Could an Inside Sneak Attack on Bitcoin Destroy It?

I’ve been warning about an outside attack on Bitcoin for some time, but the biggest threat may come from inside: from people who profess to love Bitcoin.

The people I’m talking about don’t love Bitcoin itself, and they don’t love the freedom it brings, no matter what they say. Instead they love the money they hope to make by becoming the new techno-riche: successors to Zuckerberg, Gates and the rest. (Yes, that’s an unfair thing for me to say, but I’d also be willing to bet large on it.)

The people I refer to are a neo-plutocracy — insiders who wish to institutionalise Bitcoin, making billions for themselves while turning it into just another version of PayPal.

One long-time bitcoiner has been warning for some time that this group controls the Bitcoin Foundation. He describes them as “regulatory statists.” He has analyzed their backtalks since their beginning and has been telling anyone who would listen that they wished to politically co-opt the Bitcoin market.

At last weekend’s Bitcoin conference, he was proved correct.

Robert Wenzel of economicpolicyjournal.com reported this, directly from the conference:

The most important vibe I am picking up at the event is that there are many money players who want to get Bitcoin up and running and are willing to play by government rules, that is, register all accounts they open and take down the name, DOB and social security number of Bitcoin buyers and sellers… Many of these players argue that it is impossible to battle the government, [one developer] told me that “It is a period to build the baby and not send it to war.”

No sooner than that passed my screen, I got an article entitled Winklevoss twins on Bitcoin: Time to work with the Feds. The article quotes Cameron Winklevoss (one of the Facebook twins) saying this at the conference:

I don’t think anyone wants a fight — I think everyone here wants to build Bitcoin, to work with regulators, cooperation is really the way forward.

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