Here My Opinion where Nobody is Talking About
You watched the charts. You did the math. Everyone said this was the cycle—the one where Bitcoin would smash through $180K, maybe even touch $300K or a million.
Instead? We got a shrug. A muted, disappointing bull market that barely whispered past $100K before stalling. No banana zone. No parabolic explosion. Just sideways action while gold and tech stocks hit fresh records.
What happened?
The internet will feed you theories. Jordi Visser’s “silent IPO” moment. OG whales selling after the $100K milestone. AI draining speculative money from crypto. These explanations feel tidy. Logical even.
But here’s the thing they miss—the reason that cuts deeper than supply dynamics and institutional rotation.
When Bitcoiners Stopped Talking About Bitcoin
Every past bull market roared to life on the back of Bitcoin-native narratives.
Remember those podcasts? The endless exploration of game theory, Austrian economics, mining decentralization, hard money principles. Bitcoiners weren’t just investors. They were revolutionaries armed with ideas. Every cycle uncovered new dimensions of why this technology would conquer the world—from sound money properties to censorship resistance to the social dynamics of hyperbitcoinization.
The conversation was always about Bitcoin’s internal strengths. Its fundamental properties. The reasons mass adoption was inevitable because the technology was simply superior.
Then the American election season arrived.
And everything changed.
The Great Narrative Pivot
Suddenly, Bitcoin-specific discussions vanished. In their place? Cultist political slogans echoing across every podcast, Twitter space, and YouTube channel.
“Golden age.”
“4D chess.”
“Running the government like a business.”
“The first Bitcoin president.”
“The most libertarian president ever.”
“Strategic Bitcoin reserve.”
“DOGE.”
As a high-volume podcast consumer for over a decade, I searched for Bitcoin-native ideas and narratives. I couldn’t find them. Every show—every single one of my favorites—devolved into political theater. Golden age this. DOGE that. Strategic reserve promises that turned out to be empty air. It totally killed all the Bitcoin native narratives, and replaced it with external empty political promises.
Months went by without finishing a single episode. I’d hit stop the moment the political nonsense started. Which eventually meant I stopped listening entirely.
The Betrayal of the OGs
If you’re a libertarian Bitcoiner, you know this pain.
Dave Smith. Tom Woods. Clint Russell. Names that once represented principled resistance to state power. I had to slay a lot of libertarian hero’s. For Bitcoin it wasn’t any different: Bitcoiners I respected for years. Voices that understood why separation of money and state mattered.
One by one, they fell in line. Mindless bootlickers repeating talking points from a political machine that had nothing to do with Bitcoin’s core mission.
It was the biggest betrayal I’ve ever felt in this space.
The feeling of fighting together to change the world—of being an innovator in freedom technology, part of a revolution against centralized control—shattered into pieces.
Bitcoin didn’t change. The code still works exactly as designed. But being a Bitcoiner changed completely.
Where Did the Energy Go?
Narratives drive markets. Not just price charts and halving cycles. The stories we tell ourselves create the conviction that fuels real money flows.
When 90% of Bitcoiners transform from independent thinkers into political zealots, something fundamental breaks. The optimism that powered previous bull markets—the energizing sense of building a better future and winning despite what political figures do—evaporates.
I didn’t sell my Bitcoin. The fundamentals remained too strong. But I can understand why others did.
Here’s who got hit hardest: the OGs. The early adopters who were libertarian or at least a-political. These weren’t people looking for a political daddy. They were looking for separation of money and state. For true financial sovereignty.
When they saw the community abandon those principles for partisan cheerleading, many quietly exited. Others simply stopped buying. The motivation, the energy, the focus—gone. Not because Bitcoin itself was attacked, but because Bitcoiners were attacked. And very successfully.
Like last cycle, there are plenty possible Bitcoin native narratives this cycle. Why did we give it to the politicians? The people we rightfully hate the most?
The Psyop Question
You will say it’s stupid to sell your Bitcoin because you don’t like what Bitcoiners are doing, and I would normally agree. However, this wasn’t only a hit to my feelings, it also damaged my perceived resistance of Bitcoin agains social attacks.
Before this transformation, I saw Bitcoiners as the most resilient people on the planet. Social attacks? We’d see them from miles away. Consensus changes? We scrutinized every line of code.
But if 90% of Bitcoiners fell for a political psyop, how protected are we really against an internal social attack?
BIP110 and BIP361 floated through the conversation recently. Are these early attempts to psyop Bitcoiners into attacking Bitcoin itself? I can’t say for certain. But my confidence shifted.
My estimated chance of Bitcoin’s failure used to be a fraction of a percent. Now? A few percent. Still unlikely. Still worth fighting for. But the feeling of certainty is gone.
Why Whales Walked Away
Put yourself in a whale’s position. You’ve accumulated thousands of Bitcoin over a decade. You believed in the revolution. You held through multiple 80% drawdowns.
Now you watch the community abandon its principles. You see respected voices become propagandists. You notice the narrative shift from technical superiority to political loyalty tests.
What do you do?
Rational actors take profits. They diversify. They reduce exposure to an asset whose social layer appears compromised. Not because Bitcoin changed—but the social protective layer did.
Was this selling pressure enough to mute the bull market? Combine it with the IPO distribution theory, the milestone profit-taking at $100K, and the AI competition for speculative capital. Multiple inputs in a complex system producing a disappointing output.
But the narrative betrayal was the psychological driver that made those other factors bite harder.
The Path Forward
Bitcoin doesn’t care about our feelings. The code keeps running. Blocks keep getting mined. The monetary policy remains fixed.
But communities are fragile. They require shared values and independent thinking to thrive. When a space becomes dominated by political zealots repeating slogans instead of principled warriors who want to change the world, something essential is lost.
If this resonates with you, Please leave a comment shill your non-political podcast or Twitter account! I feel lonely as a principled Bitcoiner in 2026!
The Bitcoin that existed before the political takeover is worth rebuilding now the political promises are proven to be false. It starts by identifying the problem honestly. Political zealots in Bitcoin are worse than shitcoiners, so we should treat them like that. At least shitcoiners aren’t bombing girls’ schools last time I checked….
We need to reclaim the narrative. Focus on Bitcoin’s internal strengths again. Game theory. Economics. Code. Not cult leaders and empty promises.
The revolution isn’t over. It just got distracted. Time to bring it back!