Alex Morcos

SUNDAY BITCOIN OUTLOOK 1. Bitcoin price will continue to go up. As the world's most liquid* fixed supply** digital asset (for now), bitcoin is still underpriced and will continue to be bought up by people fluent with money. 2. Third party custodians remain the only and preferred option for most people to actually interact with bitcoin, due to (i) a poorly chosen high-level technical path (i.e. the Blockstream-style smallblock scaling meme), and (ii) a lack of any real interest from most participants in the more abstract goals of bitcoin, like circumventing the fiat monetary system. 3. Soft forks with bold scaling improvements likely can't be deployed anymore. This is not a certainty but it is my best guess. This condition has been all but cemented by ecosystem fragmentation, high degrees-of-freedom in design choice, and the entrance of large institutions who have fork leverage. 4. As a result of bitcoin's failure to preserve mass self-custody, there is now a "shot clock" on the properties I asterisked above: liquidity* (the censorship resistant kind) and the fixed supply**. As large institutions capture larger shares of stored and immobile bitcoin, fork choice clauses translate into the power to dump one side of a given fork, destroying the price of the fork and forcing profit-seeking hashrate to the other side. While this isn't a definite game-over, it creates a very uncomfortable option for governments and institutions to exert a high leverage veto over tech that will bitcoin meaningfully challenging to fiat. The idea that everyone who holds bitcoin would be voting on protocol changes indeed seems foolish, but certainly there is a point closer to that side of the spectrum than where we are heading. 5. Even if the fork choice judo isn't leveraged, traveling the path that gold did seems inevitable given the low rate of self-custody. Bitcoin could be crippled by fiat in the same way: centralized warehouses give way to rehypothecation. Some will argue that bitcoin's easy-to-validate nature will mitigate this, and that may be true. But ask yourself how much fake gold governments have to produce vs. simple rehypothecation and accounting games. 6. BCH might have actually been right about the big picture, but in the critical moment they didn't have the developer network effect or market recognition to capture bitcoin's momentum. Even if they were right, and are still right, about some major conceptual issues for bitcoin's scaling, the ship has sailed. I hope I'm wrong on this, but BCH's market share will remain fringe despite being probably the most faithful continuation of what bitcoin was actually supposed to be - in the same way that early internet pioneers thought we'd all be running easy-to-use SMTP servers, but instead we converged on the more dystopic outcome of all mostly submitting to gmail's walled garden. 7. The upside is that for now, bitcoin's rules are indeed resistant to inflation. True P2P exchanges may not have developed, LocalBitcoins might have been beaten into submission, and KYC/chainalysis may be basically winning, but at least for now the asset is still scarce. So the silver lining is that maybe we've bought some time, and those who are fiat-hostile may have been awarded some capital. 8. An under-mentioned fork necessary to scale bitcoin ownership is probably unit subdivision (as pointed out by @shocknet_justin). At the current base unit, if we hit $1 = 1 sat, the minimum transaction fee is around $200 unless some kind of out-of-band miner payment is happening. 9. As I get older, I realize that many of the problems that created the emergence of fiat money are due to upstream human systems problems, and that is where the fix really lies. Developing our relationship with (and place beneath) God, and revisiting what made the west successful in the first place, are more crucial to human flourishing than bitcoin is. Bitcoin still remains an interesting experiment and encouraging bed of possibility.

My name is Roman Storm, and I am one of the founders of Tornado Cash, a non-custodial privacy protocol. I am being prosecuted for writing open-source code that enables private crypto transactions in a completely non-custodial manner. This prosecution represents a terrifying criminalization of privacy. The charges against me threaten to criminalize software development itself. If successful, the implications could extend far beyond the crypto industry, impacting every software developer. I face up to 45 years in prison on charges including operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and sanctions evasion. This case has already had a chilling effect on developers working on software tools. Recently, a developer filed a lawsuit against the DOJ, seeking relief because my case has made them fearful of releasing new software. x.com/lewellenmichae… Additionally, there is significant confusion around the 1960 charge (operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business), as different government agencies have conflicting interpretations of the law. x.com/amandatums/sta… “This prosecution threatens to criminalize software development itself,” said Keri Axel of Waymaker LLP, my legal counsel. American entrepreneur and politician @VivekGRamaswamy commented, “You can’t go after the developers of code. What you actually need to do is go after individual bad actors who are breaking the laws that already exist.” x.com/benzingacrypto… Multiple amicus briefs have been filed in support of my defense by the DeFi Education Fund (@fund_defi), Coin Center (@coincenter), and Blockchain Association (@BlockchainAssn): defieducationfund.org/_files/ugd/84b… coincenter.org/app/uploads/20… theblockchainassociation.org/wp-content/upl… The 5th Circuit Court has already ruled that Tornado Cash sanctions were unlawful: x.com/AlexanderFishe… However, the DOJ has dismissed this ruling as irrelevant: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… My trial is set for April 14, 2025.

NEW: The Finney Freedom Prize for the 2012-2016 era goes to Pieter Wuille and Gregory Maxwell for their contributions to Bitcoin usability, scalability, and privacy. For more info on the Prize, Hal’s story, the committee, and future prizes, visit finneyprize.org