Without actual P2P money use, Bitcoin risks replicating the fiat power structure.
Lightning, big custodians, big exchanges, big mining pools create enormous efficiencies — but they also recentralize power in the hands of large economic actors.
So if everyday users stop running active, opinionated nodes… or worse, stop using Bitcoin directly…they effectively hand over the governance of Bitcoin to the same kind of concentrated intermediaries the fiat system relies on (banks, payment networks, governments).
In that world, Bitcoin becomes a wholesale settlement network run by a few big players with layers of opaque, off-chain payment systems on top and minimal direct-user input into the underlying rules or consensus.
This mirrors the fiat system, where central banks settle reserves and the public just interacts through commercial banks or apps — meaning users are dependent on intermediaries and have no real influence over the base layer.
What stops that?
👉🏼Active, opinionated, economically meaningful P2P users running their own nodes, spending their own money, and enforcing their own rules.**
Without them, Bitcoin’s decentralization in theory doesn’t translate into decentralization in practice.
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