He's right. My favorite part was how bitcoin benefitted from the adversarial environment of being against the system - governments probably wouldn't have stopped the "war on drugs" without bitcoin giving people power back (IMO the war on drugs isn't over, and lots of places never stopped, and there's a "the empire strikes back" sequel coming.) When everyone was sure the government would attack, only the dedicated crazies were here. I wasn't - I arrived with the crowd of mediocre people, who needed to hear that bitcoin is unstoppable and we're gonna win and the suits are coming. But without that struggle, there's less reason to remain the hardest and most unconfiscable money, so we're letting it slide.

So, inserting my own thinking here, the suits are here with their big bags of money, but big bags of money come with rules. The main rule, which is never spoken but never absent is : compromise, don't be extreme. Also, bend the knee, integrate, pay your overlords. Its a protection racket, like gangsters controlling a street, but more legitimized because of the veneer of authority. Money wants to grow ; money hates shrinking. So the be-suited money bag says, you can have a pile of cash if you make it easier for me to sell a product. And if you don't make a compromise, then we'll find a way to replace you. That process exists everywhere, not just bitcoin. The benefit of being against the system is that we can grow without that dissolving pressure. I think we should find a way to be against the system again, and get the money bags to fuck off.

I think I might disagree a little, in that I think there's merit in Hodl's saying we should change the consensus rules - I don't think he means it, its like the one thing that should never be done, so its rhetoric - but if that's the more adversarial path, then that's probably the correct path, if we can do it without fucking it up. There should be hundreds of forks right now. That would certainly help in getting rid of the suits.

"Winning" against crypto, in as much as we have, might be hurting us. Crypto is/was experimentation, which could be brought back into bitcoin. The problem is the confusion with the money. Money is not value. It represents value, but its not the thing. When people use price as a proxy for value, they're inviting an error. The experimentation is the value. If people are discouraged from experimenting because they see the prices and think that anything that's not bitcoin is pointless, then that hurts bitcoin. Fork the motherfucker. Its made to be forked as much as its made to be used. Most forks are junk, and that's good. Most people are junk, too, and that's good. Look at Bcash - junk thing made by junk people. But they tried... And if they hadn't, then we wouldn't know how bad it is. Would lightning exist if bcash hadn't tried and failed? Pretty sure that was the order - it was before I got here, so correct me if I'm wrong. It was junk because it wanted to compromise to get the money bags. But its a wild success because it moved the money bag chasers out of bitcoin for a time! But that time has passed. We need a new thing to get these morally compromised compromisers the fuck out. I think its fork time. I think its way past fork time.