The wooden boy.
Pleasure Island.
Boys eating and breaking things. No rules. No masters.
They turned into donkeys.
Ears first. Then the tail. Then the bray. By the time they knew it was too late.
This is about Bitcoin. About how you forgot. About the transformation you won’t acknowledge.
Bitcoiners must return to fundamentals before institutional capture completes what it started.
The Island Before
2008
Banks gambling with your money. Derivatives they couldn’t price. Leverage on leverage on leverage.
The collapse came. Not for them. For you.
Bailouts for banks. Bills for taxpayers. Bonuses for executives. Foreclosures for homeowners.
Bitcoin emerged. October 2008. Lehman Brothers dead weeks earlier.
The promise was simple. No central authorities. No trusted third parties. No institutions gambling with your wealth then billing you for losses.
Self-custody. You own it. Permissionless. No one stops you. Trustless. No intermediary required.
This wasn’t about getting rich. This was about opting out.
Financial sovereignty. Not exposure. Not adoption. Not number go up.
Sovereignty.
The Boat
Bitcoin worked. The price rose. One hundred. One thousand. Ten thousand. One hundred thousand.
The conversation shifted.
Financial sovereignty became investment thesis. Exit became exposure. Revolution became asset class.
The language changed. Store of value. Digital gold. Portfolio hedge. All measured against the dollar. All defined by the system Bitcoin meant to escape.
Then institutions arrived. BlackRock. Fidelity. Goldman Sachs. JP Morgan. The same banks that ran the 2008 casino.
The Bitcoin community didn’t resist. They celebrated.
ETFs became victories. Wall Street buying became validation. Michael Saylor borrowing billions became genius.
The metric changed. Not how many exited the system. Not how many achieved sovereignty.
Price. Denominated in dollars. Measured by the system.
Number go up became the goal.
This is the deviation. Success measured by the system Bitcoin meant to replace.
If success is dollars, dollars remain real money. If validation comes from institutions, institutions remain authority.
Bitcoin was meant to be alternative. It became asset.
Number went up. Critical thinking stopped.
The Coachman Returns
The deviation has consequences. Documented. Across jurisdictions. A pattern.
Canadian truckers. 2022. Bank accounts frozen without trial. No due process. Trudeau invoked emergency powers. Banks became weapons.
Bitcoin was donated. The network couldn’t freeze it. But exchanges froze addresses. Because exchanges are institutions. Regulated. Controlled.
Self-custody maintained access. Exchanges got cut off.
COVID lockdowns. 2020 to 2022. Wrong opinions meant debanking. Question narratives, lose your account.
Thailand. 2024. Three million accounts frozen. Simultaneously. Mass financial control demonstrated.
Vietnam. 2024. Biometric requirements. Show your face or lose your money. Millions complied.
The pattern clear. Centralized infrastructure enables centralized control.
Trump family debanked. 2023 to 2024. Former president. Wealth. Power. Still cut off.
Jack Mallers debanked. 2024. CEO of Strike. Building Bitcoin infrastructure. Cut off by JP Morgan.
The same JP Morgan that paid $290 million for enabling Epstein’s trafficking. The same JP Morgan allegedly shorting MicroStrategy.
Institutions tolerate Bitcoin as asset. They resist Bitcoin as exit.
November 2025. Data breaches. JP Morgan. Citibank. Evolve Bank. Customer data exposed.
They demand biometric data. Require personal information. Promise security. Can’t protect what they collect.
This is the pattern. Financial control. Surveillance. Selective debanking. Data incompetence.
These institutions now control Bitcoin access for most users. Through exchanges. Through ETFs. Through custody.
The fundamental was self-custody. The evidence shows why.
The Ears
The Stoics understood. Freedom requires refusing what controls you.
Epictetus. Freedom won by disregarding things beyond control.
You can’t control JP Morgan. Can’t control regulation. Can’t control government freezing accounts.
You can control whether you depend on JP Morgan. Whether you measure in dollars. Whether you keep Bitcoin in institutions.
Most don’t control these things. They chose dependency.
Every dependency is a control point. Every control point is vulnerability. Every vulnerability is leash.
Marcus Aurelius. You have power over mind, not events.
Financial dependence is voluntary slavery. Comfortable slavery.
The comfort costs. The cost is control. Permission. Surveillance. Being cut off.
Seneca. No person is free who is not master of themselves.
Are you master of your Bitcoin? Or does someone else control access?
Exchange means someone else controls it. ETF means someone else controls it. Permission required means someone else controls it.
You might own exposure. You don’t own Bitcoin.
This is dependency. Opposite of sovereignty. Abandoning fundamental for convenience.
The Stoics give instructions.
Control what you control. Your keys. Your Bitcoin. Your exit choice.
Release what you don’t. Dollar prices. Institutional adoption. Regulatory approval.
Accept discomfort as freedom’s price. Self-custody is harder. Circular economies smaller. Exit requires effort.
Measure wealth in freedom not dollars.
Act aligned with truth. If Bitcoin enables exit, then exit.
Return to fundamentals means refuse dependency. Embrace self-custody. Measure success by sovereignty not price.
The Escape Route
Return to fundamentals isn’t nostalgia. It’s applying original principles now.
Be your own bank. Not hold Bitcoin in bank. Eliminate banks.
Self-custody is foundation. Not your keys not your coins. Minimum requirement for sovereignty.
Hardware wallets. Multisig. Air-gapped signing. Seed phrase backup. Inconvenient. That’s the feature.
Exchanges for entry and exit only. Buy Bitcoin withdraw immediately. Never store. Never wait. Never trust.
Evidence confirms this. Self-custody maintained access. Exchanges got cut off.
Beyond custody is transacting. Bitcoin isn’t meant for dollar’s shadow. It’s meant for use.
Circular economies. Find others accepting Bitcoin. Pay them. Get paid by them. In Bitcoin terms not dollar terms.
Small now. Hard now. The work now.
Merchants accepting Bitcoin. Employees paid in Bitcoin. Services priced in satoshis. Gradually. Locally. Peer to peer.
Stop measuring in dollars. Psychological reorientation.
One Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin. Not slogan. Measurement frame.
Debank yourself. Gradually if necessary. Completely as quickly as possible.
This is extreme. This is what fundamentals require.
The discomfort is real. Fewer services. Smaller ecosystem. More responsibility. More risk.
This discomfort is freedom’s price.
Build alternative infrastructure. Don’t wait for it. Build it.
Self-custody everything. Use exchanges only for conversion. Build circular economies. Stop measuring in dollars. Debank completely. Accept discomfort. Build alternative.
None requires institutional adoption. None requires price appreciation. None requires regulatory approval.
All requires choosing sovereignty over convenience.
The Tail
The pattern accelerates. Thailand’s three million. Vietnam’s biometrics. Mallers debanked. Trump debanked. JP Morgan breach. All 2023 to 2025.
Clustering in present. Control mechanisms normalized. Infrastructure tested. Precedents set.
Institutional adoption progresses simultaneously. ETFs launched. Corporate treasuries loading. Wall Street custody expanding.
Two trends converging. More control infrastructure. More Bitcoin in controllable locations.
The window closes. Not closed. Closing.
Each Bitcoin moved to institution is Bitcoin under institutional control. Each person choosing exchange is person who can be cut off.
Urgency isn’t price. Price is distraction. Urgency is maintaining possibility of sovereignty.
Once institutions control enough Bitcoin they control Bitcoin. Once control network complete exit becomes impossible. Once dependency deep enough independence becomes unbearable.
This isn’t hypothetical. This is pattern from every captured technology.
Internet was decentralized. Now handful of platforms. Email was open. Now Gmail and Outlook. Social media distributed. Now Facebook and Twitter.
The pattern. Start decentralized. Become convenient. Get captured. End centralized.
Bitcoin follows this pattern. Started decentralized. Became convenient through exchanges. Getting captured through institutions. Heading toward centralized control.
Bitcoin’s architecture resists capture. Blockchain can’t be changed. Protocol doesn’t need permission. Self-custody remains possible.
But only for those who exercise it. Only for those who choose it. Only for those accepting inconvenience.
Network effects reversing. Early on every person choosing Bitcoin strengthened sovereignty. Now every person choosing institutional Bitcoin strengthens capture.
Return to fundamentals becomes more critical as deviation accelerates.
The window exists. The tools exist. The knowledge exists.
What’s missing is will.
The Bray
Bitcoin succeeded as technology. The network secured itself. Transactions clear without permission. Architecture fulfilled promise.
Bitcoin failing as revolution. Not because tools don’t work. Because people don’t use tools for intended purpose.
The thesis. Return to fundamentals. Not nostalgia. Necessity.
The fundamentals. Self-custody. Permissionless transactions. Financial sovereignty. Exit from institutional control.
The deviation. Institutional adoption. Price obsession. Convenience over sovereignty. Measuring in dollars. Keeping one foot in system.
The evidence. Debanking across jurisdictions. Surveillance requirements. Data breaches. Selective access restriction. Institutional control reasserting.
The framework. Dependency creates vulnerability. Convenience requires permission. Integration enables capture. Sovereignty requires refusing control mechanisms.
The alternative. Self-custody. Circular economies. Complete exit. Measuring in Bitcoin terms. Building parallel infrastructure. Accepting discomfort as price.
The urgency. Pattern accelerates. Window closes. Each person choosing institutions strengthens capture.
The choice remains. For now.
Fundamentals or convenience. Sovereignty or integration. Exit or exposure.
The Pinocchio allegory isn’t decoration. It’s description.
Pleasure Island offers everything. Toys. Candy. Fun. No rules. Boys who stay transform into donkeys. Gradual. By the time it’s obvious it’s too late.
Bitcoin offered exit from Pleasure Island. A boat off the island.
Most brought the boat back. Showed it off. Used it as toy. Measured its value in island’s currency. Celebrated when masters approved.
The transformation is in progress. Not complete. In progress.
The ears are showing.
Return to fundamentals. Before transformation completes. Before exit closes. Before capture makes sovereignty impossible.
The tools exist. The knowledge exists. The choice exists.
What’s missing is will.
The fundamentals were never about getting rich. They were about getting free.
Choose.