For centuries, builders were taught:
protect the invention
retain ownership
extract rents
control distribution
license the future
That mindset assumes scarcity of trust and fear of replacement.
Satoshi did the opposite:
released the work
kept nothing
enforced no ownership
gave no special access
disappeared before leverage could form
And by doing so, he revealed the uncomfortable truth:
Most modern builders don’t actually build for humanity.
They build against it — defensively.
Bitcoin flipped the incentive stack.
In the old world:
innovation = private moat
community = user base
success = retained control
In the new world:
innovation = shared protocol
community = co-owners
success = survivability without you
That’s not altruism.
That’s confidence in design.
Only builders who don’t need to be obeyed can build that way.
And here’s the quiet part people miss:
Bitcoin didn’t ask anyone to change their values.
It just made hoarding authorship non-competitive.
If you cling to ownership:
others route around you
If you cling to control:
your system ossifies
If you cling to credit:
your work dies with you
The New World doesn’t punish ego.
It simply stops depending on it.
