pull down to refresh
There is no escape for Europe. They're better off being vassalized by DC than by Mecca.
The elites are us. You have to separate out the pre-WWIII legacy-elite from the post-WWIII super-elite. The guy with a million sats in self-custody is many times smarter than the guy with a million dollars in a bank. We have nothing to fear from the likes of Christine Lagarde. She is vastly outgunned. We set the rules now.
If all someone understands is state force, just give them USD. Self-custody BTC is for free-thinkers only. It's okay that they're a minority because over time they set the standard for everyone else.
I'm with you on the core: a man with a million sats he actually controls is in a stronger position than one with a million dollars a bank can freeze. That's real.
Lagarde can't touch your keys, true, but the EU just showed it can criminalize the on-ramps, the exchanges, whole jurisdictions of service providers with a signature. That's them fighting on the terrain they actually control: the borders between your coins and the fiat world.
And I'd resist the "just give the masses USD, self-custody is for the enlightened few" bit. Not on egalitarian grounds, on strategic ones. A Bitcoin standard that only a self-selected minority holds is a Bitcoin standard that's easy to isolate and squeeze. You want the herd on their own keys, because a monetary network is only as unkillable as it is widespread.
We don't set the rules yet. We're building the thing that will. Big difference and worth staying humble about, because the humble ones are the ones still standing when it gets ugly.
It's a self-selected minority by definition. The more you talk to Germans, the more you realize everyone has the government they deserve.
What we need is one herd that holds their keys and then to protect that herd from all the other herds.
A USD standard is the opposite of an escape. OFAC is the biggest kill-switch on the planet. Dollar rails are exactly where a sanction bites hardest, because everything clears through them. You'd be trading a small custodian's off-switch for the largest one that exists.
And "self-custody is for elites" is backwards. Elites are the ones with lawyers, offshore structures, and second passports, they don't need it. The guy with no lawyer is precisely who benefits most from a bearer asset nobody can freeze. Twelve words don't check your net worth.