It's interesting the variety of people who come to Bitcoin

Bitcoin has cypherpunk / libertarian / anarchist roots. Over the years of growth and adoption, the variety of actors has grown and it is now being embraced by traditional financial institutions.

When I listen to people like Kevin O'Leary who say Bitcoin needs regulation, because of the sovereign wealth funds and whatnot need it, it admittedly makes me cringe. Sovereign wealth funds? WTF is that and who needs those?

He talks about auditors, regulators, compliance departments and all those things of the rotten legacy system I loathe and don't give two hoots about. I can't help but feel like some people view Bitcoin as yet another ticker - a symbol with a chart, like Amazon of Google stock that you trade and store on centralized exchanges or brokerages, without any regard for or understanding of what the underlying asset actually is, what values it represents, what lies behind it - the ingenious technology, the open-source community, the grassroots movement, the brave souls that fight for the most fundamental human right that is the sovereignty of the individual in the increasingly Orwellian world. He calls cypherpunks "crypto cowboys" and says "we don't need their crap".

If Bitcoin is to be yet another ticker, do we need it? We already have thousands of stocks, fiat currencies and commodities. You can trade them, long or short, all you want; adding one more doesn't make the world a better place.

Or does it? Maybe it does. For example, even regulated, it's still a hedge against inflation like no other, because its monetary policy is controlled by a decentralized protocol and unaffected by regulation. So there is this other part of me that's trying to see the positives of regulation.

Do I want Bitcoin to forever be this funny internet money that computer nerds use to buy pizza from one another, or do I want it to be more than that? The answer is: I want widespread adoption. I want to be able to use it everywhere and I want it to become the world's #1 currency/asset, because the more people use this freedom technology, the more people have freedom as an option. And yes, it will pump my bags, no shame in admitting that.

The good thing is, even if it's regulated for those who need or want regulation, it will never be regulated for those who use it the way it was originally intended to: on chain, p2p. Only centralized custodians can be regulated; the chain is decentralized and no regulation can change that. That's the beauty of Bitcoin: it can be a dual system, with centralized and decentralized parts, each serving its purpose and complementing each other to the degree that each individual actor desires (and centralization clearly has its uses; for one, it's efficient. I don't necessarily want to pollute the blockchain with every limit order I put in and pay tx fees for it; that's also the reason there are layer 2 solutions in crypto in general). Now, centralized doesn't necessarily mean regulated or KYC'd; the nature of Bitcoin as a 'sendable' asset (as opposed to an IOU) means I can send it to an offshore exchange where regulations are less strict or non-existent. This ability to send value freely creates a perfect environment for jurisdictional competition and arbitrage. Centralized coins go (over decentralized rails) where laws are what the users - and not the politicians - want them to be.

Institutions can hold their coins with regulated custodians, bringing tons of money into it and stabilizing the price. Traders can trade it on regulated exchanges providing liquidity and making the market more efficient. No harm in that. Maybe it's all meant to be part of Bitcoin's maturation. At the same time, I can send my coins permissionlessly to whoever I want - no one can take that freedom away from me - while benefiting from the adoption, stability and steady price growth.

Of course there is always the Tornado-type threat, whereby regulators declare the coins that have interacted with certain addresses tainted and prohibit exchanges within their jurisdiction from accepting them. But if they go too far, people can always move offshore or go 100% p2p. So it seems like a perfectly self-regulating system and on multiple levels; the closest to anarcho-capitalism mankind has ever seen. Like a subscription model whereby you choose which laws you want to abide by (and consequently, benefit from), and if someone tries to impose a law on you you didn't opt into, you show them your diamond middle finger.