Bitcoin: No Lie.
A letter to Mike Brock, who recently "ethicsquit" Bitcoin.
An Open Letter to Mike Brock
June 8, 2026 Bitcoin Block Height 952,864
Dear Mike Brock,
I recently read your December 2025 piece, titled “Bitcoin is a Lie,” and I have some thoughts I’d like to share with you. Even if you don’t read or respond to them, perhaps someone, somewhere, will find them useful.
I am with you against fascism. And I am with Bitcoin against unfreedom. Because Bitcoin is satyagraha, M.K. Gandhi’s word for the “soul force” of those whom he first led in resistance against apartheid in South Africa.
We’re all bound by time, physics, the failings of the flesh, and the rules of whatever government’s boundaries we are born into. Geographically imposed rules surround us, by accident of birth. Many of us are literal prisoners, merely surviving until death in cold cement boxes. Others are sealed off by digital prisons of oppressive states.
I want someone from a freaking gulag of a country, who will likely never be able to escape physically, to be able to speak value with a voice that cannot be silenced, to someone on the other side of the world.
Bitcoin makes that possible. It lets someone who can’t change his miserable physical circumstances to use code to carry value to anyone, anywhere. That makes bitcoin a soul force, emanating from the collective soul of humanity, pushing us to become freer.
M.K. Gandhi wrote “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.” Mike, you and I both know, so many states are now lawless and corrupt. Martin Luther King Jr. from his prison cell in Birmingham, wrote “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” With commitment, we’ll get there. Saving and transacting in bitcoin is nonviolent direct action against corrupt and draconian laws and states.
Forget price-speculating assholes. Forget ETF and treasury company shills. Forget people who promote loans against bitcoin held in self-custody. They’re all bullshitters working to corral people into The Panopticon. And definitely forget assholes who bark “have fun staying poor.” Leave them to their little games.
And forget “money for enemies.” Bitcoin is pure voluntary cooperation. Because of world citizens’ non-violent cooperation, the Bitcoin protocol teaches police- and prison-states that they can’t completely silence or take every last thing away from their us—even if they take our lives. From this truth, many new freedoms arise.
I run a Bitcoin node so that anyone can join the network and speak freely. It’s not, as you say in your essay, “a system premised on the assumption that everyone is your enemy.” It’s a system that incentivizes cooperation. It’s not “every man for himself.” It’s “all for one and one for all.” It’s the digital version of walking together with fellow conscientious objectors as fascist thugs swing clubs on the other side of the bridge. It’s anti-liar, and anti-asshole-cop.
Owing to the collective actions of freedom-minded people, one person somewhere will always have the capacity to speak value beyond walls, beyond borders, beyond nations. Such action stands as a shield against the jackboot that would stomp down on the human face, forever. And it opens a new space: a space of solidarity between the prisoner in drastic circumstances and the free person in another part of the world. I’m not going to abandon the field just because some fools only care about price. Price preoccupation feeds Moloch, the fiat god of genocide.
And let’s remember one last thing: governments should have no rights. None. Zero. They should only have abilities given to them by people. This is no small thing. At the very core, Bitcoin is an analog for that last and most special thing that government cannot take away from individuals: thought. If we cannot conspire in our minds against systems of control, then it’s 1984. In our fiat world, governments have so much control over people’s everyday lives, especially their financial lives. There must be some last best things that demonstrate the ultimate powerlessness of government against individuals of good conscience. Bitcoin is a last best thing. The digital right of revolution.
Mike, if you read this, thank you for your attention. Lastly, but very importantly, I celebrate your right and ability to join and leave Bitcoin whenever you see fit.
In solidarity with you against authoritarianism and fascism,
Cosmo Crixter (Bitcoiner)
