One builder’s perspective on Bitcoin, Chainlink, and Ethereum.
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A builder at ETH Global New York argues that almost everybody, including people who own it, is wrong about what Bitcoin actually protects you from. Not inflation. Currency debasement. And he uses 2022 to prove the difference.
His frame is competition. “Every single one of the cryptocurrencies, they all compete with Ethereum for this one thing called decentralized immutable settlement. And unlike Ethereum, Bitcoin has no competitor. Bitcoin only competes with gold.”
What it solves, in his telling, is theft by printing. “If you work for forty hours in a work week and you get paid for that, the government comes along and they print twenty percent more money, then the price automatically goes up.”
Then the correction, which is the spine of the piece: “It’s a common misunderstanding that Bitcoin solves the problem of inflation. If you just simply look back at 2022, when the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates, Bitcoin was plummeting as they were raising interest rates. So it did not hedge inflation in that circumstance. What Bitcoin actually hedges is currency debasement.” He traces it back past central banks: “The history of governments, the history of debasing currencies, mixing less and less valuable metal into the coins.”
On Chainlink he makes a distinction most explanations skip: the data “comes from a decentralized network rather than a single source oracle,” which is what separates it from an API.
He also concedes the awkward thing about layer twos rather than defending it. “I like L2s cause they’re cheaper and I hate paying gas fees for ETH. But the problem is that that takes the demand for ETH.” The interviewer finishes the thought and he agrees: price is where supply and demand meet.
He is not only talking. “I run a Nostr relay. I run a Nostr node. I run a Bitcoin node. I have an AI agent that can use all three of those tools. He runs on the same machine.”
And the closing argument, which is the most quotable line in it: “The benefit of decentralization is that no one can change the rules to benefit themselves.” He describes his own work as removing middlemen: “That’s what I do, I disintermediate the rent seekers in the economy. If you’re not solving a problem, you’re not really providing value.”
His message for the builders is two words: build on Bitcoin.