I want to take a moment and salute everyone who has spoken up and taken a stand in calling out Core's authoritarianism and disregard for node-running plebs. This year has been a very enlightening time in finding out who is a serious Bitcoiner and who is a "crypto-asset"-NGU'er. (I'm not talking about people that are new to Bitcoin and still learning what a node or hardware wallet is).

Speaking up and "choosing a side" is not easy... it's much easier to keep your head down and believe that things will sort themselves out. I don't think I'd be the first person to compare this to covid vaccine mandates. It seems easy now to see the failure of "the experts" and runaway authoritarianism. But at the time, it was not easy at all. (NC State was one step away from mandating it for employees... they were already terminating anyone unvaccinated that was part of Federally funded programs).

What I really want to address here is those that say, "See, it worked out okay in the end. See, there were no vaccine passports. See, the mandates have been lifted." Yes but only because there were enough people who said, "Awwwww hell no!" Another analogous incident was only a couple months ago when the US bombed Iran. It was very interesting to see who made excuses for it and who were freaking out. Only by some miracle it didn't escalate into WW3. And yet there were people saying, "See, it worked out fine. See, calm down."

It's possible that this year's OP_RETURN/filter debate turns out not to be the end of Bitcoin as we know it... (I still have my doubts). But man, hats off to everyone that is, and continues to raise hell about it. Bitcoin is not just an "anti-fragile" honey-badger, unstoppable-train all on its own. It takes people to make it that way.