I want to be clear: I am not anti-Bitcoin. I am a critic of Bitcoin. I am anti-Bitcoin-as-politics. I think this is madness. I have always thought it was madness. Even when I worked on Bitcoin-related things.

I have observed that fascists like Bitcoin. They promote it. Fascists of all kinds. American fascists. The IRGC in Iran. Bukele in El Salvador. And I think to myself: wow. Look at all these very bad people doing very bad things and branding themselves with Bitcoin. And I don't think Bitcoin advocates have passed a moral smell test.

I see them go up on stage with actual fascists, who are actively pushing — among other things, and I'm debating one of these fascists on stage in Las Vegas at the Bitcoin Conference — for ending democracy and returning to a feudalistic world. And they are calling it freedom or "libertarianism."

The notion that people just look past this and say "well, we can disagree on politics and work on Bitcoin together" think they are performing some principled compartmentalization. But that is not a reasonable argument for tolerating this. It is, in fact, quite suspicious that the fascists are very excited about ending democratic control over money.

Now, you might think democratic control over money is a bad idea because of perverse incentives, public-choice problems, the time-inconsistency of political monetary policy, and we can have amazingly interesting philosophical debates about all of that late into the night. But what is it, exactly, that these "liberal" or "progressive" Bitcoin advocates think is going to happen in a world where the government is completely unable to constrain private finance? They think some magical fairy dust of bottom-up enlightenment will push back against those whose goal is to rule you and turn you into a serf? Forever?

I think these are serious observations. I have not heard an answer yet. I am still waiting.