If you are concerned that because Blackrock holds a bunch of Bitcoin that this means they control it:

Monetary power has nothing to do with how much of some arbitrary unit you own, it’s in how much **the market WANTS the unit you are holding.**

Money is a PROXY for securing and exchanging wealth. Not wealth itself.

Amazon or Blackrock or [insert huge corporation] cannot control Bitcoin simply because “they have a bunch and are super wealthy” for the exact same reason they don’t control any of their markets without their customers.

It’s the same as saying that Amazon could lose almost all of their customers but still control the retail market because “their company is so big.” The ONLY reason they have power or wealth is because customers want to use their service. Take that away and their stock, their streaming service, their servers, their website, all of it is worthless. Their wealth vanishes in a literal instant without customers, because the value of all of those things IS the size of the market that desires them.

Blackrock forking with “So MaNy CoiNs” doesn’t mean anything if nobody wants them. The value of those coins is explicitly a reflection of how much OTHER PROPLE are willing to directly sacrifice to get them. Because nobody wants another sh*tcoin. The market has proven this over, and over, and over, and over again.

If you think people would be willing to sacrifice more in order to hold Blackrock’s sh*tcoin fork, than to own real Bitcoin… then I have fiat to sell you.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Great note Fren and spot on!

🎯

Also, all the other ETFs and MSTR would have to agree with a theoretical BlackRock hard fork. They would not, so BlackRock would die.

what? there's someone who thinks otherwise?

hashing power, maybe. But nr of coins?

I was having this conversation with my dad yesterday. If I understand correctly, as long as the market demands real bitcoin for their time and energy and doesn't accept fiat shitcoins then bitcoin will never centralize.

> If you think people would be willing to sacrifice more in order to hold Blackrock’s sh*tcoin fork, than to own real Bitcoin… then I have fiat to sell you.

I wouldn't, you wouldn't, 99% of people on nostr wouldn't.

Normies would.

Pictures millions of normies. Holding Bitcoin in banks, in exchanges. Merchants who have to follow laws in their jurisdictions.

And law-abiding normies who see Bitcoin as a get rich quick scheme, or as a retirement fund.

When push comes to shove, do you really think all those brave normies (see: covid1984) will stand up for freedom AND risk their whole stash?

I admire your optimism.

Normies literally don’t matter in this. Thats the whole point of my “fiat to sell you” remark.

If the thesis that whatever normies blindly, thoughtlessly follow will be the winner, then there was never a chance for Bitcoin. Because Fiat already has ALL of the blind, thoughtless normies. Blackrock coinwill get 1/1000th of what normal fiat already has, and it’ll be shittier, more confusing, and provide exactly zero monetary assurances of any kind.

It won’t have a network. It won’t have nodes. Literally not a single lightning channel will work on it because nobody is gonna double up their nodes and they have to pick which one they operate on. There will be no businesses on it. It will literally be dead on arrival.

It isn’t optimism for the sake of optimism. It’s simple realism and a non-defeatist attitude because of the simple knowledge of how these things *actually* work.

I admire your pessimistic view when normies don't get to decide the way the network goes. Bitcoin is controlled by the people willing to do the work to run nodes. Do normies run nodes? No, they don't.

Blackrock and fidelity along with the US Federal Government and China could announce a fork and all normies would go "okay" while all the people who keep Bitcoin actually functioning will go "lmao, no." and the only network that will work will be the original one.

They'll both work. One will be backed by the nerds, the other by the biggest financial institutions on the planet with the complicit support of the major governments.

Nice of you to assume that's an automatic win for the nerds. I don't think that's as clear-cut as you're making it out to be.

And mind you, I'm on the side of the nerds here.

But Bitcoin mining is highly centralized and easy to identify (massive energy consumption), most users will be custodial via banks and etfs (if they're not already) and as for the nodes.. yeah, I'm sure the people and institutions who run the global financial system can spin up a few hundred thousand, no problem.

I guess my point is, let's not be complacent here.

ETFs and what not are great for NGU, but to the best of my knowledge, Satoshi didn't exactly envision Blackrock owning most Bitcoin.

By the way, I am not pessimistic. That I find Mr Swann optimistic does not mean I take the opposite view. I am agnostic, interested, and vaguely concerned, that's all.

I'm collecting sea shells.

Interesting. Wanna trade for some of my boogers?

No, your boogers are stupid and gross. Sea shells slowly form over years, not made up out of thin air, they're pretty to look at, like gold, and they're fungible. Already denominated as well, bc larger ones take longer to produce and thus worth more than smaller ones.

Beautifully put Guy.

🔥🫂

Learning dominos effect

If no one wants their coins. Their ETF is fucket. Just out of interest, does anybody know where Blackrocks Keys are?

Could be quite an interesting information