The real shift is not who runs the system, but how control moves over time. War finance built central banks. Central banks enabled debt money. Debt money enabled financial markets. Financial markets concentrated into asset managers. Asset managers now influence companies, media, and policy through capital allocation. The form of power changed from guns → banks → markets → data. Bitcoin enters at the exact point where control moved from states to custodians and intermediaries. So the tension is not “Bitcoin vs government.” It is self custody vs financial custody inside a world where capital, not politics, steers outcomes.