Bitcoin, and ultimately broader crypto, was steered away from being a decentralized different to the state and towards integration into the very monetary system it was meant to interchange.
In an interview, Aaron Day, co-founder of Daylight Freedom, a basis devoted to monetary sovereignty and particular person liberty, reached this conclusion primarily based on his private experiences with Bitcoin.
Questioning Bitcoin’s Unique Mission
These days, Bitcoin is finest identified for its non-sovereign, censorship-resistant traits. For a number of years now, the crypto group has touted the asset as akin to gold, albeit digital.
Day, an outspoken critic of cryptocurrencies and a libertarian thinker, as soon as thought this too.
That’s why he began utilizing Bitcoin as early as 2012. Nevertheless, he quickly began to understand that its narrative was in a relentless state of transformation– one which parted methods with its self-proclaimed decentralized nature.
His persistent remarks on social media and sharp criticisms of among the trade’s strongest firms have inevitably made some paint him as a conspiracy theorist.
Nevertheless, his lengthy trajectory as a crypto consumer within the house, paired with the analysis he conducts as a fellow on the Brownstone Institute, offers a perspective that’s onerous to dismiss, particularly amid Bitcoin’s broader mainstream adoption.
New Hampshire as a Bitcoin Testing Floor
When Day, a New Hampshire resident, began utilizing Bitcoin 15 years in the past, many eating places and outlets accepted it immediately. It already functioned as a spendable digital forex.
In some ways, the state was a breeding floor for one of these exercise.
Generally known as the “Live Free or Die” area, New Hampshire additionally grew to become the house of the Free State Challenge, a nonprofit political migration motion based in 2001 that efficiently relocated roughly 20,000 free thinkers to the world, aiming to pay attention them in a low-population state.
“Live Free or Die” — Begin your Journey with the Free State Challenge
The combat for liberty started proper right here in New Hampshire and it’s alive and thriving as we speak. We’re Free Staters — hundreds of liberty lovers who’ve made the transfer to the Granite State to dwell free and construct a… pic.twitter.com/8JssrpsMfC
— The Free State Challenge (@FreeStateNH) November 6, 2025
Day was the Chairman of that undertaking, and by advantage of his beliefs, he grew to become drawn to Bitcoin’s potential.
“Back [in 2012], mostly conferences were about how Bitcoin was going to be used as an alternative to central banks, how it was going to be something that solved the problem of the 2008 financial crisis, [and] how it was going to be a tool that didn’t require intermediaries or third parties. This is how I got introduced to it,” Day advised BeInCrypto throughout a podcast episode.
Nevertheless, regardless of its early adoption in his metropolis, the narrative started to shift by 2017. In response to him, it quickly grew to become unusable.
“All of a sudden, the fees went through the roof. We went from transactions being finalized in seconds to days. It lost its fundamental utility, which is to be something that anyone anywhere in the world could engage in voluntary transactions without third parties,” he added.
Although that was Day’s unique frustration with the forex, it quickly solely represented the tip of the iceberg.
A Narrative Shift From Money to Retailer of Worth
When Day began utilizing Bitcoin, it was seen as simply one other type of forex for on a regular basis transactions with decentralized benefits. It was by no means perceived as the rest.
“People weren’t talking about primarily as being digital gold. It’s something you just hold and save and don’t spend. It’s not in the title of the whitepaper, this is not the behavior and function of Bitcoin,” he defined.
These adjustments coincided with the rise of Layer 2 options in crypto. These secondary protocols, constructed on high of the first blockchain, are designed to considerably improve transaction speeds and scale back charges. Protocols like Segregated Witness (SegWit) and Lightning Community grew to become notably in style on the time.
Whereas many builders argued these upgrades have been obligatory technical trade-offs, Day interpreted them in another way.
In his view, the technical debate round scaling was inseparable from a broader structural shift occurring behind the scenes — one associated to who was funding Bitcoin’s improvement.
From Non-Revenue Backing to Institutional Affect
In 2012, the Bitcoin Basis, a non-profit group, was established in the US to advertise Bitcoin use and shield the integrity of the undertaking. It additionally supported Bitcoin’s earliest core builders.
Three years later, nonetheless, the group collapsed amid inside turmoil and monetary difficulties.
Shortly afterward, the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT) Media Lab, by its Digital Forex Initiative —directed by Jeffrey Epstein-linked Joi Ito— started funding a number of Bitcoin core builders.
Present workers on the MIT Media Lab Digital Forex Initiative. Supply: MIT.
To many within the ecosystem, this was a sensible resolution. Bitcoin was an open-source protocol with no formal company sponsor. Builders wanted funding to proceed their work.
However for Day, the timing raised questions.
“MIT took over, and then some of the same developers that were working on things like SegWit and Lightning Network, essentially hobbling Bitcoin as peer-to-peer cash and moving to this Bitcoin is digital gold narrative.”
As Bitcoin’s scalability points grew to become extra obvious and the community’s future improvement was more and more steered by well-funded institutional pursuits, the undertaking’s decentralized nature started to erode.
Quick ahead to as we speak, and Bitcoin has turn into extensively built-in in infrastructure immediately tied to conventional, centralized banking. Change-traded funds tied to the asset, institutional custody, and nation-state reserves have since entered the dialog.
Day questioned whether or not this trajectory was inevitable or the results of structural forces that redirected Bitcoin’s unique mission.
“I think at the end of this, the longer it goes on, the more it’s pretty clear that all of crypto has been hijacked,” he concluded.
