Why do we still need Bitcoin 17 years later?

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks”

“The Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the verge of bailing out Bank a second time”. ——Satoshi Nakamoto, Genesis Block

Introduction: Two eras, one problem

On October 31, 2008, when the global financial system faltered in the aftershocks of the subprime mortgage crisis, a cryptographer named Satoshi Nakamoto sent a white paper to a niche cryptography mailing list. The title is very succinct: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash/Money Market System”.

Today, 17 years later, on November 1, 2025, when we look at this document again, the time on the calendar is already very different, yet the world looks strikingly similar.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the $2.7 trillion bank bailout program have been replaced by $38 trillion in US Treasury bonds and $1.2 trillion in annual interest payments. Satoshi Nakamoto’s prediction, engraved in the Genesis block, that “the Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the verge of bailing out Bank for the second time” is not only out of date, but has become even more impressive in 2025.

17 years ago, $Bitcoin (BTC.CC)$ It was born from questioning the centralized financial system; 17 years later, not only was this question not properly addressed, but it became even more urgent.

The question is: In 2025, when it seems like “everything is under control,” and today Wall Street has embraced Bitcoin, the government has begun discussions on Global Strategy reserves, and the price has reached a record high, why do we need Bitcoin?

2008 vs 2025: Comparing the two crises

2008: The Collapse of the Old World

In the early morning of September 15, 2008, the 158-year-old Lehman Brothers Investment Bank declared bankruptcy, making it the largest bankruptcy case in US history, with a total debt of 613 billion dollars.

Let’s use a simple story to understand how that crisis unfolded:

Imagine you’re a restaurant waiter with an unstable income of just 0.03 million a year. According to traditional standards, you can’t borrow money to buy a house at all. But in the early 2000s, the bank took the initiative to find you and said, “No problem! We can give you a loan of 0.5 million dollars to buy a house. You only need to pay very little interest for the first two years, housing prices will rise, and you can switch hands to make money!”

Bank employees at the grassroots level care about their KPIs; upper management cares about whether loans can be sold to financial institutions; you care about whether you can own a house. There is nothing wrong with everyone in this system. As long as housing prices rise, this game can be played forever.

This is a “subprime mortgage” (Subprime Mortgage) — a high-risk loan issued to people with poor credit and poor ability to repay. From 2000 to 2007, such loans surged in the US, from about $130 billion to $600 billion.

After issuing these loans, the bank didn’t hold them themselves (because the risk was too high), but instead played a “magic trick”:

1. Putting thousands of loans together

2. Split into different classes of “Bonds” (this is called MBS – Mortgage Backed Securities)

3. Then package these Bonds into more complex products (CDO – Guaranteed Debt Certificates)

4. Find a rating Institutions to rate these products “AAA” (the most secure rating, the same as US Treasury bonds)

It’s like mixing a bunch of rotten apples into a good apple, repackaging it, and then labeling it as “high quality fruit.”

Lehman Brothers bought these “AAA-grade” securitized products in large quantities and still used borrowed money (leverage). By 2007, Lehman Brothers had a leverage ratio of 31:1— that is, it only had $1 of its own funds, but managed $31 of assets.

It wasn’t until 2006 that house prices began to fall in the US. Those who relied on subprime loans to buy homes suddenly fell into trouble — housing prices fell, house values shrank; interest rates rose and repayment pressure doubled; they wanted to sell but found no one to take over; in the end, they only chose to default.

As the ripple effect unfolded, the default rate for subprime loans rose rapidly: from around 13% in 2006, it had surpassed 25% in 2008.

This also means that those securities that were once rated “AAA” are actually fraught with risk, and so-called high-quality assets instantly became “toxic assets” (Toxic Assets). Lehman Brothers held tens of billions of dollars of such assets, so they lost their value overnight.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, $613 billion in debt, and 0.025 million employees lost their jobs.

After Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the entire financial system fell into an unprecedented state of panic. Bank no longer trust each other (no one knows if each other still holds those “toxic assets”), so mutual borrowing has almost come to a standstill. The credit market froze, and companies were unable to obtain loans; the stock market continued to plummet, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by about 2,000 points in just one week, a drop of 14%; the unemployment rate also climbed all the way from 5% to over 10% in October 2009.

Faced with this systemic collapse, the US government had to intervene. First, it launched the “Problem Asset Relief Program” (TARP), which used 700 billion dollars to buy toxic assets in the hands of Bank; then, the Federal Reserve initiated Algo easing (QE) policies to print money on a large scale to buy Bonds, expanding its balance sheet from 800 billion dollars in 2008 to 4.5 trillion dollars in 2014.

However, who will ultimately bear the cost of the bailout? Taxpayers’ money is used to save Bank, the Federal Reserve’s printing of banknotes causes the MMF to depreciate, and the purchasing power of ordinary people’s savings continues to decline. Ironically, the Wall Street Bank that were bailed out in 2009 still paid out bonuses of up to 18.4 billion dollars.

The paradox seen by Satoshi Nakamoto

This is the background of Satoshi Nakamoto’s words in the Genesis block: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for Bank” (Times January 3, 2009: The Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the verge of bailing out banks for the second time)

The paradox he saw was:

• When Bank make money, profits go to private individuals; when they lose money, losses go to the public

• Central Bank can print unlimited money, and savers can’t protect their purchasing power

• The entire system is built on “trust,” but this trust has been systematically betrayed

The white paper was born in this context, and Satoshi Nakamoto proposed a solution: no longer require trust, use a fixed supply to completely eliminate MMF overspending, and let decentralized consensus replace the credit endorsement of a former authority.

2025: New world, deja vu

Fast forward to 2025, and on the face of it, everything is different. Cryptos Market Cap reached a new high of 60% of the global stock market. Bitcoin was included in ETFs, and traditional financial giants such as BlackRock and Fidelity became the largest holders.

Even Big A has warmed up.

But what about the underlying logic? Let’s understand the 2025 US debt crisis in the same plain way.

What are US Treasury bonds? Why is there a crisis?

Think of the US government as a family with huge incomes and expenses. By 2025, the household’s “annual income” (tax) was about 5.2 trillion US dollars, while the “annual expenditure” was as high as 7 trillion dollars. The difference in the middle — 1.8 trillion US dollars, is the fiscal deficit. To make up for the deficit, the government can only borrow money, that is, issue treasury bonds. Treasury bonds are like a “debt note” issued by the government, promising to repay the principal amount and pay interest in the future.

As of October 23, 2025, the total amount of US Treasury bonds exceeded 38 trillion dollars. What kind of concept is this? If you repay at the rate of $1 per second, it would take a full 1.2 million years to pay off; on average, every American (including infants), this is equivalent to about $0.114 million in debt per person. This figure already accounts for 123% of the US gross domestic product (GDP, about 31 trillion US dollars).

What is even more worrying is the rate at which debt is growing. In 2000, US Treasury bonds were only 5.7 trillion dollars, or 55% of GDP; by 2008, on the eve of the subprime mortgage crisis, they rose to 10 trillion dollars, accounting for 65% of GDP; in 2020, the impact of the pandemic relief surged to 28 trillion dollars, accounting for 98% of GDP; by 2025, the debt had reached 38 trillion dollars, accounting for 123% of GDP.

In other words, in the past five years alone, America’s debt has increased by a full $10 trillion.

Borrowing money always comes at a cost. By 2025, the US government will spend as much as $1.2 trillion a year on interest payments on treasury bonds, which already exceeds the country’s main expenditure items: about $842 billion for defense, $830 billion for Medical insurance, and $101 billion for education.

In other words, the US government’s biggest expenditure today is not defense, not Medical, or education, but — interest.

More worryingly, interest rates themselves are rising. In 2021, the average interest rate on US Treasury bonds was 1.61%; by 2025, this figure rose to 3.36%.

What does doubling interest rates mean?

Let’s say you owe $1 million:

• At an interest rate of 1.61%, you pay interest of $0.0161 million per year;

• At an interest rate of 3.36%, you pay interest of $0.0336 million per year;

• Interest expenses have doubled, and not a single cent of the principal amount has been reduced.

For the US government, every 1 percent increase in interest rates means paying an additional $380 billion in interest each year. It’s like a self-accelerating “snowball of debt” — the bigger it gets, the harder it is to stop.

America’s fiscal situation has fallen into a vicious cycle that is hard to break out of: government spending always exceeds revenue, and it has to constantly borrow money to make up the gap. The more debt, the heavier the interest burden; in order to pay interest, the government’s spending rises further, and more money needs to be borrowed — so it goes back and forth, and the cycle accelerates.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this trend will become increasingly severe: debt is already equivalent to 100% of GDP in 2025, 106% in 2027 (more than an all-time high during World War II), is expected to rise to 118% in 2035, and is likely to rise to 200% of GDP by 2047. In other words, America’s debt snowball is expanding at an Index rate.

Some people may ask: The US is the largest economy in the world, and it also has the right to issue the US dollar, a global reserve MMF. Why can’t we borrow it all the time? On the face of it, there may seem to be no limits, but there are actually three fatal risks.

Risk 1: Debt ceiling crisis

The US Congress has a statutory debt ceiling. Congress just raised the cap to 41.1 trillion dollars in July 2025, but at the current rate of borrowing, it is expected to peak again in 2026. Once Congress fails to agree on raising the upper limit, the US government will not be able to issue new bonds, and there may even be a “technical default.” The debt ceiling impasse in 2023 has caused Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the US credit rating (from AAA to AA+), triggering severe financial market shocks, and at one point putting the government at risk of shutdown.

Risk 2: The erosion of dollar credit

The US dollar’s status as a global reserve MMF is based on the world’s trust in America’s credit — believing that the US can repay its debts and that the dollar can preserve its value. However, that trust is being eroded. BRICS+ countries are promoting de-dollarization, the proportion of RMB settlements in oil trade has increased, and central banks in more and more countries have begun to reduce their holdings of US debt and increase their holdings of gold. According to data from the International money market funds (IMF), the US dollar accounted for 71% of global Forex reserves in 2000, but by 2025 it had declined to 58%. If the US dollar further loses its reserve MMF status, the US government will not be able to borrow at low interest rates, and the debt crisis will break out faster.

Risk 3: The Devil of Inflation

When the debt is too large to pay off, the government has only three options: cut spending, raise taxes, or print money to pay off the debt. The first two are hardly politically viable — no politician wants to cut benefits or raise taxes; therefore, the most realistic option is often the third: monetizing debt, where the Federal Reserve prints money to buy treasury bonds to finance the government.

The cost of this approach, however, is inflation. An increase in the MMF supply means a decrease in the purchasing power of each dollar. Using 2008 as a benchmark, the purchasing power of $1 was only about $0.73 left by 2025, and cumulative inflation was over 27%. If debt monetization continues to accelerate, inflationary pressure will worsen, and this time, it will be the savings and living costs of all ordinary people that will pay for it.

Essentially the same, upgraded in scale

Let’s take a look at the two crises together, and you’ll find a surprising similarity:

During the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, the total amount of US treasury bonds was about 10 trillion dollars, accounting for 65% of GDP; by 2025, the size of US debt had soared to 38 trillion dollars, equivalent to 123% of GDP. The annual fiscal deficit was 450 billion dollars (3.2% of GDP), but now it has grown to 1.8 trillion dollars (6.2% of GDP). The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet expanded from 800 billion dollars to 4.5 trillion dollars, and now it has reached about 7 trillion dollars. In 2008, the US paid $250 billion in annual interest on debt; in 2025, this figure rose to $1.2 trillion, an increase of about 380%. Back then, the US government introduced TARP and QE1, and the total bailout scale was about 2.7 trillion US dollars; now it is no longer possible to implement interventions of the same scale. The unemployment rate peaked at 10% in 2009. Currently, no significant wave of unemployment has broken out, but warning signs have appeared. In terms of credit ratings, it was still AAA in 2008, but now it has been downgraded to AA+ by S&P and Fitch.

The essence of the two crises is exactly the same: they are both systemic risks caused by excessive credit expansion, requiring costs to be passed on through “printing money,” and both are eroding the ability of ordinary people to store wealth.

So why Bitcoin?

When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Bitcoin was just a concept. On January 3, 2009, the Genesis block was just launched. There is no exchange, no price, no ecosystem, and only a few cryptographers are discussing this experimental electronic Cash/Money Market system. Its total Market Cap is zero, and it has no real influence.

By 2025, the situation was quite different. Bitcoin has been running steadily for 17 years without downtime; hundreds of thousands of nodes are distributed around the world, the computing power has reached 650 EH/s, and the security is unprecedented. With a total Market Cap of around 2.4 trillion dollars, it has surpassed silver to become the seventh-largest Assets in the world.

At the Institutions level, BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF has managed $89 billion in assets; at the sovereignty level, countries such as El Salvador and Bhutan have included Bitcoin in national reserves; at the corporate level, MicroStrategy has held 640,808 bitcoins for a long time, about $69 billion at the current price. From “zero price” to $126,200 per coin, Bitcoin has completed long-term price verification throughout the market.

More importantly, Bitcoin has not only experienced the test of time, but has also been verified by several “top level” crises:

• Prices plummeted 84% during the 2018 bear market, and the network is still strong;

• It plummeted 50% within 24 hours during the 2020 pandemic, but recovered rapidly;

• In the crypto winter of 2022, FTX went bankrupt and Luna collapsed, but Bitcoin remained above $10,000;

This means that when the next systemic crisis hits, people already have an alternative proven in 17 years:

A decentralized system that has never been defaulted, never released, and never shut down.

In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto asked the question, “If we can’t trust Bank, what else can we trust?”

In 2025, the question escalated to: “If we can’t even trust sovereign credit, what else can we trust?”

The answer in 2008 was an experiment, an idea, and a 9-page white paper.

The answer for 2025 is a proven system, a $2.4 trillion Assets class, and a network that has been running for 17 years.

Reconstructing the Identity of Coin Holders: From Utopia to Wall Street

Bitcoin, as outlined by Satoshi Nakamoto in his white paper, is a pure peer-to-peer electronic Cash/Money Market system. No intermediaries, no censorship, no inflation — this is a declaration of a technological utopia against financial leviathan.

The early Bitcoin community was a group of cryptopunks, hackers, and liberals. They discussed the code on the forum, bought pizza with bitcoin (on May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas with 10,000 BTC, worth more than $1.2 billion at today’s price), and verifying censorship-resistant payments on the “Silk Road.”

But history has never progressed according to idealists’ scripts. Bitcoin’s evolutionary path has been full of compromises, disputes, and unexpected turns.

2017: CME Group launches BTC Futures: Wall Street officially recognizes Bitcoin as a financial Assets for the first time. Although this has sparked controversy over “betraying the decentralized spirit”, it also marks Bitcoin’s move from the edge to the mainstream.

2021: Tesla’s big bet with MicroStrategy: Michael Saylor fully Bitcoined MicroStrategy’s (now renamed Strategy) balance sheet, pioneering a “corporate treasury strategy.” In February 2021, Tesla bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. The participation of these traditional companies changed Bitcoin from a “speculative Assets” to an “Assets allocation option.”

September 2021: El Salvador’s National Experiment: El Salvador, led by President Nayib Bukele, became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal MMF. Despite strong opposition from the International money market funds (IMF) and the controversial implementation process, this is the first time that Bitcoin has been recognized at the level of a sovereign country. As of September 2025, El Salvador held 6,313 BTC worth over $0.7 billion, and unrealized gains of over $0.4 billion.

January 2024: ETF milestone: The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs, including giants such as BlackRock, Fidelity, and Ark Investments. This was one of the most significant turning points in Bitcoin’s history.

So who’s buying it?

Today’s Bitcoin is no longer just a game for retail investors and geeks, but is officially incorporated into the Assets allocation landscape by mainstream institutions. A growing number of Institutions funds are entering the Bitcoin market through compliant channels such as ETFs.

The Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), a public pension Funds that manages assets of approximately $156 billion, purchased a $0.164 billion Bitcoin ETF in the second quarter of 2024 and held approximately 99,000 IBIT shares and 71,000 FBTC shares, becoming one of the first US state pension funds to publicly disclose Bitcoin exposure.

The Harvard Management Company (Harvard Management Company) was also allocated in the second quarter of 2024, investing approximately $0.116 billion in a Bitcoin ETF and holding approximately 1.9 million IBIT shares. This marks one of the most influential education funds in the world, officially incorporating Bitcoin into the long-term Assets pool.

Morgan Stanley (MORGAN STANLEY) 15 million customers buy Bitcoin ETFs through wealth management Account, and the minimum investment threshold is 0.1 million dollars. This means that traditional financial customers are accessing Bitcoin assets in a compliant manner.

More extensive data shows that more than 937 institutions disclosed their Bitcoin ETF Hold Positions in the US SEC’s Form 13F quarterly report, covering various types of long-term capital such as pension funds, endowments, hedge funds, and family offices.

Philosophical reflection: compromise or maturity?

This evolution has been hotly debated.

Critics say the Wall Street hug is a kind of “compilation.” When BlackRock held a large amount of Bitcoin, and when ETF became the main entry point, Bitcoin lost its decentralized soul and became another Assets controlled by financial elites and “old money people.”

Proponents say wider adoption is an inevitable evolution. Bitcoin’s core values, fixed supply, decentralization, and censorship resistance, have not changed. Even if Wall Street bought Bitcoin, they couldn’t change the rules of the agreement and couldn’t print new Bitcoin.

In fact, formal compromises have made the kernel uncompromising.

Bitcoin hasn’t changed itself to cater to Wall Street; instead, Wall Street has to accept Bitcoin’s rules. When BlackRock wants to hold Bitcoin, they must learn to manage private keys, must accept a decentralized network, and must accept a supply limit of 21,000,000.

For the first time, traditional finance gave in to Bitcoin.

When Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin, his goal was not to make it a tool for small circles, but to create a MMF system that everyone can use, everyone can verify, and no one can control. Seen from this perspective, Wall Street’s institutional adoption is the way to go.

Bitcoin is an Assets that will always benefit from increased entropy in the real world

“Entropy increase”: the key to understanding chaos

Let me introduce a physical concept: entropy.

In the second law of thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of the degree of disorder in a system. The entropy of a closed system always tends to increase — this is “entropy increase”. Coffee gets cold, rooms get messy, and order always evolves into disorder.

However, this concept of physics is the best analogy for understanding the value of Bitcoin.

In economic and social systems, “entropy growth” is not an abstract metaphor; it actually occurs in every complex system we are in.

Imagine that when a company was first established, the scale was small, the goals were clear, and the process was simple; everyone knew what they should do, information transmission was efficient, and decisions were clear. At this point, the “entropy” of the system was very low.

However, as the company continues to expand, hierarchical increases, personnel turnover, interdepartmental interest frictions, information delays, and institutional rigidity gradually emerged. That initial clear order is beginning to be replaced by noise: more meetings, longer documents, more blurred responsibilities, and managers spend more time “coordinating” rather than “acting.” At some point, the company seemed to have lost its original sense of direction.

This is a typical “increase in organizational entropy.”

So is the economic system. The more MMF is issued, the more complex the debt, and the more entangled the relationship between politics and finance, the more difficult it is for the system to maintain its original order. Every crisis is a natural manifestation of increased entropy.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is an anti-entropy mechanism.

Bitcoin’s “negative entropy” attribute

1. Supply rigidity: iron law of 21,000,000 sheets

In the fiat MMF system, the money supply is elastic and arbitrary. The central bank can freely adjust liquidity according to economic conditions, and this kind of “regulation” often means printing more money. Take the US dollar as an example: in 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet size was about 800 billion dollars, and the M2 MMF supply was 7.5 trillion dollars; by 2020, these two figures expanded to 4.5 trillion and 15.5 trillion dollars, respectively; by 2025, the Fed’s balance sheet had reached 7 trillion dollars, and the M2 MMF supply soared to 21 trillion dollars. In just 17 years, the dollar’s MMF supply has grown 180%, which is equivalent to the average person’s savings purchasing power being diluted by nearly two-thirds.

This trend is not unique to the US. The Bank of Japan’s balance sheet is already equivalent to 130% of GDP, the highest in the world; the ECB launched a debt purchase program totaling 1.85 trillion euros during the pandemic; China’s M2 grew nearly sixfold from 47 percent in 2008 to 280 percent in 2025.

We can understand it this way: let’s say there were only 100 Apple in the world, and you own 10 of them, accounting for 10% of the total. But if the central bank suddenly “prints” 900 new Apple, and the total number becomes 1,000, the 10 in your hand remain the same, but they only account for 1% of the total. Your absolute wealth hasn’t decreased, but your relative wealth has been diluted by 90%.

Bitcoin’s supply mechanism is the complete opposite. Its distribution rules are written into the code, and the total amount is constant at 21 million, which is automatically halved every four years, and no one can change it.

As of November 2025, Bitcoin’s supply curve has almost come to an end. Approximately 19,580,000 Bitcoin were mined across the network, accounting for 93.2% of the total amount. The remaining 1,420,000 (6.8%) were gradually released over 115 years through a four-year halving cycle.

This means that Bitcoin is entering an “era of scarcity” that has never been seen before. First, its inflation rate continues to fall. The annual inflation rate in 2024 is about 1.7%, and after the next halving (2028), it will fall to about 0.85%, far below the Federal Reserve’s long-term inflation target of 2%.

Second, Bitcoin is also facing natural deflationary effects. It is estimated that about 1 million Bitcoin disappear permanently every year due to loss of private keys, death of holders, or operational errors. This means that the actual circulating supply is constantly shrinking.

2. Decentralized: no single point of failure

When a system is too centralized, it can easily be corroded, manipulated, and misused. The concentration of power in the hands of a few means that risks are as concentrated as decisions; once mistakes occur, the costs are shared by the entire system.

In traditional financial systems, this centralization is particularly evident.

The right to issue MMF is in the hands of a very small number of people — the Federal Reserve Board has only seven members, yet it can determine the direction of trillions of dollars in MMF policy. The payment system is controlled by a few giants such as SWIFT, Visa, and MasterCard, and they have the right to freeze transactions of any individual or institution. Bank Account aren’t really personal, and an executive order can freeze assets — the 2022 Canadian truck driver protests are a prime example.

In stark contrast to this is the decentralized reality of the Bitcoin network. As of 2025, there are approximately 0.18 million full nodes in running worldwide: North America accounts for 35%, Europe 40%, Asia 20%, and the remaining 5% are spread all over the world. Anyone can running a node—all it takes is a regular computer and a 2TB hard drive, and it costs around $500. The existence of a node means that the rules are verified jointly by all participants and not decided by a central Institutions.

At the level of computing power, the security of the Bitcoin network is jointly maintained by miners distributed around the world. The total computing power of the entire network is about 650 EH/s. The top five mining pools together account for about 55%, but no single entity controls more than 25%. The geographical distribution is equally extensive: the US accounts for 38%, Canada 7%, Russia 5%, Kazakhstan 4%, and the rest is scattered across Latin America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. This distribution makes it impossible for any country, Institutions, or company to unilaterally control or shut down the network.

3. transparency

Furthermore, Bitcoin’s transparency removes the black box of information from traditional financial systems. In the fiat MMF world, the public is often excluded from key data — the Capital Trend from the 2008 bailout plan is unclear, the details of the Federal Reserve’s QE Assets purchases are not transparent, and the currency swaps with foreign central banks are kept secret. Even with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, customers had no idea that the bank’s balance sheet had large losses of long-term Bonds.

In the Bitcoin system, this asymmetry is almost non-existent. Every transaction, every block, and every transfer is publicly recorded on the chain, and anyone can independently verify it.

Historical verification: entropy increase is positively correlated with BTC price

Let’s take a look at the data.

March 2020: COVID-19 outbreak

Central banks around the world initiated unprecedented Algo easing, and the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet swelled from $4.2 trillion to $7.4 trillion in one year. Bitcoin’s reaction? It surged from $3,800 (March 2020 low) to $69,000 (November 2021) — an increase of over 1,700%.

2022: Russia-Ukraine conflict and financial sanctions

Western countries have frozen Russia’s Forex reserves of about 300 billion dollars. This unprecedented weaponization of finance has caused many countries around the world to rethink the safety of reserve assets.

2024-2025: ETF approval and the US debt crisis

When US debt broke through the $35 trillion mark, when interest payments exceeded defense spending, and when the CBO predicted that debt would reach 135% of GDP by 2035, Bitcoin broke through a record high of $126,200.

Future deduction: The acceleration of entropy growth

If we look ahead, there are three trends that will further accelerate entropy growth in the real world:

1. The impact of artificial intelligence

The rise of artificial intelligence is profoundly reshaping the global labor market. As AI gradually displaces large numbers of repetitive jobs, structural unemployment is likely to become a long-term phenomenon. At that time, governments may have to implement a “Q&M Dental income for all” (UBI) to maintain social stability. And UBI’s funding source is almost unsuspense—printing money. The issuance of a new MMF means new inflationary pressure, and it also means another round of “increased MMF entropy.”

At the same time, the explosive growth of AI-generated content is blurring the “truth.” Images, sounds, and text can all be falsified by algorithms, and the reliability of information is rapidly declining — this is a sign of “increased information entropy.” In a world where truth and falsehood are difficult to discern, an immutable and verifiable ledger system will be particularly important.

2. Competition for resources

Frequent extreme weather, energy and food shortages, and supply chain conflicts are exacerbating inequalities in global resource allocation. However, the failure of international cooperation mechanisms has caused the world order to become fragmented — this is another manifestation of the “increasing entropy of order.”

As trust systems between countries continue to break down, a neutral, decentralized settlement layer is particularly necessary. Bitcoin has no borders, no political positions, and in a fragmented world, it can be the smallest consensus that sustains the global exchange of value.

3. Generational wealth divide

Gen Z and millennials are a generation that grew up in the shadow of the financial crisis. They have seen the bursting of their parents’ housing price bubble, the heavy burden of student loans, and the gradual collapse of the pension system. For them, distrust of the traditional financial system is not an emotional rebellion; it is a realistic, structural perception.

According to VanEck’s 2025 survey, young consumers are more likely to choose Bitcoin over gold as a store of value in emerging markets. They grew up in the digital age, believing that algorithms are better than institutions and that they trust code more than authority.

As long as the real-world “chaos index” continues to rise — MMF overruns, uncontrolled debt, geographical fragmentation, and information pollution — Bitcoin’s value as an “anchor of order” will continue to increase.

“Satoshi Nakamoto” 17 years later

Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared in 2011, leaving behind a code and a question: “Can this experiment continue?”

Seventeen years have passed, and the answer is yes. But this answer was not given by Satoshi Nakamoto alone, but by countless “Satoshi Nakamoto” — people who continue their spirit, redefine their meaning, and expand their boundaries.

Guardians of the technical layer: Code is the Constitution

Core developer groups (such as Wladimir van der Laan, Pieter Wuille) are Bitcoin’s “anonymous guardians.” In the 2017 SegWit2x battle, large mining pools and Exchange jointly promoted block expansion in an attempt to change Bitcoin’s basic rules. Core developers refused to compromise and insisted that “Bitcoin’s value lies in the immutability of the rules.” In the end, the community sided with them, proving a principle: the code is a constitution, and no one can unilaterally modify it.

Lightning Network developers, such as Elizabeth Stark, have built a layer 2 payment network on top of Bitcoin, making small-amount, high-frequency payments possible. El Salvador is using the Lightning Network to implement everyday payment scenarios — making the original vision of “peer-to-peer electronic Cash/Money Market” possible again without compromising the security of the underlying layer.

Application Pioneers: From Idea to Reality

Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, is the boldest national-level experimenter. On September 7, 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal MMF. Bukele launched the Chivo wallet (based on the Lightning Network), offering every citizen a $30 bitcoin reward, installing 200 bitcoin ATMs, and implementing a “buy 1 bitcoin a day” Global Strategy beginning in November 2022. He also did something unprecedented: the address of the national Bitcoin wallet was revealed in March 2024, so the world could check El Salvador’s Hold Positions in real time.

As of September 2025, El Salvador held 6,313 Bitcoin, invested around $0.3 billion, and unrealized gains of over $0.4 billion (133% yield). The actual results were remarkable: tourism increased by 55% (“Bitcoin pilgrimage”), remittance costs were reduced from 10% to < 1% (cumulative savings of 2.4 billion dollars), and 3 million people used Chivo wallets (47% of the population). Despite strong opposition from the IMF and demanding the cancellation of Bitcoin’s legal tender status on the condition of a $1.3 billion loan, Bukele ultimately only agreed to change the merchant’s acceptance of Bitcoin to a “voluntary” one, but retained its legal MMF status and continued to buy.

Bukele’s vision is clear: “When the dollar eventually loses its reserve MMF status, countries that prepare ahead will win. El Salvador will be one of them.” Regardless of whether this experiment succeeds or not, El Salvador, a small country with a population of 6.4 million, is writing the boldest national-level experiment in Bitcoin history. The results will influence future countries’ attitudes towards Bitcoin.

Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Strategy, is taking “enterprise Bitcoinization” to the extreme. In August 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused corporate Cash/Money Market to depreciate, Saylor made an aggressive decision: fully Bitcoin MicroStrategy’s balance sheet. He continued to buy Bitcoin by issuing convertible bonds and Stocks financing, and created a “Bitcoin barbell strategy”: using debt and equity financing to buy Bitcoin, using Bitcoin appreciation to repay debts, and achieve a positive feedback cycle.

As of October 30, 2025, Strategy holds 640,808 Bitcoin (about 3% of total supply) at a total cost of about 42.4 billion dollars, current value of about 69 billion dollars, and unrealized revenue of 26.6 billion dollars. The company’s stock price has risen 3,300% over the past five years, far exceeding the 1,100% increase of Bitcoin itself. Saylor’s strategy is now being imitated by dozens of listed companies ($Metaplanet (3350.JP)$, Marathon Holdings, etc.), formed a new category of “Bitcoin treasury companies”.

Saylor’s philosophy is simple: “Bitcoin is the highest form of property in human history. We won’t sell bitcoin and never will. Whoever gets the most Bitcoin wins.” He turned a traditional software company with a Market Cap of 1 billion dollars into a Bitcoin development company with a Market Cap of more than 121 billion dollars through a Bitcoin strategy. This is one of the boldest balance sheet restructurings in corporate finance history.

The Evangelist of the Mind: Connecting Two Worlds

Lyn Alden, macroeconomic Analyst, explains Bitcoin’s MMF attributes in the language of traditional finance. Her research reports are widely read by Wall Street Funds managers and pension administrators. The core argument is: Bitcoin is not a “digital tulip,” but an “upgrade in monetary technology” — the path of MMF evolution is from “difficult to counterfeit” to “easy to carry”. Bitcoin satisfies these two conditions at the same time (harder to counterfeit than gold, easier to carry than banknotes). She’s the bridge between traditional finance and the crypto world.

Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures, re-explains Bitcoin mining’s energy issues. Faced with criticism that “Bitcoin consumes too much energy,” he proposed a new framework: energy consumption itself is not a problem; the question is whether energy is being wasted. He pointed out that 52% of Bitcoin mining uses renewable energy, and many miners use “discarded electricity” (excess electricity from hydropower plants), and mining can also be used as a “grid stabilizer.” This work changed the way ESG investors thought about Bitcoin, enabling more Institutions funding to be allocated in compliance.

Infrastructure Builders: Lowering the Barriers

Brian Armstrong,$Coinbase (COIN.US)$ The CEO has established a compliant exchange so that ordinary people can safely access Bitcoin. Coinbase is the custodian of 11 Bitcoin ETFs, proving a reality: the vast majority of people need a regulated, user-friendly portal.

Jack Dorsey, founder of Block (former Square), integrated Bitcoin payments into mainstream apps through CASH App. In 2018, Cash App became the first mainstream payment app to support Bitcoin trading, and by 2024, more than 13 million Americans had purchased Bitcoin through Cash App — the most concrete expression of Bitcoin’s “mass adoption”. Dorsey also funded the Bitcoin Development Kit open source toolkit to help developers easily build Bitcoin applications.

Satoshi Nakamoto designed the engine, and these people built the road. Bitcoin’s success is not a success for Satoshi Nakamoto alone, but a collective achievement of countless people willing to carry on its spirit.

What is the contemporary Bitcoin mentality?

When AI can fake any voice or face, we need a ledger that can’t be faked;

When regulators say “innovation must be within our defined boundaries”, we need spaces to innovate without permission;

As everyone is celebrating “crypto’s finally being accepted by the mainstream,” we need someone to remember that Bitcoin was never meant to be accepted, but to survive when it wasn’t.

In an increasingly centralized world, preserve a decentralized option—this is the contemporary meaning of the Bitcoin spirit.

epilogue

Let me go back to the question at the beginning of the article: Why do we need Bitcoin 17 years later?

Bitcoin itself has given four answers:

1. Historical level: The problems of 2008 were not solved; instead, they became worse in 2025.

2. Functional level: Bitcoin evolved from a payment instrument to a store of value.

3. Philosophical level: Bitcoin is a negative entropy mechanism to counter the increase in entropy.

4. Spiritual level: Amid the triple siege of AI, regulation, and institutionalization, the Bitcoin spirit is the courage to continue questioning and creating.

But the real answer is probably simpler:

17 years later, we still need bitcoin —

not because it’s perfect,

It’s because the world isn’t good enough.

Edit/Rocky