CAN BITCOIN REMAIN PURE?
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The question never arises abruptly. It settles in slowly, almost out of sync, when the euphoria subsides, when announcements follow one another too quickly, when the same institutions that ignored Bitcoin yesterday suddenly begin to celebrate it today. It appears as a diffuse unease, a silent discomfort, as if something essential were slipping away, without a clean break, without a visible collapse, but with a disturbing regularity. Can Bitcoin remain pure, or is it doomed to be absorbed by the system it was supposed to render obsolete?
Initially, Bitcoin didn't raise this question because no one was interested in it. In 2009, there was nothing to gain. No prestige, no power, no revenue. There was only open-source software, a few lines of code, an almost naive promise, and a handful of individuals curious enough to take an interest. Bitcoin wasn't pure in an ideological sense. It was pristine. Free because it was ignored. Invisible because it was deemed insignificant.
This invisibility was its first line of defense. The system doesn't fight what it considers marginal. Nor does it co-opt it. Bitcoin thus grew in a blind spot, outside the dominant narratives, far from the centers of power. It didn't need defending because it wasn't yet perceived as a credible alternative. It existed in parallel, almost silently.
Then the world continued on its trajectory. Crises piled up. Central bank balance sheets ballooned. Money became a tool for the permanent management of emergencies. Rules ceased to be fixed. They became adaptive, exceptional, temporary, and endlessly renewed. And as this instability became structural, Bitcoin began to take on a new meaning. It was no longer just an experimental protocol. It was becoming a benchmark.
It was from this point that the question of purity arose, not because Bitcoin had changed, but because the way it was perceived had transformed. Bitcoin went from being a curiosity to a potential solution. And every solution attracts the attention of those in power. Appropriation never begins with outright prohibition. It begins with recognition. People start by saying that Bitcoin is interesting, innovative, promising. They grant it a place in discussions, then in wallets, then in financial infrastructures. The goal isn't to destroy it. The goal is to integrate it. To make it compatible. To make it manageable.
This is how Bitcoin entered the vocabulary of banks, funds, and regulators. Not as an existential threat, but as an emerging asset. A new investment class. A diversification opportunity. An alternative store of value, provided it is regulated, monitored, and channeled.
At this point, many spoke of victory. Bitcoin was finally recognized. It was no longer marginal. It had earned its place. But this victory had an ambiguous taste. Because what was recognized was not Bitcoin in its entirety. It was a partial, abstract version, stripped of its most disturbing aspect.
We adopted the price, not the rule. We adopted scarcity, not sovereignty. We adopted the potential return, not individual responsibility. Bitcoin has become an acceptable financial product, provided it is held by intermediaries, integrated into existing structures, and subject to compliance and delegation rules.
This transformation is far from trivial. It profoundly alters the relationship between the individual and the protocol. Where Bitcoin offered a way out of the institutional trust system, it is now presented as an extension of that system. Where it once encouraged verification, it now re-encourages trust. Where it imposed direct responsibility, it reintroduces layers of protection, assurance, and mediation.
Bitcoin is not corrupted by this evolution. The protocol still functions exactly as before. Blocks are generated one after another. The rules haven't changed. The 21 million limit remains, implacable. But something else is transforming, something more subtle, more fragile: meaning.
Bitcoin can remain technically intact while being culturally neutralized. It can exist as infrastructure without being disruptive. It can become ubiquitous without being subversive. And it is precisely this possibility that is worrying.
Mass adoption is often presented as the ultimate goal. The more Bitcoin is adopted, the stronger and more legitimate it is supposedly. But mass adoption doesn't necessarily mean mass understanding. It often means simplification, abstraction, smoothing over complexities. What is adopted by the greatest number is rarely what demands the most discipline or responsibility.
Bitcoin, in its most demanding form, requires a direct relationship with value, risk, and time. It forces us to think of loss as definitive, responsibility as personal, and sovereignty as uncomfortable. Mass adoption, on the other hand, seeks comfort, fluidity, and a lack of friction. Therein lies an irreconcilable tension.
If Bitcoin becomes primarily held through financial products, if it is massively used as collateral, integrated into debt and leverage mechanisms, then it risks reproducing some of the very dynamics it was meant to correct. Not because it would be forced to do so, but because its users would trap it in them.
At that point, Bitcoin wouldn't disappear. It would continue to exist. But it would cease to be an escape route. It would become a marginal improvement on the existing system. A more disciplined store of value, but still caught in the logic of power, concentration, and mediation. Some argue that this evolution is inevitable. That every innovation is eventually co-opted. That purity is a romantic illusion. Perhaps. But Bitcoin is not an ordinary innovation. It doesn't rely on a commercial promise or human governance. It relies on impersonal rules, physical constraints, and a temporality independent of political will.
Its ability to remain pure therefore depends not on the institutions that adopt it, but on the individuals who continue to use it in accordance with its original spirit. As long as there are people who possess their private keys, who understand what they hold, who use Bitcoin as a tool for separation rather than simply as an investment, Bitcoin retains its subversive potential. Bitcoin's purity is not a fixed state. It is not an immutable essence. It is a permanent tension. An unstable balance between reclamation and resistance. Between integration and autonomy. Between comfort and responsibility.
Bitcoin cannot prevent the system from partially seizing control. It cannot choose its users. It cannot filter intentions. It is open, neutral, indifferent. This is both its strength and its vulnerability. It offers an option, not a guarantee. The danger, therefore, is not that Bitcoin will be used as a financial investment. The danger is that no one will see it as anything other than a financial investment. That the political, philosophical, and existential dimensions of Bitcoin will dissolve into a purely asset-driven discourse. That the question of sovereignty will be replaced by that of return.
In this scenario, Bitcoin wouldn't be destroyed. It would be domesticated. Neutralized. Made compatible with a system it was meant to constrain. And the world could continue to function more or less as before, with simply better monetary discipline at the margins. But this scenario isn't inevitable. It rests on a collective choice, but above all on a sum of individual choices. Bitcoin remains pure as long as it is experienced as a personal responsibility, as long as it imposes a direct relationship between the individual and value, as long as it compels us to think about the long term, scarcity, and inheritance.
Bitcoin's purity isn't found in press releases, financial products, or regulators' pronouncements. It lies in discreet, everyday, almost invisible actions. In the decision to keep one's keys. In the desire to understand rather than delegate. In the refusal of the easy way out when it implies a loss of sovereignty. Bitcoin was never designed to save the world. It was designed to offer a credible alternative to those who feel the need for it. If this alternative still exists, then Bitcoin remains true to itself, even if it is surrounded by layers of co-optation and distorting narratives.
The real question, therefore, is not whether Bitcoin will be appropriate. It already is, to some extent. The real question is whether enough people will continue to use it as a protocol for separation, and not simply as a financial instrument. Bitcoin can remain pure. But not on its own. It will only be so to the extent that those who hold it refuse to make it an object of comfort. Purity is not in the code. It is in the relationship.
And perhaps this is the most uncomfortable lesson. Bitcoin will never be better than the ways in which it is used. It will not correct the world for its users. It will simply reflect their choices, their compromises, their sacrifices. Block after block, without emotion, without rhetoric, Bitcoin continues to exist. The question is not what it will become. The question is what we will do with it.
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