I've got a few more Bitcoin-related topics I'd like to write about and then I'm going to be done with my Bitcoin research and focus on AI. If any influencer wants to steal my Bitcoin homework, feel free to. The odds of someone with my background spending the amount of time I've spent doing research is very close to 0. Hope we manage to address some of these issues.

I've been doing some research on the biggest mistakes we Bitcoiners made as a community — and obviously we got very complacent over time. Instead of listening to podcast hopium and alienating people with "have fun staying poor" narratives, we should've focused on game theory and patched up at least some of the holes. It was always inevitable that Bitcoin was going to get attacked, and things like having close to 100% of nodes run on a single implementation was just silly in hindsight. People are doing more harm than good when posting charts of hashrate going vertical without the context that 2 pools (Foundry and Antpool) are close to 50% of hashrate and for more than 98% of cases, pools, not miners decide which transactions get added to the blockchain. You had most of the Bitcoin community cheering price over payment share; we welcomed ETFs as victory. Paper share rose, self-custody fell. The entire community also cheered Square's surveilled "Bitcoin payments" where every payment generates identity-linked transaction data: buyer, location, device, and amount. All transactions flow through Square/Cash App's KYC/AML perimeter, meaning both sides of the payment are verified. That data fuels risk scoring, fraud models, blacklist propagation, and targeted marketing. Exactly this surveillance value is Square's enduring moat, not the 1% fee. We just got too complacent. I'd say the 5 main mistakes we Bitcoiners made are: 1. Letting arbitrary data compete with money on the base layer (witness discount abetted it). For Medium-of-Exchange you need predictable fees; underpriced junk data is a Denial-of-Service subsidy. 2. Treating privacy as an "expert mode". That guarantees surveillance wins by default. Make privacy invisible and automatic. 3. Under-investing in operational safety (backups, recovery, liquidity UX). Normal users pick custodians when scared. 4. Relying on norms over policy. In a low Gross Consent Product world, policy beats culture. If your mempool policies are naïve, adversaries will price you out. 5. Ignoring perimeter levers (app stores, banks, clouds). If you don't plan redundant routes, the other side will plan your failure. The uncomfortable truth is that Bitcoin's defense can't be "hope users pick hard mode". Defaults decide outcomes. If Bitcoin wants to be mass Medium-of-Exchange, privacy, finality, recoverability, and predictability must be invisible and automatic — and the perimeter must be treated as hostile by default. Until then, paper wrappers will dominate, regulators will "clarify", and L1 will be priced as store-of-value with supervised access, not as everyday cash. The good news: all of that is fixable — but only if it's designed, not preached.

The only thing I am bullish on in regards to Bitcoin is its fiat-denominated price (which is a weird thing to say). Old regime: retail perps set price → parabolic tops, −70% to −85% busts, halving-clock "3 years up / 1 year crash". New regime (post-ETF): CME + ETFs + dealer gamma set price → longer, flatter upcycles, faster but shallower draw-downs (−30% to −55%), macro/liquidity > halving, mean reversion > parabolas. We're already ≈31% below the ATH with constant stop-hunts and very little leverage. Instead of the Bitcoin is "arbitrary data storage" movement, I would've liked to see changes that (1) harden fee predictability, (2) make privacy and self-custody defaults, and (3) blunt perimeter levers. In other words, changes that keep Bitcoin useful as money. However, these are exactly the changes that Bitcoin's developers aren't prioritizing. Instead, we're letting arbitrary data compete with money on the base layer. For Medium-of-Exchange you need predictable fees. Underpriced junk data is a Denial-of-Service subsidy. I was excited about these changes that improve Bitcoin as money, but then I started digging into what Bitcoin Core has been up to and at this point, I'm like "Just stop changing things. You're making everything worse." 😂 More context:

How Bitcoin's developers are attacking its Sovereign/Monetary use

Cheaper witness, friendlier data-paths, RBF normalization, relay policies favoring deep pockets, and node-operator liability drift tilt Bitcoin tow...