While Bitcoin eliminates the trusted third party at the monetary layer, most Bitcoiners access that monetary layer through devices that are entirely subordinate to trusted third parties who are institutionally, commercially, and philosophically opposed to everything Bitcoin represents. Yes, you may run your own node, hold your own keys; you do all of it on a device that reports your location to Google every few minutes, routes your app installations through a duopoly that has demonstrated willingness to remove Bitcoin wallets under regulatory pressure, and is architecturally incapable of resisting an OS-level identity mandate when one arrives, as one now demonstrably is.
The trusted third party that Satoshi eliminated from money has simply migrated up the stack. It now lives in your pocket. GrapheneOS, while not perfect, is a critical layer for finishing the work that Satoshi started. For Bitcoiners, the trajectory points to a world in which running a Bitcoin wallet on a mainstream smartphone requires first authenticating your identity to Google or Apple, who relay that information to the wallet developer, who is then legally required to apply KYC procedures before allowing the app to function. Pseudonymous Bitcoin use on a mainstream OS becomes technically impossible not because of any flaw in Bitcoin’s protocol, but because the device enforces identity before the protocol can be accessed.
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