What kind of bitcoiner are you?

As for me:

- Bitcoin is money.
- Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, because it has no cash flow and isn't valuable in itself. Rather, it has extrinsic value because it is a useful tool that can do things other monies cannot do.
- Fees, not filters, are the way to knock out spam.
- Lightning is good, especially as a privacy tool, but not what we'd hoped for, and not a complete scaling solution. Full blocks will drive the L2 tech stack forward.
- Ecash is very nifty, and we should experiment more with it. Privacy is good, and bitcoiners should use more privacy tools.
- Quantum risk is real.
- People will inevitably build financial games atop bitcoin. They're sort of good, in that they can increase demand for the base asset, benefiting earlier adopters. But they're sort of bad, because they are parasitic on bitcoin's core value proposition (being uniquely useful as resistance money), without actually enhancing or directly making use of that core value proposition.
- Hyperbitcoinization — as when bitcoin becomes the dominant global money — is unrealistic. Moreover, fantasies of this kind are totally unnecessary for either a positive moral evaluation of bitcoin or a bullish stance. Something can be good, and wise to acquire, without taking over the world.
- Bitcoin makes the world a better place — not always, not in every respect, not for everyone, but on net, a better place.

Five Theses on "Bitcoin is for Criminals"

1. If bitcoin is for anyone, then bitcoin is for criminals (and infants, and students, and Catholics, and demisexual vibeswomen, and so on). If you wish to say that bitcoin is for anyone, then you probably shouldn't get all upset when someone says that bitcoin is for criminals. That bitcoin is for criminals follows logically from your own view.

Bitcoin is for anyone; so bitcoin is for criminals.

2. Since some laws are bad, some criminals are good. Sometimes it is not just okay, but morally mandatory, to commit crimes, as when disobeying unjust laws. Tools that facilitate resistance of this kind should be praised, and their resistant powers should be celebrated, not hidden. Bitcoin is such a tool, for it enables anyone to resist the tyrants who'd get between us and our money.

Some criminals are good; bitcoin is for them.

3. You might agree that bitcoin is for anyone, and that technically it thus is for criminals too, but think that it isn't especially well-suited for crime. After all, cash is more private, and USD in various forms is proportionally far more criminal in its use than is bitcoin. These are fair points. But they miss something important. Bitcoin can do things cash cannot (it is digital), and doesn't require the cooperation of a pliant banker. Bitcoin bypasses monetary authorities. Many of those authorities are state actors; they enact and enforce laws. We call the people who disobey or resist state actors "criminals". There is no shame in saying bitcoin is for them.

Bitcoin is useful in the crime of resisting monetary authorities; and that is a good thing.

4. You might agree that bitcoin is for criminals, but wish to keep that message hidden or muted, so as to not scare away would-be investors or users, and thereby enhance your own profits. Bitcoin's price is purely a function of demand (since supply is fixed). If there are groups of people who have special reason to use bitcoin, or who simply *must* use bitcoin, their presence sets a floor for demand. That floor is bullish, and also rebuts speculative scenarios in which demand falls to zero, and with it price. So long as there are people who'd like to disobey the tyrants and take control over their own money, bitcoin is a useful tool. And tools that are both useful and scarce tend to command a positive market price.

That bitcoin is for criminals is not a shameful truth; it is bullish.

5. Does saying that bitcoin is for criminals incorrectly imply that it is *only* for criminals? It does not, any more than 'children like to draw' implies that *only* children like to draw. Bitcoin is for criminals; but it is not only for criminals.

censorship is all around us, and pervades all big tech platforms. but because it consists in what is not seen, it is often very hard to see.

middlemen have their place

(from Tibor Fischer's My Bags are Big; a good read)