The scarcity of Critical Thinking and the Future of Bitcoin
- Andrew B. White
- Feb 26
- 7 min read
The cypherpunks, the critical thinkers, the ideological libertarians and the freedom money advocates cohorts – those who wanted to separate money and state - are largely saturated. The “elite of the elite” is already full-in bitcoin. Wall Street will now drive adoption via financialization. What are the risks?
The latest interview between Natalie Brunell and Michael Saylor reinforced a conviction I’ve had since the Covid era—not because of what was said in the interview, but because of the reactions in the YouTube comments. Bots and bitcoin haters were out viciously attacking both Natalie and Saylor. I do not use any social media except for the very tranquil Nostr-Primal account, and I was surprised by the toxicity level of the comments and the plain idiocy of most of them on YouTube. Which, will bring me to the “critical thinking people” part below in just a moment.
The most benign commentators complained that Natalie didn’t “challenge” Saylor enough. But that criticism misses two points. First, only getting access to someone like Michael Saylor is no small feat. Second, anyone who has listened to him a number of times knows that he rigorously challenges his own ideas. He follows his reasoning wherever it leads, often pre-empting the very objections critics demand be raised. So why ask him for the thousandth time why he prefers Bitcoin over gold? We have heard his rational answer many times already.
So yes—I give Natalie full credit for allowing Saylor the space to articulate his thesis without unnecessary interruption. Sometimes a focused semi-monologue from someone who has deeply thought through a subject is more valuable than performative confrontation. After all few people in the past (Andreas Antonopoulos was one) had the rationality, the clear thinking, the articulated speaking and the logical coherence that Saylor has when talking about Bitcoin and Strategy’s financial products.
The true elite: “Critical Thinkers”
This brings me to my broader idea of what one can call today’s true “elite.” Not the political or economic elite described in classical sociology—not even Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, although I share their conclusion about the rise of “one-dimensional” thinking individuals. Certainly not the wealthy and powerful degenerates of the many Epstein-like "elitist" circles, who give the term "elite" a deeply negative, degrading connotation.
By “elite,” I mean here something virtuous and simpler: people capable of independent critical thought. This has little to do with IQ or academic credentials. I know brilliant PhDs in physics and mathematics who, in moments of collective fear, failed to step back and ask basic probabilistic questions and act accordingly, critically, without being manipulated.
During Covid for instance, how many highly intelligent individuals calmly assessed the risks instead of absorbing the prevailing narrative? How many paused to evaluate their relative risk to the disease versus the Pharma industry incentives, the manufacturing constraints, contamination risks due to the lack of supervision to rush the production of billions of doses, or the historical data on vaccine testing and safety? Very few, judging by the overwhelming majority who took the experimental shots gripped by irrational fear.
The same dynamic appears elsewhere. How many people believe the mainstream narratives that wars and geopolitical conflicts arise “out of nowhere” because the useful ”villain of the moment” wakes up with imperial fantasies? How many ever examine the incentives embedded in the fiat monetary system and the war profiteering in the terminally ill and corrupted fiat system? Years into major global conflicts, most people still cling to such simplified narratives.
The pattern repeats with events like September 11, or October 7 in Israel. Most people accept surface simplistic mainstream explanations and passively absorb the narratives. Very few investigate underlying power dynamics, incentives, or historical context.
My point is this: intelligence can be evaluated in a number of ways. The IQ is just one, an easily quantifiable parameter. But there are other parameters, not easily quantifiable which makes a person intelligent, such as its mental flexibility and the capability to grasp and evaluate complexities as opposed to complications. Then there is also the critical thinking factor. The capability to think independently of external influences and manipulations. Perhaps, critical thinking is rarer and more important than an high IQ—and it is becoming increasingly rarer.
What This Has to Do With Bitcoin?
What does this have to do with Bitcoin and Saylor? Everything, because it directly affects its adoption path.
As we all know—understanding Bitcoin requires hundreds, often thousands, of hours. Self-custody. Running a node. Studying Austrian economics. Questioning Keynesian orthodoxy. Exploring monetary history. This is not casual learning; it’s a commitment of the scarcest resource we have: time. Then you need to have a rare mental framework, the willingness to question everything you have learned so far, the foundations of it and understand that most of it was wrong , and start from scratch again.
How many people are willing to make that investment? Very few.
If less than 20% of the population are genuine critical thinkers (and that may be overly generous), only a small fraction of them will go deep enough to understand Bitcoin at a foundational level. That’s an elite within the elite.
That includes people like Saylor, Simon Dixon, Natalie, and others like us who have spent years immersed in both legacy finance and Bitcoin’s technical and monetary architecture.
Saylor vs. Dixon: Not Opposites
And why am I bringing in Simon Dixon now? Because Dixon has always been one of the strongest advocates of self-sovereignty and self-custody. Saylor, by contrast, is driving Bitcoin financialization through corporate structures and capital markets. On the surface, they appear far apart.
But this is only on the surface.
Deep down they fully agree on what Bitcoin is. They understand the legacy financial system. They recognize how narratives are shaped by power and incentives. Their disagreement is not about Bitcoin’s nature, function or uses, but about the path to adoption.
Dixon emphasizes bottom-up empowerment: individuals holding their own keys.
Saylor emphasizes top-down capital flows: institutional adoption via financial products.
Are these paths incompatible? No. Are they mutually exclusive? Not at all.
I personally sympathize with Dixon’s ethos. I’ve invested thousands of hours into understanding and self-custody and running a node. But I am also aware that it is unrealistic to expect hundreds of millions of people to follow that same path for the same reason that I have mentioned above about the scarcity of “critical thinking”.
Saylor is correct in saying that bringing trillions into Bitcoin requires Wall Street. Most investors want regulated products, yield structures, and volatility management—not hardware wallets and full nodes. They cannot afford to hodl during bitcoin’s wild volatility spikes. They do not want, they have no time for and they are not interested in reading Satoshi’s Whitepaper, nor learn Austrian economics or what it is the difficulty adjustment mechanism or how cryptographic keys work. They just want a product which works and a “one pager” explanation.
Does that mean Bitcoin’s future is only ETFs and corporate treasury strategies? No. It means adoption will happen in layers.
The cypherpunks, the critical thinkers, the ideological libertarians and the freedom money advocates cohorts – those who wanted to separate money and state - are largely saturated. The “elite of the elite” is already full-in bitcoin. Retail enthusiasm has waned, as analysts like Lyn Alden and James Check have observed. Institutional capital will now be the dominant driver before a new cohort of retail users return to bitcoin. They will be mostly interested in products and services which use bitcoin on the background, easy to use apps which deliver a result without having to learn any of bitcoin complexities.
This means that financialization becomes a real risk? Yes—and no.
Yes, if we completely abandon self-custody and node sovereignty.
No, because financialization contributes anyway to expand the network’s reach and resilience.
Meanwhile, bottom-up adoption continues—especially in developing regions as those great stories show . But scaling “one taxi at a time” is slow. Many users of simple mobile apps also don’t understand custody models or Lightning vs. on-chain transactions. They care that it works: it’s fast, cheap, and reliable.
Is that enough? I am not entirely sure.
I still see a strategic risk worth exploring here:
If, as we argued:
Only a tiny minority are true critical thinkers, the elite of the elite and they are already full-in bitcoin, and
Mass adoption requires financial institutions, and
Most people will never deeply understand Bitcoin.
then the real question becomes: if most adoption will be driven by actors who are not deeply aligned with Bitcoin’s ethos —how do we prevent systemic capture by the very power structures Bitcoin was designed to resist?
Will game theory be enough to maintain a check on the balance of powers, between the largest centralized custodians, the nodes, the miners and the developers? This assumes enough network decentralization and distributed power at all times.
Saylor and Dixon agree on that too. So far game theory has always worked out and the tensions have been always resolved, the protocol has become increasingly resilient with every attack. But it was also a time in which bitcoin financialization was minimal. Now it will become the driving force.So what if custody and liquidity centralize too heavily and that equilibrium shifts?
That is the unresolved tension in my thinking. This is the strategic risk I struggle to assess and which is worth discussing.
Let the Incentives Play Out
So, meanwhile, let Saylor build financial bridges. Let Dixon defend sovereignty and self-custody. Both roles matter.
If you value self-custody, run your node. If you prefer exposure through financial instruments, use them. If you are a gambler, we cannot stop you using bitcoin. If you’re simply sending value across borders cheaply with Lightning, do that.
Bitcoin’s game theory does not depend on ideological purity. It depends on incentives, decentralization, and resilience.
Ultimately, I agree with both Saylor and Dixon: this technology is transformative. Broad adoption may take years—perhaps decades. But if Bitcoin remains decentralized and censorship-resistant, it will continue to grow. Its price will reflect that over time.
And one show I would truly like to see? One between Saylor and Dixon on adoption paths.
Now that would be a conversation worth watching.
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