Calling Bitcoin a ‘meritocracy’ is just a polite way of saying a handful of insiders get to decide the rules. That’s not what Bitcoin was built for. It’s supposed to be decentralized, permissionless, and accountable to everyone who uses it. It is not a gated club where only the self-appointed elite have a voice. If Core keeps drifting toward technocratic capture, it betrays the very ethos that made Bitcoin matter in the first place.