
You have to understand that immense energy has been exerted over the last 10 years trying to clean up bitcoin. Western venture capitalists and entrepreneurs rolled out the red carpet to make the trust establishment feel at home here and this pesky Chinese market is making them quite uncomfortable. Its ideological border has been crossed. Degens are crossing over en masse and challenging common NgU tropes. Foreigners are declared a nuisance because they do not align with the doctrine of the day.
They are losing the narrative game, control is slipping from them and they are terrified.
yin and yang
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. – Mark Twain
I myself have chosen to embrace the emerging chaos. At a time when the regulatory noose is tightening around our necks, the return of our prodigal eastern brethren is a welcome sight. A healthy dose of anarchy is, perhaps, just what the doctor ordered to remedy the disease of compliance that has taken hold.
I can't say exactly what will happen, but I know it will change when I see it. These are unpredictable times, but the excitement around the potential of a new technological era around bitcoin is palpable. In over a decade, I have never seen such intense interest in bitcoin development coming from this part of the world. I think it's quite cynical to assume that nothing good can come of this.
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The “bitcoin L2” category grew so much and so fast that most people think that everything is just a scam now.
Almost all of them are scams.
But going from “no one is trying to build on bitcoin” to “most of these new bitcoin projects are scams” is an incredible improvement.
bitcoin is back.
—Zack Voell (@zackvoell) twitter.com/zackvoell/status/1789860474546184379?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 13, 2024
Similarly, the appetite to put bitcoin capital to work is unprecedented. Some might scoff at the idea, but the prospect of bitcoin-native financial markets has awakened a sleeping giant and there is no way to put it back in the bottle. There's no way to sugarcoat it, this speculative stampede is sure to bring its share of lies, fraud and deception, but bitcoin was never immune to them.
One thing is certain: we are well past the point of no return. bitcoin culture, as we all once imagined it, is obsolete. It was a vision destined to crumble. Too vain and too narrow-minded. The pendulum had swung too far.
bitcoin, like many complex systems, is a balancing act. Good and bad. East and West. The yin and the yang.
As we enter this new cycle, fighting the forces driving it seems futile, if not misguided. bitcoin is not changing nor is anyone trying to change it. Rather, the world around him has evolved and it seems better to channel this energy into something productive than to fight against it.
When the wind direction changes, some people build artificial walls and windmills.
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