Transcription
This is Matthew Crowder's Bitcoin University. Today I want to answer the question, is Bitcoin being slowly sabotaged? But first, a preface. Please don't use this video to tell me why I should own some other cryptocurrency instead. The trade-offs that every other single crypto makes are much, much worse than Bitcoin. And most cryptos are already fully captured by a centralized dev team, premine beneficiaries, a foundation, etc. If you're still a ship coiner in 2025, I don't really care about your opinion at this point because you're either a scammer yourself or you're just kind of dumb and you haven't figured out how things work.
So, how to slowly sabotage Bitcoin? Let's say we wanted to sabotage Bitcoin. What are some things we might do? Well, the emphasis is on slowly because you want to boil the frog, but not so quickly that he notices and jumps out of the water.
So, how to slowly sabotage Bitcoin? Number one, herd all the newcomers into custodial Bitcoin products and use that to build up a massive stockpile of Bitcoin that can be eventually seized. Examples of custodial Bitcoin products would be MSTR for example and all of its derivatives like MSTY, IBIT, IBIT, and the other spot Bitcoin ETFs as well as all the other Bitcoin treasury companies. Perhaps we'll find out that the true American Bitcoin strategic reserve is the Bitcoin being held at Coinbase custody and the other large custodians that back MSTR and other Bitcoin treasury companies as well as a large spot Bitcoin ETFs as we said like IBIT. And this is the strategic reserve that will eventually be seized and nationalized by the US government or by another powerful group of people. This is something I've been maintaining for over a year now that Coinbase's Bitcoin will be seized. I don't have a good idea when that's going to happen, but it's it's certainly becoming a huge honeypot. As Turister points out here, the US government now owns 10% of Intel, the semiconductor company, the chip company. Could this also happen to companies custodying Bitcoin? Here's what we wrote in our most recent report. And he goes on to quote here, "A future administration, especially in the context of out-of-control budgetary deficits and escalating domestic or military conflicts, might take a more adversarial stance. In such a scenario, large stashes of Bitcoin that are held in heavily regulated onshore entities would be considered low-hanging fruit and thus the most vulnerable to confiscation or forced rehypothecation." Now, to be very clear, I'm not accusing Sailor or Black Rockck of having any malicious intent here. But even if they don't, they may be being used by malicious higher powers. And of course, as we saw, Larry Frink recently became uh interim co-chair of the World Economic Forum, which is definitely a bad actor.
Number two, people who own MSTR and IBIT have no reason to run a Bitcoin node. Most don't even know what one is. And so they spend most of their time just analyzing capital structure implications and playing other trady games that are pretty uh I must say pretty boring at this point. Financial engineering is ultimately not that interesting. Now also people who don't run a node, they have no say in how Bitcoin is run, which is great if you'd like to capture or sabotage Bitcoin.
So how else to slowly sabotage Bitcoin? Number three, never remove the capital gains tax on Bitcoin. Make people have to pay capital gains taxes whenever they spend their Bitcoin. This is what how it works in the US if you spend depreciated Bitcoin. Make people have to pay capital gains taxes whenever they spend their Bitcoin in order to discourage using in order to discourage them from using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. Get your electorate then get your electorate so excited about a strategic Bitcoin reserve that they forget that an SB actually strengthens a state while eliminating taxes as a capital gains tax. If eliminated on Bitcoin, that would weaken the state. We are here to separate money and state, right? This is why I'm here at least.
If you're finding this video interesting so far, just ask you to help to support this channel's educational mission. Hit the subscribe button. That does really help. Leave a like, leave a comment, question, suggestion for a future video. And share this video with a friend or family member.
So, how else to slowly sabotage Bitcoin? Number four, allow Bitcoin to enter the regulatory system only as a commodity. Repeatedly deny that it's a currency, tell people that they should use stable coins like USDT instead of Bitcoin, and then elect a quote unquote Bitcoin president, do a bait and switch, and have most of the legislative agenda be around stable coins, as this is basically what we've seen in 2025. Because if people aren't earning and spending Bitcoin, then Bitcoin can be captured in the same way that gold has been captured and neutered. It sits in vaults as a store of value, but rarely moves. And a money that rarely moves is not a threat to the US dollar. A money that rarely moves also cannot pay transaction fees to miners who help to secure the blockchain. We can see that transaction fees on Bitcoin even in 2025 with all this quote unquote adoption. They're still rock bottom at one sat per vbyte.
Number five, use the presence of sustained low transaction fees, as we just saw, to gaslight Bitcoiners about Bitcoin's quote unquote security budget and try to get them to change the protocol by adding a tail emission. This would ultimately increase the 21 million supply. You just add a few extra Bitcoin or sats that are given to miners with each block after the 21 million runs out. You could do something like demirage. You do a s a soft fork so that forces holders of Bitcoin to pay a special tax to miners. This is something that Bitcoin core dev Peter Todd seems very interested in a tax on savings where basically even if you're hodlding Bitcoin it'd be basically a hoddle tax and you'd have to pay this to the miners even if your Bitcoin was in cold storage. It's a very dangerous and awful idea and this is the kind of idea if someone has this they shouldn't be let anywhere near Bitcoin core. Here's Peter Todd saying I wrote an entire article on tail emissions which I'll link to in the description notes below. Surprise, surprise. Tail emission is not inflationary. As if we actually would believe that. And here's an article from Bitcoin magazine about hoddle fees, which is something you'd basically it'd be almost like a property tax that you'd have to pay to the miners while you're hoddling. These are absolutely absolutely terrible ideas, and yet they're being taken seriously and even published in a place like Bitcoin magazine.
How else to slowly sabotage Bitcoin? Number six, subvert Bitcoin at the developer level. That's really what we've been focused on in 2025. If 99% of Bitcoiners on the network are running the same node software, then the developers and the development process of that node software is a huge attack vector. See Peter Todd, the example we've just been talking about. Now, fortunately, we now have node software becoming less centralized as a result of Bitcoin Core devs going rogue. And it's becoming less centralized thanks to all of you observing this and actually taking action and dumping Bitcoin Core for Bitcoin Knots. And we can now see Bitcoin Knots nodes comprise approximately a little bit more than 17% of the network up from something like 1 or 2% earlier this year. So what we're seeing is a sea change in Bitcoin that we've never seen before. So this does give me hope.
How else to subvert Bitcoin at the software development level? Number one, introduce buggy upgrades that make spam easier, like Taproot, and also make spam cheaper, like SegWit. We get the 75% SegWit discount. Also, subvert Bitcoin Core from within to the point where they're unwilling to fix these buggy upgrades, but instead engage in linguistic nihilism and gaslighting like no one really knows what spam is. You can't really define it. It's so amorphous. Or, you can't stop all spam, so we're not going to try to stop any spam anymore. or quote filters don't work, but we still need to remove a filter because we all secretly know that it's been working. This sort of really bizarre. It's almost like COVID logic that we've been experiencing with Bitcoin Core and our interactions with the devs there. The next stage of developer decay takes place when Bitcoin Core devs not only refuse to upgrade the spam filters, but they're also emboldened to rip out existing spam filters like op_return as we're going to see in the next version of Bitcoin Core when it comes out in September October. In this version, user configurability is being quote unquote deprecated. As Asher Hop points out here, Bitcoin Core are deleting the devs are deleting features. They're not just changing default settings. They're not just recommending a different config. They're just straight up removing capabilities. Why are they doing this? And why are they doing this in the face of so much pushback?
How else to slowly sabotage Bitcoin? Number seven, seek to confuse people about what Bitcoin is for. It's obviously a monetary network. So you need some high-up players to start spreading the lie about how Bitcoin is actually a use-agnostic platform. This sort of platform maximalism, a use-agnostic platform that can also be used for anything else you want, like storing non-monetary data, like storing garbage like this, as we've seen with inscriptions over the past few years, which is really just a bug that Bitcoin Core devs should have fixed a couple years ago, and then get these same people to promote Bitcoin spam through their magazine, their conference, their political connections.
So, this is how Bitcoin may be in the process of being captured or sabotaged as we speak. There's something very, very fishy going on. And I'm obsessed with it. I'm trying to get to the bottom of it and understand what's happening here. So, if you think we're in trouble here, how can you help? You can run Bitcoin Knots or do your own research and don't run Bitcoin Knots, but at least be informed on the matter. Run Sparrow wallet and connect it to Bitcoin Knots. Connect it to your own node. Get a good hardware wallet and connect it to Sparrow. Withdraw your Bitcoin from the exchange. We don't want these exchanges to be any more honeypots than they already are. So, withdraw your Bitcoin from there and hold your own private keys using that hardware wallet. Verify your UTXOs using Sparrow and using your own node and really learn to think for yourself. You need to stop trusting Bitcoin OGs. You need to stop trusting Bitcoin quote unquote experts. You need to stop trusting Bitcoin influencers. And you need need to stop trusting me as well. So analyze everyone's incentives, learn how Bitcoin works, study Bitcoin's history, and then make up your own mind, and then take action because Bitcoin is only as good as the Bitcoiners who participate in the system by running nodes, mining, hoddling Bitcoin, etc.
So, I'll put a link to a few resources in the description notes below. Here's how to run your own Bitcoin node and fight Bitcoin spam. I discussed some of the settings in there for Bitcoin Knots. Here's running Bitcoin Knots and why you should, too. And if you go in the description notes here, you'll see a bunch of resources how to run Bitcoin Knots, either buying a personal server or building one or just running it on your laptop or desktop. And then here's a video how to mine Bitcoin at home.
A final note here. If you're holding stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, or anything else instead of Bitcoin and you're laughing as part of this video, you're laughing at the the possible sabotage of Bitcoin that may be taking place, you should realize that you're going down with the ship as well. if the authoritarians prevail and the digital prison is rolled out globally because you're holding assets that are still objectively far worse than Bitcoin even even with all Bitcoin's problems and even more prone to capture in basement than Bitcoin is. So for the sake of humanity this is a battle at least we Bitcoiners understand this is a battle that we absolutely absolutely need to win.
If you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit the subscribe and like buttons. Hit the notification bell if you want to be notified when I publish my next video. And let me know your questions and comments in the comment section below. Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you in the next.