dewmap

Software Architect

[dewmap @separ8]

@nntaleb Je salue votre courage, vous n'avez sûrement pas peur du ridicule.
Le temps se chargera de votre éducation sur les technologies de rupture et les changements de paradim. Profitez de votre ignorance tant qu'elle dure.

[hodlonaut @hodlonaut]

1/
Since publishing my CAPTURE investigation into Bitcoin Core governance and taking a public position on BIP-110, I've been repeatedly targeted by @Coinicarus.

On his show Pleb Underground, and X, he's compared me to Craig Wright, tied me to a scheme to “monetize the people that we scammed”, and named me when asked to identify a grifter. His co-host has explicitly called me a scammer.

I only discovered this on 21 October, after first seeing a post on X where he said I had “gone completely off the deep end.” I contacted him privately that same day and asked him to explain. He didn't want to.

Thread. 🧵

[The War on Beauty @thewaronbeauty]

Manners maketh man and a whole society

[dewmap @separ8]

@bitrefill @moonpay 🤷‍♂️

[dewmap @separ8]

@bitrefill

[dewmap @separ8]

>“Institutional Capture” is nothing more than normal, neurotypical people acting rationally in their own interests. You may not like that the character actors that infested the last 8 years are being replaced by people you don’t recognise, but that was always going to happen, genius

💯🎯

[dewmap @separ8]

@dotkrueger @Puncher522 Completely Coretarded IMHO...

[hodlonaut @hodlonaut]

Watch how institutional power is not merely normalized, but openly celebrated in Bitcoin's social layer.

Wealth, status, access, and proximity to power are elevated, while Bitcoin's founding principles, including sovereignty and the separation of money and state, are ridiculed.

The values of the fiat system Bitcoin was created to challenge are being repackaged as Bitcoin's path to success.

On November 5, Mars Spits Bars takes this worldview to BTC Inc's Bitcoin Amsterdam, on a Whale Pass-only panel titled:

“BIG BITCOIN: IN CONTROL?”

The CAPTURE articles documents the institutional relationships and mechanisms of influence.

Bitcoin's social layer is the final line of defense against complete institutional capture.

But if that very social layer is being conditioned to celebrate institutional power, ridicule principled opposition, and attack those exposing its concentration, who exactly is left to resist it?

[hodlonaut @hodlonaut]

I appreciate this response. Genuine good-faith engagement has been painfully scarce in response to my articles.

I don't think there's a single technical fix. Better processes, greater transparency around funding and conflicts of interest, and more independent implementations would all help.

But a big part of the remedy has to come from the social layer.

People need to start engaging seriously with well documented criticism instead of reflexively attacking the messenger, questioning motives, and treating scrutiny of influential Bitcoin institutions as an attack on Bitcoin itself.

That's how informal power in Bitcoin imo has become entrenched and unaccountable.

A system's resistance to capture depends on people being willing to scrutinize power, especially when it's exercised by people and institutions they trust.

I appreciate you doing exactly that here.

[hodlonaut @hodlonaut]

You're drawing a distinction the series already makes.

CAPTURE doesn't claim that BTC Inc controls Bitcoin Core.

It's a four-part investigation into how influence over Bitcoin development, funding, governance, and public narratives can accumulate through overlapping institutional relationships.

Article 4 examines the media and commercial side of that picture. Articles 1-3 document the developer networks, institutional levers, and decision-making process surrounding the OP_RETURN change.

You can't rebut the broader investigation by isolating one article, reducing it to disclosure failures, and then demanding that it independently prove direct control of Core.

The connections between the parts are the point.

[Maya Parbhoe @MayaPar25]

It’s only a matter of time 🧡

[Riley Brown @rileybrown]

Here's Opus 5.5 with a visual reading of Karpathy's latest tweet. Watch on 2x speed. (one prompt btw)

[hodlonaut @hodlonaut]

A pattern is emerging in the responses to CAPTURE: The Machine.

Joe Nakamoto: “Saved you a click. Old news.”

Now Jonathan Bier, CEO of Farside Investors, posting as @FarsideInsights: “TLDR. Already widely publicised.”

Same straw man. Same dismissal. Reduce an investigation to one already-public fact, then declare the entire thing old news.

But that's precisely the point of CAPTURE. The individual facts were often public. What matters is the picture that emerges when you put the editorial conflicts, disclosure failures, policy exemptions, financial arrangements, institutional relationships, and timelines together.

Break that picture back into isolated facts, and each becomes easier to dismiss.

Worth noting: Bier sits on Brink's board, administers Bitcoin developer grants, and personally answered questions for the CAPTURE investigation about Brink's internal governance.

He's not an outside observer of the institutional structures this series examines.

Don't trust. Verify.

[Joyce Dawn @BitcoinWifey]

Censorship resistance isn’t a feature you install. It’s a property that emerges from the distribution of power, and one that must be continuously defended.

Everything you love about bitcoin are EMERGENT PROPERTIES. The code is just a tool.

A bank can approve every transaction you make for 20 years. That doesn’t make it permissionless.
Don’t confuse the absence of censorship with the inability to censor.

What happened to “don’t trust, verify” ?
And “only the paranoid survive”?

You’ve listed properties of the software and mistaken them for guarantees of the system.

Id say that’s a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of Bitcoin..

[Knut Svanholm ∞/21M @knutsvanholm]

I truly love playing and hanging out with you, Joe. So I say this as a friend.

Dismissing the work of the most thoughtful and thoughrogh journalist in Bitcoin as something people should TL;DR is not a good look.

I know you might think Mr. Cat is your enemy, but he is not. On the contrary, he's a man of greater integrity than most others in the space, and IMO, all bitcoiners should read this article series.

They should read the rebuttals too, of course, and make up their own opinions, but disregarding it as controversy click-bait is far more more telling about you than Mr. Cat.

Bitcoin can only give you true self-sovereignty if you do your homework. All the homework. The economic principles, the technical aspects, and figuring out who you can trust or not. There are scammers everywhere.

I have to balance cypherpunk values and sponsorship money too, and I know it's a tricky thing to navigate while keeping your soul uncorrupted.

You quit Cointelegraph for a reason. You're a bitcoiner. Act the part, ffs!

Looking forward to continuing this conversation in-person.

[Luke de Wolf @lukedewolf]

So? There are plenty of people presenting the opposite perspective. Including everyone at Bitcoin Magazine, for example. People are allowed to have opinions and points of view.

Hodlonaut is allowed to investigate what he believes is worthy of investigating. Just because you disagree with him doesn't mean his findings aren't legitimate.

Rebut the actual content, instead.

[Aviator Anil Chopra @Chopsyturvey]

Well said

[hodlonaut @hodlonaut]

The CAPTURE series was produced independently and without pay. If you found it valuable, you can support the work here:

BTC (Bitcoin): bc1qwwgr24d0k0my9p4zvef77r6rdd04ac5vg2h48w

XBT (Bitcoin Blake2b): bc1qlh6xsvpqykl4lkxt5c0tuex3z9crunx4ju9vev

[Hardfork Kratter @mattkratter]

@djsenior13 Bitcoiners have always sought to call out bad actors in our midst. I don't understand why the community has forgotten so many of its founding values