I wrote this article after being inspired by videos from Matthew Kratter of Bitcoin University
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3AYCZo7oEsIn these video, he explains the different ways Bitcoin can be weakened, redirected, captured, or gradually absorbed
This article my expanded interpretation of the ideas he presents and an attempt to explain more clearly how Bitcoin can be attacked without directly breaking its code or openly banning it.
12 Attacks on Bitcoin That Are Happening Right Now
Bitcoin will probably not be destroyed through one large and openly declared ban. Such an attack would be too obvious and could produce the opposite effect, encouraging people to think more seriously about why governments, banks, and major financial institutions are so afraid of a decentralized monetary system.
To weaken Bitcoin, you do not need to destroy its code directly. You need to change its purpose in the minds of its users. You need to convince them to voluntarily hand their private keys over to intermediaries, that running their own nodes does not matter, and that Bitcoin is not peer-to-peer money, but merely a speculative asset whose only purpose is to rise in fiat price.
1. Associate Bitcoin With Everything NegativeThe first attack takes place through language and public perception. Bitcoin is not primarily presented as neutral peer-to-peer money. Instead, it is constantly associated with crime, fraud, money laundering, hackers, terrorism, and environmental destruction.
When the average person hears the word Bitcoin for the first time, the goal is to prevent them from thinking about monetary freedom, a strictly limited supply of money, or the ability to independently hold and control their own property. The goal is to make them feel fear, distrust, and moral disgust.
This is an extremely effective way to attack Bitcoin because most people will not spend hundreds of hours studying the history of money, inflation, central banking, proof of work, or self-custody. They will form their opinion based on a few headlines they have seen in the media.
A predetermined mental framework is created: if Bitcoin is associated with something bad, then anyone who uses it must also be suspicious. Once that framework has been established, it becomes much easier to justify KYC surveillance, transaction restrictions, bans on private wallets, and other forms of control.
2. Distract People With Crypto and ShitcoinsIf you cannot stop people from becoming interested in Bitcoin, you can dilute that interest with thousands of tokens, projects, and alleged “innovations.”
Most newcomers do not enter this space because they understand monetary economics. They enter because the fiat price is rising and they want to make money quickly. Instead of learning why Bitcoin was created, they immediately encounter an endless supply of altcoins promising higher returns, faster transactions, staking, passive income, and the “next 100x.”
Attention is therefore shifted away from the question of money and toward gambling. Instead of studying limited supply, decentralization, and a monetary policy that no individual can unilaterally change, people try to guess which token will pump next.
A particularly dangerous form of this attack is the creation of shitcoins directly on top of Bitcoin. Through them, Bitcoin is turned into yet another platform for tokens, images, speculation, and fraudulent projects.
In this way, Bitcoin is pushed away from its original purpose as decentralized peer-to-peer money and dragged into the same casino from which it was originally supposed to provide an escape.
Eventually, when people lose their life savings in shitcoins, scams, and failed “projects,” most of them will not distinguish between Bitcoin and the crypto industry. Instead of realizing that they were destroyed by greed and false promises of quick riches, they will begin to hate Bitcoin and regard it as a scam, even though they often never understood or used real Bitcoin in the first place.
3. Trap and Track Users Through KYCBitcoin allows a person to receive and send value without opening a bank account or asking anyone for permission. However, when most people obtain Bitcoin through regulated intermediaries, their use of Bitcoin becomes connected to their identity.
KYC does not merely collect a person’s first and last name. It can connect a user’s identity to their purchases, withdrawal addresses, and future transactions. When this information is combined with public blockchain analysis, it becomes possible to construct a highly detailed picture of someone’s financial activity.
Bitcoin, which was supposed to reduce dependence on financial intermediaries, is therefore absorbed into the existing system of financial surveillance.
A user may technically withdraw bitcoin into their own wallet, but the trail already exists. The intermediary knows who bought the bitcoin, when it was purchased, how much was purchased, and to which address it was withdrawn.
The ultimate goal does not necessarily have to be an immediate ban on Bitcoin. It is enough to build a system in which there are “clean” and “suspicious” bitcoins, approved and unapproved addresses, and permitted and prohibited wallets. This attempts to recreate something similar to the banking system on top of Bitcoin.
4. Discourage People From Using Bitcoin as a Medium of ExchangeOne of the most important narratives is the claim that Bitcoin should never be spent.
People are told that they should only buy it, hold it, and watch its fiat price increase. Paying with bitcoin is portrayed as a mistake because whatever you spend today could be worth far more in the future.
However, no money is held forever. People save value so that one day they can exchange it for goods, services, time, security, or life experiences. A store of value is not the final purpose of money. It is merely deferred exchange.
If nobody accepts Bitcoin in return for their work, products, or services, then Bitcoin remains trapped within the fiat financial system. It is purchased with fiat money, its value is constantly measured in fiat money, and it is eventually sold back into fiat money.
A circular Bitcoin economy breaks this cycle. Within it, people earn, save, and spend bitcoin without constantly returning to the banking system.
Accepting Bitcoin is therefore not merely a symbolic act. Every merchant, tradesperson, programmer, landlord, or producer who accepts bitcoin helps it move from being treated as a speculative asset toward functioning as actual money.
5. Call Bitcoin Digital Energy or Digital Capital, but Not MoneyTerms such as “digital energy,” “digital asset,” and “digital capital” may sound modern and attractive, but they can also obscure Bitcoin’s fundamental purpose.
Bitcoin was not created as a stock, a technology platform, or a digital version of real estate. Satoshi presented it as peer-to-peer electronic cash.
When we stop calling Bitcoin money, we also change the way people think about it. If it is merely a capital asset, then it seems perfectly natural for it to be held by investment funds, banks, ETFs, and large corporations. The average person no longer needs their own wallet, their own node, or any understanding of the network. They only need to purchase a financial product that tracks Bitcoin’s fiat price.
This removes Bitcoin’s most revolutionary characteristic: the ability of an individual to directly own, verify, and transfer money without an intermediary.
Bitcoin can simultaneously function as a store of value and a medium of exchange. The problem begins when its monetary function is deliberately suppressed and replaced with nothing more than a narrative about rising prices and institutional capital.
6. Convince People That Their Decisions Do Not Affect Bitcoin’s FutureIt is often said that Bitcoin is unstoppable, that it has already won, and that game theory will automatically solve every problem.
This message may sound optimistic, but it can produce dangerous passivity.
Bitcoin is not an independent living organism capable of making decisions. Its rules survive because people verify them and reject software or chains that violate the characteristics that make Bitcoin valuable.
People choose which software they run. Miners choose which transactions they include. Users choose which chain they recognize. Merchants choose which bitcoin they accept as payment. Developers may propose changes, but users are not required to accept them.
If everyone withdraws from responsibility and says that “Bitcoin will solve the problem by itself,” then decisions will be made by a small group of the most active and organized participants.
Game theory operates only through actual human decisions. Economic incentives do not exist separately from the people who recognize and respond to them.
Bitcoin’s future is therefore not guaranteed in advance. It depends on people who understand its fundamental characteristics and are prepared to defend them.
7. Create Large Centralized Bitcoin Holdings and Use Them to Control the MarketWhen enormous quantities of bitcoin accumulate in ETFs, investment funds, corporations, and custodial services, formal ownership becomes increasingly concentrated.
This does not directly change the rules of the Bitcoin protocol, but it creates other forms of power.
Large holders can strongly influence market liquidity and Bitcoin’s fiat price. They can lend bitcoin, create derivatives, and sell financial claims that provide exposure to Bitcoin without transferring actual bitcoin into the buyer’s possession.
This can create “paper Bitcoin”: financial claims whose total quantity may greatly exceed the amount of bitcoin that can actually be delivered.
Until users demand withdrawal into their own wallets, it is difficult to know how much real bitcoin stands behind all the products promising exposure to its price.
Self-custody is therefore not merely a matter of individual security. Withdrawing bitcoin from an intermediary is a way of verifying that the bitcoin actually exists and preventing the same bitcoin from being promised to multiple people.
8. Normalize the Centralization of Mining PoolsBitcoin mining is not the same thing as a mining pool.
Physical miners provide the computing power, but the pool often constructs the block, selects the transactions, and sends miners the work they are expected to perform. When a large share of the total hashrate is directed through only a few pools, practical control over block construction becomes concentrated.
Such concentration can make it easier to censor transactions, enforce regulatory demands, or coordinate decisions that individual miners might not independently accept.
The problem is often dismissed with the claim that a miner can switch pools at any moment. That is important, but it assumes that miners will recognize the problem in time, coordinate their response, and be willing to accept the possible economic consequences of switching.
A healthier structure would give individual miners greater control over their own block templates and transaction selection, rather than automatically surrendering those decisions to a small number of pool operators.
Decentralization should not be measured only by counting physical machines. We must also examine who actually makes decisions about the contents of blocks.
9. Direct New Users Toward Stocks Instead of Self-Custodied Bitcoin
New users are increasingly no longer advised to purchase bitcoin, withdraw it into their own wallet, and learn how private keys work.
Instead, they are offered shares in a company that owns Bitcoin, an ETF, an investment fund, or some other financial product.
Such a user gains exposure to Bitcoin’s fiat price, but they do not receive Bitcoin. They cannot send it to another person, use it for payment, hold it without an intermediary, or independently verify its rules.
They remain dependent on a broker, a bank, an exchange, regulators, corporate management, and the traditional financial system.
Shares in a company that owns Bitcoin also carry risks that have nothing to do with Bitcoin itself: debt, shareholder dilution, management decisions, regulatory problems, and the possibility of bankruptcy.
If an entire new generation is introduced to Bitcoin through such products, we will end up with large numbers of people who call themselves Bitcoiners but have never made a Bitcoin transaction, held a private key, or used their own node.
That is the adoption of Bitcoin’s fiat price, not the adoption of Bitcoin.
10. Use the Dominant Reference Implementation to Carry Out Attacks
Bitcoin has no central server and no official company that determines its rules. However, when the overwhelming majority of users run a single software implementation, the maintainers of that implementation gain significant practical influence.
Even when a change is not part of Bitcoin’s consensus rules, default software settings can shape the network’s behavior. Most users do not review every line of code or manually adjust every setting. They install the recommended version and accept whatever comes as the default configuration.
The reference implementation can therefore gradually come to be regarded as Bitcoin itself. Criticism of particular developers or decisions is then falsely portrayed as an attack on Bitcoin.
But Bitcoin is not the same thing as one repository, one development team, or one software program.
The ability to run alternative implementations is an essential defense against the development process turning into a central authority. Users must have a genuine choice and be willing to exercise it when they believe the dominant software has moved away from Bitcoin’s purpose.
Code enforces the rules, but people decide which code they will run.
11. First Create Bitcoin Celebrities, Then Compromise ThemA community that claims not to trust authorities often creates authorities of its own.
Influencers, executives, investors, and early adopters are turned into supposedly infallible leaders. Their statements are no longer evaluated according to the strength of their arguments, but according to the status of the person making them.
This creates two dangers.
The first is that popular figures can be used to spread ideas that the community would not otherwise easily accept. People trust a famous name and stop independently verifying what that person is saying.
The second is that an entire community can be discredited by bringing down a few of its most recognizable representatives. If an influencer is exposed as dishonest, financially motivated, involved in fraud, or willing to change their position for personal benefit, Bitcoin’s opponents can present that person’s downfall as proof that Bitcoin itself is a scam.
Bitcoin must therefore never depend on heroes.
Respecting someone’s work does not mean surrendering your own judgment to that person. In Bitcoin, it should not matter who made a statement. What matters is whether the argument is logical, verifiable, and consistent with the characteristics we are trying to preserve.
12. Portray People Who Try to Solve Problems as the AttackersThe final attack is a complete reversal of reality.
When someone warns about centralization, spam, software changes, weakened privacy, or Bitcoin being pushed away from its monetary purpose, that person is labeled an extremist, an enemy of progress, or an attacker of Bitcoin.
The problem itself is no longer discussed. Instead, the person who mentioned it is attacked.
They are accused of creating division, damaging the price, frightening new investors, or harming Bitcoin’s reputation. Peace and unity within the community are therefore presented as more important than an open discussion of genuine risks.
This is an effective tactic because most people do not want social conflict. It is easier to remain silent than to be labeled insane, a conspiracy theorist, or an enemy of Bitcoin.
However, a system that cannot tolerate criticism has already begun turning into a cult of authority.
Pointing out a weakness is not the real attack. The real attack may be the attempt to prevent anyone from speaking about that weakness.
