In 2020, I predicted that Bitcoin would face attacks during the 2018 to 2023 period but would ultimately emerge successful by the end of it. Although I am not a prophet, it was clear to me that this would be a critical time for Bitcoin. When the bear market hit this year, we saw a “cleansing” of the Bitcoin ecosystem and an opportunity to refocus on its main mission of monetary freedom.
The snowball started in the heat of July with the Celsius bankruptcy, which was the first sign that the ecosystem we were building was not healthy. The fact that we were using a decentralized currency to mirror the centralized financial system did not match the vision for Bitcoin.
This once again highlighted the existence of two alternate and diverging realities for Bitcoin: “real” Bitcoin, which is rising from the bottom up and focuses on the value Bitcoin can bring to the world, and “regulated” Bitcoin, which is focused on price and committed to regulatory systems and adoption through speculation.
I sold Coinfloor in 2021 because I realized that exchanges like ours were too often dedicated to keeping their users trapped in regulated Bitcoin land. As we near the end of 2022, the negative effects of this have been painfully demonstrated by the collapse of FTX, the regulatory fallout and the losses incurred by so many innocent people.
