The Power and Purpose of Anonymity
In an era where everyone is building a personal brand, broadcasting opinions, and optimizing for visibility, anonymity feels almost subversive. We’re told that trust comes from transparency, that leadership requires a face, and that credibility demands a name. But anonymity is a different kind of power — not the power to influence, but the power to disappear. To disappear is to strip the idea of ego — and in doing so, ironically, achieves the kind of fame that only anonymity can bring.
Satoshi Nakamoto understood this. And that decision — to vanish — may be the most important thing they or he ever did.
Nobody Wants Bitcoin at $10K
And that’s exactly when you should.
People only seem to care about Bitcoin when it’s breaking all-time highs. At $100K, my phone lights up with texts:
“Should I buy now?”
“Is it too late?”
“Bro, tell me straight — is this going to a million?”
But where were those questions when it was at $10K? Or $15K? Or when it crashed and sat there quietly, building hash rate and dev support while everyone pretended it was dead — again?
That pattern tells you everything. People chase heat. But Bitcoin isn't about price — it’s about value. And more importantly, retaining value in a system built to silently take it from you.
Inflation Is Just Theft With Good PR
If you’ve been sitting in dollars for the last ten years without allocating into assets — stocks, real estate, Bitcoin — you’ve been bleeding purchasing power. Quietly, steadily, relentlessly.
The dollar doesn’t need to die for Bitcoin to succeed. Both can coexist. The dollar can remain a good medium of exchange — something you transact with — while Bitcoin can act as a store of value — something you hold to avoid erosion. That’s what this is really about: preserving purchasing power. Not getting rich quick. Staying rich slow.
Scarcity Doesn’t Guarantee Value
Bitcoin’s fixed supply — 21 million coins, ever — is a brilliant design. But scarcity alone isn’t enough. I can make 21 million coins, JPEGs, or hot sauce bottles tomorrow. Doesn’t make them valuable (though the hot sauce might slap, who knows).
Value comes from adoption, from network effect, from consensus. If nobody wants what you’ve made, it’s worthless — no matter how rare it is. That’s true for NFTs, for altcoins, for anything. The difference with Bitcoin is that it’s become the first digital object to be collectively treated as money.
Cowrie Shells and Monetary Collapse
Take cowrie shells — once a trusted currency across West Africa. For centuries, they held real value in local economies. But then came colonial powers, especially European traders, who began importing massive amounts of cowries from the Indian Ocean. The supply exploded. Suddenly, what had been scarce became abundant. Value collapsed. Not because the shells changed — but because trust in the system was broken by artificial inflation.
Sound familiar?
Today’s fiat currencies operate under the same logic. When supply is unlimited and centrally controlled, value is always at risk. That’s why inflation isn’t just a monetary issue — it’s a confidence issue. And once confidence goes, everything else follows.
Sound vs. Unsound Money
This is the real divide — not crypto vs fiat, not Bitcoin vs dollar — but sound money vs unsound money as well explained in Saifedean Ammous’s book The Bitcoin Standard.
Sound money is scarce, durable, decentralized, and resistant to manipulation. Unsound money is whatever the current thing is: centrally managed, printable on demand, and always tilted in favor of those closest to the printer.
Bitcoin is sound money for a digital world. It holds its own without needing a nation-state. That’s revolutionary — and deeply threatening to systems built on monetary control.
Satoshi’s Exit Is Why It Still Works
And here’s the part people miss: none of this works if Satoshi sticks around. If he (or she or they) were still giving interviews, shaping policy, tweeting takes — Bitcoin becomes just another project with a leader. Which means it becomes corruptible.
Satoshi’s disappearance is the most important part of the design. No leader. No face. No one to pressure or idolize or subpoena. Just code and consensus. The myth stays clean because nobody can hijack it. It’s the first protocol that survived because the founder left — not in spite of it.
Value Is a Social Contract
Bitcoin’s value isn’t enforced by decree. It’s not printed into existence or assigned by a central bank. It’s emergent. Organic. It arises from millions of people independently deciding, “Yeah, I trust this more than them.”
It’s not perfect. It’s volatile. It’s early. But it’s real — and it doesn’t need the old system to die for it to matter. All it needs is to exist, long enough for more people to ask:
"Why does my money keep buying less?"
And then:
"What if it didn’t have to?"
TL;DR — The Whole Point
Bitcoin doesn’t promise fast profits. It promises freedom from erosion.
It doesn’t kill the dollar. It gives you an option.
It’s not just scarce — it’s leaderless, borderless, and trustless.
And it works because we choose it.
That’s the trick.
Not price.
Belief.
Well said