By Willem Shroé, CEO of Botanix Labs
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author
On May 23, 2014, just days after Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to a $2.6 billion settlement, Edmund Moy, who served as director of the U.S. Mint from 2006 to 2011, had an epiphany. After watching the bank’s chief executive, Brady W. Dougan, say the fine “wouldn’t do much damage” shortly after announcing criminal charges for a long-running scheme to help wealthy clients evade U.S. taxes, Moy wrote on X: “It’s time for the banks to have competition.”
This experience led him to write the book, The Monetary Revolution with Bitcoin, and articulate a philosophy that places Bitcoin at the center of a transformative movement that he believes ultimately aims to disrupt money, payments, and the entire financial sector. Through his experiences in the financial system, Moy came to believe that Bitcoin could disrupt “traditional” concepts of money, banking, and fintech by introducing a permissionless, decentralized financial system.
In those early days, Bitcoin was full of invention, and the core spirit of disrupting traditional finance seemed to accelerate this process. During this time, Tether launched on Bitcoin, primitive decentralized exchanges like Bisq served Bitcoin traders, and tokens (both fungible and non-fungible) sprang up, all of which were developed on Bitcoin. The industry sentiment at the time was a mixture of ecstasy, anxiety, and greed.
The vision Moy articulated is shared by almost every Bitcoin enthusiast, but there is widespread disagreement on how to achieve decentralized money and finance. From stablecoins to NFTs, almost every application category commonly used in the decentralized finance industry today originated in Bitcoin, but a strong ideological undercurrent has begun to culturally turn against these projects. From Satoshi Dice in 2012 to Ordinals in 2024, Bitcoin's history is littered with experimental projects that have been criticized as "spam" or "distracting the Bitcoin community." As a result, developers, users, and capital that could have flowed to financial applications running on Bitcoin have gradually turned to other public chains.
Imagine creating a new financial system with a powerful currency, but nowhere to use it. If this anti-innovation movement succeeds, this will be the inevitable end of Bitcoin. Fortunately, we have seen this not happen over the past two years, with inscriptions, runes, new layer 2 networks, and other types of innovative projects being built in and around Bitcoin. Billions of dollars in funding from professional investors and retail speculators have fueled what many market participants see as the beginning of a new era for Bitcoin, but in reality, it marks a return to Bitcoin’s original mission - to disrupt and decentralize the world of finance.
In an industry with thousands of competitors, Bitcoin is the best public blockchain. Not only does Bitcoin have the largest well-known brand in and outside of the cryptocurrency industry, it also controls the largest pool of capital at over $1 trillion. Bitcoin is also the most battle-tested public blockchain in the world, with thousands of nodes around the world and 100% network uptime for 11 consecutive years. Bitcoin is the world's largest, most secure, most decentralized, and most reliable permissionless financial network. Building on Bitcoin means building on the best platform.
But Bitcoin still has a lot of catching up to do. Solana, Ethereum, and other blockchains have taken advantage of Bitcoin’s near-total stagnation, spending years nurturing ecosystems that host hundreds of applications, tens of thousands of users, and billions of dollars in funding. Even the Lightning Network, long touted by Bitcoin’s “anti-DeFi” faction, has seen the number of tokens on its network stagnate for years.
It’s time to recommit to making Bitcoin the home for innovation and experimentation in the cryptocurrency industry. We will fail if Bitcoin doesn’t become an onramp for new users into permissionless finance. We will fail if Bitcoin ends up being just an asset held in custody by ETF providers. We will also fail if the world’s best currency doesn’t gain widespread adoption as a native financial system powered by Bitcoin is developed. The techno-cultural norms and habits that have held Bitcoin back for years must be eradicated.
Building the future of money and finance on Bitcoin requires an army of builders. Over the past two years, hundreds of new founders and engineers have started building projects on Bitcoin, but that number needs to grow. At Botanix Labs, we’re developing part of Bitcoin’s future — a Layer 2 network called Spiderchain. But anyone building anything on Bitcoin should be proud to be part of a large team of people collaborating to build the decentralized financial ecosystem. Thanks to the collective efforts of these builders, Bitcoin’s best days are still ahead.
Bitcoin is a civilization-changing invention that should give ordinary people the power to escape the clutches of a highly centralized, censorship-prone financial system. But Bitcoin needs to foster an alternative financial system that can replace the existing one. Experimentation and innovation should be core principles of this new era, driving a transparent, decentralized, and permissionless financial system. The vision of the future of finance that Moy and thousands of others have for Bitcoin is up to all of us to realize. Given the enormity of the challenges we face, we should at least try.
