As we round the corner into 2024, a year that could be huge for bitcoin in many ways, I think it is important to remember that banks are not our friends. Traditional finance are not our friends. The governments of the world especially are not our friends. Bitcoin is an entire separate thing that transcends human control. Humans like to imagine that they have control over things that they actually do not. Insane people have this trait, and it is insane people that tend to aspire to positions of power. This is not coincidence.

There are businesses that seek to form unholy pacts with these institutions in the lower domain fiat world. Traditional banking is seen by some to be a required conjunction with bitcoin. I would like to reaffirm the fact that this is a misguided notion. Bitcoin cannot coexist with traditional institutions. We see some are trying, but some are also laying down completely ignorant and insane edicts such as nO mIxInG sErViCeS. Let's be clear, to them a mixing service is any transactions with more than 2 inputs and 2 outputs. They have no idea what they are talking about. Yet, we see "bitcoin companies" bending the knee at every turn rather than doing what they should do and telling these banks to go fuck themselves.

We must push back. We must innovate PAST the traditional system. We must OPT OUT and build what bitcoin was always meant to be. I know some say that the cypherpunk era of bitcoin ended when bitcoin started showing up on mainstream media, but I disagree. Bitcoin needs cypherpunks more than ever, and those who consider themselves bitcoiners need to really understand how early this game is. If you need a reminder, privacy is the right to CHOOSE what information you disclose. This right is nonnegotiable and worth disobeying laws for. Do not give an inch.

What's the solution? Well, we are still early. I strongly encourage people to use no-kyc methods to accumulate bitcoin. Mine it if you can, go to meetups and buy with cash, or use open source tools such as robosats (which can be self hosted!). Further, use collaborative transactions at every possible opportunity. If you run a btcpayserver, you can turn payjoins on and payjoin with yourself to create multiple inputs. Joinmarket as well is a great option. All of this is available on products such as the start9 which is now a fully open source linux distro https://github.com/Start9Labs/start-os .

If you want to buy a lot of bitcoin at once, yeah KYC is probably your only option and that is fine. The point of this post is to remember that banks are not your friends, and they will fuck you at the soonest possible opportunity and you need to prepare accordingly. Don't convince yourself that you are special, because you are not. It could happen to you and you don't want to be caught with your pants down. Stay away from custodial services and stay away from bitcoin companies that will sell you out if the pressure is put on them.

That's it from me today. Happy Monday.