It is often said that Bitcoin is money for enemies. This phrase, while it may sound defiant or combative, sums up an essential quality of Bitcoin: its openness. Like any other tool – a hammer, a fork, a chair – Bitcoin is blind and indifferent to who uses it and how it is used. This includes politicians and institutions of traditional finance. It is a lie that because Bitcoin is decentralized, open, or censorship-resistant, it means that certain types of people cannot use it. On the contrary, it means that, Even if any kind of people use it, it will work. It is read on Twitter and other Internet forums that with the nationalization of Bitcoin or with its adoption by the main institutions of the financial establishment, this monetary network has lost its purpose, it has been metabolized by the inherited system and regurgitated into a traditional asset. This is a misunderstanding of the nature of Bitcoin, which comes from the multiplicity of narratives that this cryptocurrency has had throughout history. Yes, Bitcoin was born as a project that challenges the status quo; that rejects a financial system that forces people to trust its custodians and resign themselves to the betrayal of that trust; a system that discriminates from an ivory tower who has the right to participate in that system and with what freedoms and restrictions. Therefore, it is understandable that there is a certain revanchist confusion that wishes to exclude those who were formerly excluded.
Bitcoin has been (and still is) different things to different people at different times. Even today, theorists argue about whether it is money, but there are people who use it as money. There are others who say it is not a speculative asset, but many trade with the asset. There are those who try to use it to evade taxes, and others who even pay taxes with BTC. Behind all this variety, there is something fixed, which does not change: the opening.
Bitcoin is open to any use case that does not violate its consensus rules. Bitcoin can be used by anyone who does not try to spend the same UTXO twice. It does not matter if you are an illegal immigrant without papers in the heart of Europe, a drug dealer or Donald Trump himself. Therein lies one of its great revolutions: There are no doormen; anyone can enter.
Like all disruptive technologies, its tendency is towards widespread adoption, that is, by everyone and anyone. Think of the printing press, the telephone, the Internet; they are not for some or others, they are for everyone and will be adopted by everyone when they meet the conditions of access and need. While Bitcoin does not need to be adopted massively to work, its utility is amplified by increasing its adoption and diverse human inventiveness makes new use cases flourish. This is not to say that using a mutilated BTC in the form of a promissory note issued by a custodian is the way Bitcoin preserves its reality-transforming qualities. Bitcoin is not only an asset, but, more importantly, It is a network that allows exchange between peers, without intermediaries. The asset has value because that network exists. Bitcoin in the hands of custodians is like an airplane without an engine. Gradually, this will be understood by those who are adopting BTC in this crippled way. Even with this precision, Bitcoin is still open even for a limited use of its potential, without forcing anyone. Gradually, when the need arises, they will understand that the true value is in the network, and they will be able to use it, without anyone being able to say no.