Jacopo Graziuso

The illusion of technological neutrality. We tend to view every innovation in payments as a simple technical improvement. Faster, more convenient, more efficient. It's a reassuring insight. And it is, almost always, incomplete. When a technology ceases to be an optional tool and becomes shared infrastructure, it is no longer neutral. It begins to organise behaviours, times, possibilities. Not because it 'wants' to, but because it structures. Strictly speaking, a tool is used by an individual for a specific purpose. Infrastructure, on the other hand, coordinates multiple individuals over time, establishing common constraints. A system of rules emerges when that infrastructure defines what is possible, permitted, and excluded. The transition is qualitative, not quantitative. And it does not depend on intention, but on adoption. Currency falls squarely into this category. It is not just a medium of exchange. It is an institution that organises economic relations over time. It determines how we save, how we transfer value, how we access exchange. In this sense, currency is always power organised over time: it coordinates expectations, disciplines behaviour, makes some actions easier and others more expensive or impossible. When a monetary technology changes form, it is not just 'how we pay' that changes. The boundaries of economic action change. History shows this repeatedly: the transition from metal to paper, from paper to bank credit, from credit to full digitalisation. Each leap has introduced new possibilities, but also new structural constraints. Ignoring them does not eliminate them. CBDCs sit precisely at this point of friction. They are not simply an update of payment channels. They introduce a new, potentially permanent monetary architecture that operates at the level of social infrastructure. For this reason, they cannot be evaluated solely in terms of operational efficiency or technological innovation. The central issue is neither the speed of transfer nor the reduction of costs. Rather, it is the type of system that emerges when money becomes natively digital, integrated and adjustable. This is where technological neutrality becomes irrelevant. Not by ideological choice, but by structural effect. In this context, alternative infrastructures emerge that separate rules from control, value from identity, and use from authorisation. Bitcoin was not created to replace a currency; rather, it was designed as a social asset based on verifiable, distributed rules that cannot be altered at will. It does not promise results. It sets boundaries. Every monetary infrastructure defines what is possible, even before what is legal. Over time, what is possible becomes normal. #illusion #technology #neutrality #cbdc #bitcoin #innovation #money #ideology #choise

When the code remains intact but the perspective changes. There is a misconception that reassures many: as long as the code does not change, nothing can really change. It is a convenient idea. But it is also incomplete. Because technologies do not only exist in protocols. They exist in the way they are interpreted, described and used. And above all: in the way they are made socially acceptable. Bitcoin, from this point of view, is no exception. We tend to think that technical neutrality coincides with moral neutrality. That an infrastructure, if formally correct, is also ethically unassailable. But morality does not reside in software. It resides in the social context that surrounds it. The code establishes what is possible. Culture establishes what is legitimate. Bitcoin can function perfectly even if its narrative changes radically. And this is where the real problem arises. The risk is not technical corruption. It is the ethical normalisation of foreign logics. Bitcoin was created as an infrastructure: open, verifiable, impersonal, indifferent to status. But it can be progressively portrayed as: a tool for tax optimisation, geopolitical leverage, a strategic state asset, 'responsible' infrastructure only if mediated by elites. In this shift, Bitcoin ceases to be a social good and becomes a resource to be administered. It is not banned. It is reinterpreted. The difference is subtle, but decisive. The most profound social change is this: Bitcoin has shifted from being a tool for individual autonomy to becoming infrastructure managed on behalf of individuals. When Bitcoin is primarily framed as a financial product, a complex technology for experts and a potentially dangerous tool to be monitored, The implicit message is clear: it is not for everyone; it is for those who know how to use it 'correctly'. This gives rise to a new form of delegation. Not technical, but moral. The individual is no longer responsible. They are protected. When protection replaces responsibility, freedom becomes a concession. At a geopolitical level, this change is even more evident. Bitcoin is no longer just seen as neutral infrastructure, a distributed network and a global protocol. Instead, it is now considered a lever of international pressure, a potential strategic reserve, a tool of competition between states and an object of selective regulation. In this scenario, the question is no longer whether Bitcoin should exist, but who legitimises its use. Who can safeguard it? Who can broker it? Who can claim it is 'safe'? The risk is not direct control. It is symbolic fencing. Bitcoin continues to function. Blocks are still being produced. Consensus continues to emerge. However, its social significance could be rendered meaningless. There is no need to shut it down. It is enough to render it compatible with everything it sought to distinguish itself from. The code resists. Culture does not, unless it is safeguarded. Bitcoin does not change when the software changes. It changes when we stop asking ourselves what its purpose really is. The technology survives. Responsibility only survives if it is chosen. Choose. Choose. Choose. #choose #bitcoin #responsability #software #network #change #social #function #controll #freedom #perspective #code

When money comes in through the side door. There is a recurring idea, almost like a reassuring formula: 'Bitcoin cannot be influenced by anyone.' This is true. However, the wrong question is not whether the code can be bent, but whether what grows around the code remains intact. Infrastructures operate according to rules. Societies, on the other hand, operate according to balances. Jeffrey Epstein was not a system error. He was a consistent product of a system that understands the value of access, relationships and doors left ajar. It is not his criminal biography that makes him relevant to this story, but his role as a bridge financier, facilitator and intermediary between worlds that officially should not touch but always have in practice. Epstein did not purchase technology. He bought legitimacy. At a time when Bitcoin was experiencing a period of institutional fragility — the Bitcoin Foundation crisis, regulatory uncertainty and the need for software development continuity — the centre of gravity shifted towards places that promised stability, prestige and protection: The university. The academy. Recognised knowledge: MIT. The Digital Currency Initiative. Not out of corruption, but out of necessity. But out of necessity. Every nascent system encounters a vacuum sooner or later. And every vacuum attracts capital, relationships and influence. The emails published in recent months do not reveal a technical conspiracy. They reveal a more subtle and common narrative: the normalisation of power within a space designed to be independent of it. Those emails are not verdicts. They are raw documents. However, raw documents have a dangerous characteristic: they do not lie or explain; they simply show. They reveal discreet funding. They reveal informal conversations. They reveal a familiarity that, while not surprising, should make us reflect. Bitcoin, as a network and as software, has not been touched. It couldn't be. No email changes the distributed consensus, no donation rewrites the rules, no elite changes the maths. But Bitcoin doesn't just live in code. It lives in the way it is talked about, hosted, institutionalised, made acceptable. And that's where the problem shifts. The emails do not talk about bugs. They talk about frames. They talk about how a social good can begin to be treated as a political object. About how a technology designed to function without identity is slowly being inserted into networks of reputation, influence, lobbying. Not to destroy it, but to make it compatible with existing logic. The risk is not the manipulation of the protocol. The risk is cultural domestication. When Bitcoin enters the corridors of power, it does not lose its technical properties. It loses something more fragile: its foreignness. It becomes a topic, a tool, a lever. It is discussed as a strategic asset, as infrastructure to be governed, as a geopolitical variable. All legitimate. All understandable. All dangerously human. Something doesn't add up, yes. Not because 'Bitcoin has been controlled', but because the same mechanisms that have always shaped institutions, narratives and systems of power have begun to revolve around it too. The emails published are not all there is. There are others. This is just the tip of the iceberg. But the point is not what will emerge, but what is already evident: no technology, however neutral, is immune to the social context in which it is absorbed. The code resists. The networks work. But collective responsibility does not, unless it is safeguarded. #epstein #jeffry #bitcoin #mit #dvi #joi #ioto #manipulation #nsa #cia #email #usa #congress #jmail