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#### Circling back to 21M
Yes, it's become a cliché and complete parody of itself, but the facts are facts.  Somehow it seemed appropriate to discuss this topic after watching that Gamestop GME short squeeze documentary.  During peak GME fomo when price was peaking at the absolute top within a matter of days there were a lot of degenerates going full delusional; spinning stories that GME stock was going to "eat the world" and blackhole all the world's value into a single security.  

#### Sound familiar? 
It should because that's the exact same story that Bitcoin maximalists spin on the daily.  Of course with Bitcoin the principal is a lot more sound than with some random security.  A security can be printed out of thin air and dumped on the holders of that security under several different premises.  These rules are part of the foundation for why the Securities Exchange Commission exists in the first place.  Securities are assets that are centrally controlled by the company that issues them. 

Yes, it is true that if you own a bunch of a company's stock you can vote at board meetings and decide what the company does and does not do, but how many people that own stock actually exercise their shares in this way?  I gonna go ahead and say less than 1%.  I've personally never met anyone who's talked about voting with their stake (except on DPOS and DAO crypto platforms).  When it comes to securities only the big boys do it, and even extremely wealthy people are more than happy to delegate that responsibility to an intermediary like Blackrock or Fidelity.  Hell, delegations are quite popular on Hive as well.  There's a reason why we have them; it's a needed function of stake-based voting. 

But with regard to gobbling up the world's lunch, it's not possible for a security to do such a thing even if the current shareholders did everything in their power to make that happen.  Imagine if it was even possible.  The establishment would just shut it down from the outside.  Regulators win.  Degens lose.  Common theme. 

With Bitcoin though... it can't be printed out of thin air... and it can't be shut down.  So the idea that Bitcoin could gobble up everyone's lunch is at least possible even if it doesn't make sense in theory or practice.  In fact it's against the entire ethos of decentralization in the first place.  Imagine getting into this tech to disintermediate power only to find yourself championing the thing to consolidate all the power (for yourself).  New boss same as the old boss vibes; quite embarrassing really. 

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https://x.com/BTCTN/status/1911767351768342786

#### Jesus Christ
Just saw this little gem on X.  The market has really allowed MSTR to scoop up 2.5% of the world's supply of Bitcoin.  Mindblowing.  That figure doesn't even factor in how many coins are lost or will otherwise never be spent again.  So bump it up a little to something like 3%.  Of course a lot of people point out that the price does not reflect how much these institutions claim to be buying, so the speculation is that MSTR doesn't actually have this much BTC and sooner or later the paper Bitcoin ponzi will collapse and everyone will realize that these institutions don't really have any coins at all. 

While this would be in line with what's happened in previous cycles I'm hesitant to assume BTC is going to bankrupt every single institution that adopts it because they are all lying about how much they own (by proxy or otherwise).  This isn't some Podunk FTX situation we are talking about here.  Coinbase has been around for multiple cycles.  Banks are independently setting up custodial services.  Institutions may try to rehypothecate some Bitcoin at some time but it's pretty presumptuous to assume we are already in full blown scam mode.

In fact the only reason why that narrative is given any weight whatsoever because, "QQ my bags aren't going up these whales must be cheating the system."  If number was going up no one parabolically no one would believe that these purchases were paper in name only. 

#### And why wouldn't number be going up?  
Because paper hands are selling and shorting at one of the dumbest times ever.  Of course it doesn't seem like the dumbest time ever now, but it will in retrospect.  The economy looks bad.  It's a risk off environment.  It's so risk off that institutions all around the world are dumping the safest investments in the business and jacking up bond yields.  Banks are getting squeezed from all sides and they have zero reserves.  Inflation is bad, blah blah blah etc etc. 

Everyone is bearish and also everyone cries about market manipulation pushing the price down.  Pick a lane; you can't have both.  There is no manipulation.  A lot of people are selling here... selling their hard-earned coins to institutions at a discount in the most paper-handed fashion of the century.  After all that toiling and hodling this is how it ends.  Crazy. 

It's more obvious than ever that something big is going to break in the economy, and when it does money printer will go brrr something fierce.  My guess is a banking collapse but that's a pretty lazy guess with little research behind it.  Europe seems pretty cooked, and I expect something pretty messed up will happen there that sends shockwaves with everyone scrambling to stem the bleeding.

#### Why I don't mess with ETH anymore
For one the ETH foundation simply controls too much of the network, but the main reason is that ETH is not a secure chain.  Or rather it is a secure chain but it doesn't matter because you can't actually read or interpret the contracts to know what they are doing.  Having a hardware wallet is worthless if when you go to sign it just displays gibberish to the screen and you hit the send button. 

This was most recently revealed with North Korea stole all that ETH in the biggest hack of all time.  Even the top players in the industry just see a random hash of a transaction and go "looks good I guess I'll approve it".  lol.  What a terrible way to do it.  Even the way Hive does it is better because users can at least read the JSON code if the operation might be risky or high value. 

### Conclusion
It's a bit redundant for a sophisticated audience such as mine, but Bitcoin really is better than every stock out there simply for the fact that it's a highly secure network in which no one can cheat or print more. As cringe as it is to see maximalists high five each other while parroting the same boring narratives like "21M" and "1 BTC = 1 BTC" there is still some truth to it. 

At the end of the day it isn't the spot price of Bitcoin that matters, it's the cost to actually use the network, and right now even at $85k it costs less than 50 cents to move an unlimited amount of BTC from one wallet to another.  So while it is annoying to see so many new custodians and institutions pop up to offer their services to unsuspecting plebs... they undeniably are making it easier for the real users to use the real chain.  The only question is how much underlying risk are we adding to the next bear market... but even then it would be fun to watch these big institutions go bankrupt for pulling the same stupid moves as FTX and friends.  Food for thought.