The start of this bear market has NOT been kind to Bitcoin! 😨
The recent price decline is part of it, but there's a general feeling of disappointment and malaise in the community.
This is the doing of a multitude of factors coming together all at once, making for the perfect storm.
Bitcoin isn't finished, but it could lose its footing permanently without some reflection and reinvention.
The three biggest disasters it's facing are as follows:
🪢🏝️Knots and Epstein
Bitcoin Core, the lead implementation team, has been dealing with a civil war with the Knots followers, all stemming from allegedly ruining the protocol by letting in "spam" and CSAM.
The Epstein files also revealed that Epstein himself (not good for CSAM allegations) funded Core developers and Blockstream, the main company behind Core since the block size wars. An awful look.
And even worse, Core's latest implementation had some serious funds-risking bugs! 😱
🏛️🙅Government Snubs
A centerpiece of the BItcoin strategy for the past several years has been government acceptance.
El Salvador's Bitcoin law fell apart, and they've been making high-profile gold purchases. Ouch!
Successful wide-scale strategic reserve legislation hasn't materialized in the US. And even worse, the government just lost a lot of crypto, leading to a theft of over $40 million of seized assets that could have gone into the reserve. 😬
🏢💰The DAT Debacle
And finally, another centerpiece of the Bitcoin strategy was digital asset treasury companies buying up all the supply, spearheaded by Michael Saylor's Strategy.
Now Strategy is underwater on their Bitcoin purchases, leaving 3.4% of Bitcoin's whole supply at risk of eventual liquidation. 😵💫 A sell-off from Strategy could be catastrophic for Bitcoin.
Other DAT's like Nakamoto Inc. are on the brink of collapse as well.
🍒🦄The Cherry on Top: Vitalik and Citrea
To really twist the knife, a new much-hyped L2 network, Citrea, just launched on Bitcoin, as a very-centralized EVM chain.
Citrea was part of the whole Knots drama, as OP_RETURN changes to Bitcoin were cited as necessary for companies like Citrea.
Aaaaand Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's founder and spiritual leader, just announced a major pivot away from L2 scaling.
Now Bitcoin's stuck committing to Ethereum's mistakes.
Gonna be a rough few years!