Bitcoin Forum

There's that well-known poem [1] saying:

First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.

It has been applied several times to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. For example, all the "Bitcoin is dead" obituaries (https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/) and the "Bitcoin is a Ponzi" narrative were interpreted as a sign for the "laugh at you" stage, and the tight regulations in some countries (e.g. China) as the shift to the "then they fight you" stage.

When would we "win"? Well, if there are so many of us Bitcoin / crypto users that we matter for the politicians, because we're becoming an important voter group.

Since a few years ago, signs for this becoming true are increasing. In many countries, now between 5 and 10% of the populations are crypto users and/or holders (about half or them Bitcoin users). And elections are becoming increasingly tight.

The recent shift in US politics which seemingly pressured the SEC to approve Bitcoin and now also Ethereum ETFs now (or are very close) is another strong sign for that, and at the same time the current US government's biggest contender Donald Trump is also trying to catch crypto users in his campaign rallies. Perhaps even Javier Milei's victory in Argentina last year could have been fueled by crypto users, in Argentina for well-known reasons (high inflation) the crypto adoption rate is at least at 10%, so it would be dumb for any politician to ignore them.

So do you think we, the crypto users, are about to win?

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There's a catch though. I feel that currently the politicians all over the world are trying to present cryptocurrencies as a "financial asset" and regulate it as such. And the stance of many authorities towards privacy tools for example is still harsh, see the legal action against Tornado Cash and Samourai developers/operators.

But just censorship resistance is one of Bitcoin's major achievements - and the aforementioned actions are acting directly against that censorship resistance. If transactions can't be private, then they can be censored.

So we, the Bitcoin/crypto users, should become even bolder. We shouldn't let politicians fool us with ETFs and other nice financial products. Because cryptocurrencies are not like any other financial product. They are needed to preserve the people's freedom and independence in a digitalized world, as an alternative to their surveillance fantasies (with cooperation from Google, Meta, Apple, OpenAI etc.).

If politicians want our vote, then we should insist that they have to commit to censorship resistance and cease all legal action against privacy tools.

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[1] Often incorrectly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, this quote actually is probably derived from a 1918 speech from trade unionist Nicholas Klein.

Nice poem for the Bitcoin community. This is clearly what we've experienced from the very first day Bitcoin was introduced, but we've unarguably overcame so many oppositions.


Not just win, but also make our allies to become part of us. Decentralization and transparency might be very difficult to get especially when we are been governed by those who are against it, but with time, we will overcome bigger situations, as we've already come this far and still standing strong.


Their intensions are still very much intact. I think those already in power are the number one fighters.


I just hope the Bitcoin community isn't fooled by this deceitful political strategy that is used in catching the attentions of so many. Just as you've mentioned, "They are needed to preserve the people's freedom and independence in a digital world. The coming governments have seen the importance of all these, and probably using it as a strategic medium to attract followers.


Their words are not to be trusted even when they declare it in public. If it's possible to reach an agreement based on this matter with the Bitcoin community, then that's fine.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/05/26/LTeVq.jpeg
https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1794469215098859548?t=c4kqxUBWbr4Og5cyuggXKQ&s=19

Just saw this. Don't know his true intentions, but this is clearly a way of of putting oneself ahead of his oppositions. Political strategy as always.

pollies are like if you can’t beat them join.


hodl we must.

People who are really concerned about censorship represent a very tiny percentage of the total voters. Therefore, it's not something politicians are going to take into consideration during their governments. Maybe only during the polls, because it's nice and admirable to shout about freedom and individual rights, but once they reach power positions the situation completely changes, because they don't have to be loyal anymore to the people who voted for them.

Rather, they start being loyal to those who can maintain them where they achieved reaching, that is, to be loyal to the judiciary system, businessmen and other politicians. All these people are in favour of censorship, because it's through this mechanism they maintain their positions intact too.

Live your life on your own and forget about political affairs. To find gaps on the rules and regulations they create it's the best thing we can do as average individuals who have nothing to do with those mafias and oligarchies. That is what I see as living worthily nowadays.

You aren't going to change the world, just make sure the world doesn't change you and you will be already a winner!

It depends on what does an investor consider a win for himself.

Personally I think just achieving my goals through cryptocurrencies would be a win for me. A lot of people might think so but as a community at large, the ultimate goal would definitely for bitcoin to be recognized and utilized as it was intended to do so.
I’m afraid to question if this will ever happen.

Governments want our community but do not want to give everything that we ask for. All they can give is a little compromise through CBDCs.

We would only win if bitcoin is mass adapted and openly supported by the government.

Like you said we have now become a very important voter group and lots of politicians would be looking at us and see how they could create laws or bills in our favor as a promise in exchange of our votes. Whether it’s genuine or not is up to us entirely to decipher.

Of course not. I find it delusional for you to say this at this point. If you had said it 4 years ago it would still make sense.

More and more mixers, which were the best privacy tool, seized, have been banned from this forum, where the owner is an ancap that is all for privacy and decentralization, more and more KYC in crypto casinos, and you wonder if we are going to win?

It is more than obvious that we are losing, and by a landslide.

Apart from the fact that you talk about the Bitcoiners community as if we were all as one when the reality is that most investors in recent years are investing in Bitcoin as if they were buying a stock or a gold ETF.


Who is "we"? Not even in this forum will you find a significant percentage of that "we". Just consider the many people who complete a KYC in order to withdraw $50 in Bitcoin from a crypto casino (in most cases only to re-deposit it shortly thereafter and lose it).



Pass me your dealer's phone number. The shit he sells you must be very good.

I am scared of politicians. They lie so much. And when vying for office, they lie much more. And now that the elections are close, they will lie 100 times more to win over the support and votes of the crypto community.,

This looks like a digression but I want to know, are there seated politician in the US who are as vocal for their support of bitcoin like Warren and Romney is as vocal in leading an anti-bitcoin campaign? If there are, why aren't they as vocal? I stand to be corrected but the only US politician that I know of is the Miami Mayor Francis Suarez who took his salary in Bitcoin.

Trump and other politicians who have promoted crypto want the votes of crypto users and also funding from crypto firms. Sadly majority of crypto users don't care about privacy because their interest is mainly how to benefit from the industry. People just want to invest in the sector and make a profit; they don't care about privacy. Most of them are okay with ETFs, centralized exchanges, and so on. The government has been attacking exchanges in my country, which has made buying and selling crypto difficult. I am sure that they will get all the support during elections if they begin to allow the operation of these centralized exchanges.

The big firms that will support these politicians financially are owners of these censorship-promoting firms. The population of crypto users who are against censorship is small, which means that their voices will not be heard. The crypto space is moving towards centralization, and only a few people know the danger of this move.

1.The Bitcoin/crypto users are a very small voter group. The politicians will keep ignoring us as a voter group and focusing on other electoral groups. The active cryptocurrency users around the world aren't more than 30 million in a global population of 8 billion. This is less than 1%.
2.The Bitcoin/crypto users are more divided, rather than being united. There are Bitcoin maximalists, altcoin traders, NFT "investors", etc..
The division among the crypto community is a disadvantage and the "powers that be" will use that disadvantage for sure.
3.I think that around 80-90% of all crypto users don't care about privacy and censorship resistance. They care about making profits.

I deny the premise. They are not even a group. And there are many people like me, that practically nobody knows that I have Bitcoin and I want to keep it that way. If I'm concerned about privacy in this regard, I'm not going to go talk to a politician about it, nor am I going to demonstrate, nor am I going to go on TV to defend that we have a right to privacy with Bitcoin. It's an oxymoron.

With points 2 and 3 I agree.

Our problem is that we want to be anonymous users of cryptocurrency and in this case we cannot defend our interests publicly. Of course, the situation will change and the process has already started, when large players and large capital enter the cryptocurrency, which the government and legislator will have to take into account.

See this is why we shouldn't believe in politicians too much and even if they promise us one thing after the other it shouldn't allow us to be soft and too dependent on these politicians. Don't be fooled too much. Instead we should find for politicians or characters that have genuine support for bitcoin and cryptocurrency even before they were aiming for a position so at least  we know that they actually care for bitcoin or crypto and its community and they are not just talking about it to gain votes.

Politicians are sweet liars, they know how to make most out of a situation so they just use cryptocurrency as an opportunity to gain more attention to their names and the party they belong which will obviously going to be beneficial for them to win the elections but they do keep their promise? Never so we should not trust everything they say as well, probably they can use the situation now but if they don't fulfill their promises then the next election which itself going to be a disadvantage for them.

That's almost the trend for revolutionary stuff, the concept, idea, theory, and the method is so radical to the norm that it's almost always that the majority of the population will have a hard time believing that something so novel or new will change the world and so they just always go with the safe side that it will pass and that it's just not going to last for a really long time but then they're all proven wrong and so they end up having to get into it a bit too late.

Isn't that always the case with most disaster movie tropes, they ignore the scientists because they can't believe that something like that can happen and then it happens. It's the same thing with bitcoin, people think that it's a scam and that it's really stupid that an Internet money has a value, they can't open their mind to comprehend that bitcoin is here to stay and being a hater will just make you the loser at the end of the day.

We can still to be anonymous and hides ourselves from public by not telling them that we are one of the crypto users. Many people who involved in crypto doing this to prevents from the crime that can happens to them. Perhaps they can teach other people about crypto but not telling them about how many coins we have because that will be too risky for us.

Larger players and large capital already enter to the crypto worlds and that helps crypto changed and becomes more popular than last few years. People who abandon crypto from the first already regrets it because they are too late to realizes that crypto can becomes popular like now. But they can still join in crypto like other people who already involved.

I don't blame some people on their reactions once they heard about bitcoin, the next thing that comes their mind is scam, because they don't know and were not willing to know anything about this digital currency, that is why some may not have to express themself to others on what they do and instead, they make it private to avoid related issues like this, nevertheless, the government as well are not helping in the situation on what is happening, we don't have to look on all these than to face what we want with bitcoin.

I highly agree with your opinion, the politicians often try their best to lie in order to win more votes but we have no other option available and that's why we should give them some chance to see if they are lying or they're sincere about their promises.

Donald Trump can be a good politicians who may support the narrative of cryptocurrencies and may reduce the strict actions against the crypto community and at the same time he may make it easier for American citizens to hold crypto currencies. I believe he's better than Biden when it comes to crypto support, however, no one is fully aware about his real intentions.

Besides the copium aspect of this post I have nothing against it.

The thing is that regardless of if whether the people around you ridicule you for being a cryptobro or not, the right course of action is to always continue to hold and accumulate your coins. Their sentiments of support/discouragement isn't gonna grow your portfolio, although the former is always appreciated and welcome. Plus it's not like they have a stake at what you have right now, so why let these people get into your skin in the first place? The people that are most unshaken in this industry, regardless of what happens internally or externally are the ones that will bag the most out of everyone. After all, the biggest playing factors in this industry no matter how you look at it is FOMO.

We're looking at a really bright crypto bull season this year, and besides that I do not need any more support/motivation to keep investing and putting in more money. Long as my money's getting longer and the coins in my portfolio continue to get fatter, I'm all good.

You're talking about maximalists, maximalists are clearly lose here, only crypto users are win.

The number of Bitcoin maximalist is really low, the proof is majority of people choose to hold their coins in centralized exchange over non custodial wallet. Even all the maximalists hate the politician and didn't want to vote him, there's a big chance he will win considering a lot people don't care with privacy and self custodial.

I think maximalist will never win since year by year the government want to destroy privacy in Bitcoin.

This is true if you only take into account the sub-group "Bitcoin users concerned about privacy".

But on one hand, pro-privacy groups are often quite large. For example in several European countries there is a big "pro-cash" movement rejecting credit cards, CDBCs and cash restrictions. They do often not care about BTC, but this is a often much bigger group the pro-privacy Bitcoin group could unite forces with. There are also all these groups against Internet surveillance (e.g. NSA), which have scored several political victories in the past, even if their battles are far from over.

On the other hand, of the Bitcoin users there's a constant trickle-in into pro-privacy ideas. For example, if we take Bitcointalk, I think most people come here for "personal profit" reasons (bounties, investment advice ...), but then the probability that they'll stumble upon pro-privacy content is quite high. The percentage may be lower on other platforms but imo it's never zero - because eventually people read about the word *censorship resistance* and what it means for Bitcoin's potential success. In other words: If you start to think about "why I'm really investing in BTC?" then you're often on the right path.

Politicians only are pro-Bitcoin when there are elections close? Yes, this is indeed a danger. But politicians promising and never delivering are very likely to be voted off. There are several examples of this. It's a process that can take years and even decades, I'm aware of that of course.

I think "forgetting" is dangerous because the situation could become even worse, and some day you wake up and are in a 1984-like scenario. Could you then still "live your life on your own"? China for example is already close to this. I'm not saying every Bitcoiner has to become politically active, but at least trying to educate other, new users about privacy and surveillance risks is not a bad idea. (Addition: Anarchism is also an option, i.e. working towards independence from governments.)

I totally agree that we're still not there - that's why I added the question mark and the second part of the post. But something is starting in recent years. Politicians, or at least the agencies they work with (I don't really think Trump himself is a diehard crypto supporter, for example) are considering crypto users as an important voter group. It's a start of a phase which could lead to a victory.

About your other concern - that privacy-aware bitcoin users are a minority, and many are treating it like any other financial asset - see my answer to @uneng.

I think this "first phase" of "supposed politic support to crypto" we're living today will be directed to the traditional CEX user who doesn't care about KYC, and the support from tech firms is an important issue. So the movement has to happen inside the crypto community, i.e. more people inside the crypto user group have to become privacy aware for that to change, see above.

I'd say yes and no to that trend. There is a danger of course, but on the other hand there are examples like Monero. Monero has been delisted from several major exchanges, and now they are needing to move towards increased decentralization, after having partly embraced the traditional CEX/profit culture in the recent past. This is an experiment, of course, and we don't know if they'll succeed, but until now it seems they could hold the price and even recover a bit (current price is $143, after the Binance delisting they were close to $100).

Again for most of the remaining of your post I point to the answer I gave to @uneng - I believe the effort inside the Bitcoin community to educate newer users about the importance of censorship resistance is crucial (perhaps even more important than "becoming politically active").

This is an important point. However, I think this division isn't as deep as it is sometimes affirmed. If a "no-coiner" meets a "NFT investor" and a "Bitcoin maximalist" (which should be on the opposite end of the Bitcoin/crypto user spectrum) and attacks cryptocurrency with the usual arguments like "only for criminals", "environmentally harmful", "ponzi" etc., then I believe even those opposed groups will group together. And the "trickling in into the no-KYC/pro-privacy camp" is probably also true for these groups. At least I see often threads of people asking how they can cash out their NFT/altcoin trading profits without having to demonstrate an origin of funds or so, and this is an excellent opportunity to educate them about the benefits of decentralization.

I also think you underestimate the number of active crypto users. Imo it's at least 100 million (even in a small country like Argentina there are about 5-10 million). Some (e.g. a Singapore agency called Triple-A doing crypto user research) say that India alone has almost 100 million, although of course, most of them could be NFT and stablecoin users, but they're still inside the spectrum I'd mentioned in the last paragraph.

Trump is just for memes. i don't think he really can do what he is saying. once he is already a president, he may not really be doing what was promised. all those are forgotten. maybe not all but the government is up to regulate crypto and that is always the case.

one good thing that Trump is doing is making Bitcoin known to everyone through his gatherings. the funny part is that every time he promises something about crypto, there is a crowd shouting yay! it's choreographed.

Well to be fair bitcoin world didn't really happen like this, it was a bit different. First a lot of people ignored bitcoin (which was when bitcoin was very small, pre-2013 times). Then a lot of people laughed at bitcoin because it looked not serious at all (this was until 2017 when we reached 20k when people started to take it seriously). But then they joined, that is it and we didn't had any fighting or "winning" since there was no war going on against bitcoin.

Sure there could be a few nations here and there that doesn't like it, but the reality is that a lot of bigger nations (and certainly many smaller ones) liked bitcoin and never had any bad laws about it, and that allowed us to grow even bigger, just look at ETF this year.

I dispute that a bit. Two years ago for example in the EU there was a proposed law or regulation to make it illegal to exchange Bitcoin and other PoW currencies on regulated European exchanges. It was at the same time that the European Central Bank also issued some statements about the harm Bitcoin could do, and of course this (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2022/html/ecb.blog221130~5301eecd19.en.html) "Bitcoin obituary" article which is - imo - a really embarassing opinion piece for such a prestigious institution.

The fact that this regulation didn't go through and a pro-Bitcoin movement was forming in the European Parliament was for me the first sign that something was changing with respect to politicians' attitude.

Another example was the bill proposed by Elizabeth Warren and others in the US which would have made miners money transmitters. It's not long ago, but it also seems not to have any chance in the current, a bit more pro-crypto world.

But as I wrote already in the OP, I have the impression that many countries only embrace Bitcoin as a financial asset like many others, being instead afraid or openly hostile about the privacy and censorship resistance aspect. Monero will be probably de facto banned on European regulated exchanges from 2027 on according to AMLD6, even if it is an important tool for Russian dissidents persecuted by the Putin government for example. So there's still a way to go to really "win" if we think Bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies in general) not only as a tool to get rich and speculate but also as a tool to improve freedom, privacy and independence of big institutions in the financial world.

It doesn't just feel right to me no matter What they do or say,one minute they're against bitcoin,the next minute they're trying to support bitcoin...for what exactly.There a big possibility that these politicians are up to something really huge without our knowledge and they just want to go ahead with thier plans and decisions.
The level of support and orderliness that the cryptocurreny community needs or deserves is been traded for their personal satisfaction.The earlier the better for these realization..

      Lucky are the bitcoin holders whose governments support bitcoin or blockchain technology; the adoptions will for sure happen quickly, just like what El Slavador did, where they even made bitcoin legal tender.

     It is true that you say that in the beginning we are not believed; we are laughed at and thought of poorly, but when we succeed in what we believe in bitcoin, they will be silent and their mistake will be realized.

It there's also a saying that if you can't beat them then you'd have to join them unrelentingly. So for you to win you must be practically and theoretically ready for them in Logics.


You've spoken well d5000. And to think that was a basic terminology for bitcoin and crypto owners to think they're actually in for us but that shouldn't be the bone of contentions for the crypto holders. ETF approvals isn't the most ultimate in need, we need freed exercises of utilizing our cryptocurrencies.
If any government isn't going to officially adopt it to be legal tender then they should allow everyone of its holders to utilize it as they wanted. Afterall bitcoin in the first place wasn't a particularly projected to be government official tendered but of a p2p which individuals are found comfortable with.
The restrictions of bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies as a whole has seem so much of being an illegal financial technology.
The crypto adoptors needs a free world of legal holding and trading of their crypto assets and not the so ETH of those politicians coming to give promises and implementing what wouldn't Optimize the wider range of crypto adoptions due to the governments rules.

Thinking in a victim mindset is not going to be the thing that will get us higher. Bitcoin is not something that is attacked, sure individuals may, but the governments are all approving and regulating it, USA just published their ETF approval this year and we have ETF's from so many different companies already. I think it should be clear that we are going to be something bigger if we boast how great we are, not how we are attacked.

Thinking that we are already getting some backlash is the reason why we should keep saying that we are awesome and everyone knows we are awesome, keep doing that and people will want to join you. If you keep making it like a victim thing then you are going to eventually get attacked for sure.

Obviously, paying with physical cash is the highly privacy ensuring way and governments cannot do anything about that; similarly technical developments will find its own practices to protect our privacy over the time and no government can do anything with that. Government's recent stance on privacy thing will wake up new inventors to revolutionize this total industry. This may sound too speculative but time will prove its reality.

It's probably for the best that some people are mocking us, bitcoin investors, that way, we will still have all the time and we will still be at the golden age of bitcoin and so we can always get more bitcoin for ourselves, now imagine that we're the first here and we know that it will only go up from here, I think that we will be able to get the most profits because we're the ones that believed in bitcoin and those that were laughing at us for investing, they'll eventually change their minds, I'm pretty sure of that and then they regret it. Just keep your head down and keep on investing in bitcoin.

Bitcoin has come so far even since I started buying in 2015. I mean we are on Wall Street via the Spot ETFs & we even have a Nation State buying (one so far). Adoption & acceptance in mainstream finance increases every year. Bitcoin is going nowhere, it’s here to stay so hell yeah we are winning.

Politicians will forever remain politicians, they only want to take advantage of certain moments for their personal gain, the same is the case with politicians who side with Bitcoin in particular, if he is just someone who has just appeared and is raving about Bitcoin then we should be suspicious of him, there is little reason supporting bitcoin for the sake of adopting bitcoin, of course the aim is to increase its prestige in the election. Bitcoin has become an important commodity and asset in the world, the discussion is very sensitive, those who rejected Bitcoin at the beginning must be licking their own spit.

I read an article somewhere recently that cryptocurrency users will be able to dictate terms for politicians and the government, especially if capital is concentrated in digital currency. Of course, I don’t believe in this, but if such conversations are already starting, then sooner or later we will not dream of recognizing crypto. But most importantly, we will have to take care of safety, because this will be relevant.

I believe that the conflict between governments and communities has shifted from a war against crypto as a challenge to the classical financial system, to a war against all decentralized applications that operate on blockchain, on the basis that they do not respond to the conditions for privacy control monopolized by the authorities, which in turn impose governance and oversight on the people. It was not easy for crypto to reach these results, but it later became clear that the war is against the privacy of individuals and not against any of the assets emerging as a new store of value.

Today we have two prominent examples of this trend:
The United Arab Emirates has taken giant steps to support companies active in crypto, but it still deals with everything related to privacy of use with caution.
The United States of America, which seems to be tired of continuing the war on crypto companies, and there has become a general trend among all parties of the authorities to regulate the sector and allow it according to conditions that do not conflict with the applicable laws.

Politicians are mostly liars in most of the cases, they are saying all what they are saying to win the heart of the masses and once they have gotten what they want, they will just forget about all their promises.
They are like power mongers, they try all possible means to get to power they want. Physically, emotionally and even spiritually to make sure they get the position they want

I guess it's because it motivates the people more to push their interest in BTC? But, there are also people who will be annoyed with it. The golden age of BTC is I think achieved already but it does not end there. We will have more because many people are still not here. Before it happens, make sure we already have enough BTC because it's going to be hard to obtain anymore later on due to increase price and many people won't also sell their coins easily.

If only that is how easy things work, no doubt we are now a millionaire or more than it by now. Those who discover BTC are lucky and cursed at the same time because they don't know what the future awaits for the coin. This causes them to worry and sell early.

I think there are still all of these stages going on simultaneously in different places and senses. Bitcoin is owned by less than 5% of the population, so I think it's safe to say that the vast majority are ignoring it. Then there are those who are laughing at it, and those who are fighting it. Aside from China fighting Bitcoin, I'd say that the US has also been a mixed country for Bitcoin, and there have been more restrictive suggestions lately, even if Bitcoin becoming an election's talking point is a win. I think we will continue winning more and more over the years, but it can still take several decades and other stages will still be somewhat present.