Rip VanWinckel:

Some Bitcoin holdouts are people who think that #Bitcoin  can never win because the mightiest governments in the world won't allow it. I disagree with this take. Here's why 👇

Bitcoin is decentralized. No government, no matter how mighty, has ever been able to defeat a decentralized idea. All we have to do to see evidence of this is look at the last 20 years of history.

Since just after 9/11, the United States has been involved in an endless "War on Terror". The US alone has spent $7 trillion dollars over 20 years, and lost thousands of our young, brave, soldiers to accomplish absolutely nothing. No one in the world is safer as a result of our 20 year "War on Terror". In fact, our presence in the region has only further infuriated and emboldened the terrorist groups. And it has played a huge role in driving up the national debt and undermining the value of the dollar at a tremendous cost to US citizens.

Whether it be Al-Queda, ISIS, or the Taliban, the most powerful nations in the world have been unable to defeat the proliferation of these ideas. Why? Because they have no headquarters. They have no branch offices. They are not registered with their local business bureaus. Said plainly, they have no single point of failure. They are just ideas. There can never be enough bullets, missiles, bombs or troops to stop an idea from spreading.

Of course, I am not advocating for terrorism. The point is that decentralized ideas are inherently anti-fragile. They cannot easily be destroyed. They will continue to spread in the minds of people. And the very act of attacking them only makes them stronger at the expense of the attacker.

Case in point, Chinese miners controlled 65% of the Bitcoin hashrate going into 2021. The country suddenly banned Bitcoin mining in May of that year, and nothing happened. There was no 51% attack. The network did not grind to a halt. In fact, Bitcoin didn't skip a beat. It was Tik Tok, next block. Existing miners made out like bandits, and the network became even more decentralized as hashrate left China to find more welcoming locations in which to do business. In the wake of an attack by the second largest economy in the world, Bitcoin grew stronger.

When one nation takes a hostile stance toward Bitcoin, as China did, they do so at their own peril. The smart move would have been to nurture the miners, partner with them to balance energy grids, incentivize them to burn vented and flared methane to reduce methane emissions, and tax their income. In this way, China would be building its own reserves of #BTC  without lifting a finger. Instead, they sent the business elsewhere in what may go down as one of the biggest blunders in the history of China.

Similarly, if the United States came down too harshly on Bitcoin, the entrepreneurs and those with substantial BTC denominated capital would flee the country to more welcoming shores. The USA's loss would be some other nation's benefit. They'll gladly take the tax revenue generated by Bitcoin companies. They'll happily work with miners and tax their income too.

Throughout history, good ideas are undefeated against kinetic power. Bitcoin enjoys a 100% pure monetary premium in no small part because it is an idea which exists both everywhere and nowhere in particular. For that reason, it can never be destroyed. It will continue to grow and prosper as long as the idea is alive in us.

In closing, I say that it is not Bitcoiners who should be worried about governments. Rather, it is governments who should be worried about Bitcoin, for, in the words of Victor Hugo, "there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come".

Original post: https://x.com/danieleripoll/status/1727380883584479491?s=61&t=HDoMNHLPmgigd2WYRhEypA