Bitcoin legends: heroes and villains

Every cycle brings in new heroes, but as the next one rolls in, the old champs often turn into the villains. Take Roger Ver, for example. He was a legend back in the early days of Bitcoin. This dude really fought for Bitcoin’s future and earned the nickname Bitcoin Jesus. He even went to jail for his beliefs. He was all in on the idea that Bitcoin would change everything. But then came the next cycle, and suddenly he was the guy who forked Bitcoin into Bitcoin Cash. He started claiming Bitcoin had failed and eventually got arrested for tax evasion. Talk about a twist: Bitcoin Jesus became Bitcoin Judas. Then there’s Gavin Anderson. Supposedly Satoshi’s chosen one, he got handed the keys before Satoshi vanished into thin air. Did that really happen? Not sure, to be honest. But this guy was in line for greatness until he gave a presentation to the CIA about Bitcoin. It’s rumored that Satoshi’s last email was to him, right before disappearing, which left the community feeling uneasy about him. Andreas Antonopoulos was another big name. When he spoke about Bitcoin, people were all ears. He made folks realize what they could lose if they ignored Bitcoin. His talks were super inspiring, and he had a unique way of making things relatable. But when 2020 hit, he started dabbling in other cryptos and promoting different tokens. The culture moved on without him, and he just faded into the background. Now we’ve got a new wave of heroes, and honestly, a lot of them sound like a joke.

It seems that what you are describing are not Bitcoin heroes, but rather, Bitcoin darlings. Of course darlings will rise and fall. Take a look at the current darling for example - Michael Saylor. Before that, it was Elon Musk, and before *him*, there was god-knows-who. I don't keep up with people, so I'm going to substitute "whoever was fighting Craig Wright in court" here. But, as much as you disagree with some of the people you have cited, it cannot be ignored that these folks you have mentioned were all very important to Bitcoin, and will likely have contributed an order of magnitude more to it than you or me ever could.

It would be great to add links to some of these claims so that one would read them and understand how these individuals rose and fell. I have been following Andreas Antonopoulos for a long time and have never come across any case of him promoting altcoins. To me is has been a core promoter of Bitcoin education, and he continued on that path until he retired due to health reasons. The goverment and institutional investors cannot be classified as heroes of Bitcoin. The heroes are those who believed and promoted Bitcoin when it was nothing. This new set of investors is here solely to make profit. While others have the goal of manipulating or controlling the market.

"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" The thing about Satoshi is that he has similarities with the founding fathers of various great countries. They both were so great and intelligent enough to know that they are not perfect and times change, so they didn't make laws that could not be changed; however, if you want to change those laws, there are processes. No one man should decide to change a law simply because it does not benefit him or because he has a different POV. It has to be agreed upon by a good majority of the people first. This is something that most top people in Bitcoin failed to realise. No matter how significant they might seem, they simply do not have the power to change things the way they want if everybody in the network doesn't agree with them. Roger Ve is a big example of this. For now, I can't call any of these new guys "Bitcoin heroes". Bitcoin doesn't need a hero. All the guys today care about is their investments and profit, and I hold nothing against them for that, but what I don't like is people looking up to them as heroes or something.

The title should be "heroes who turned into villains", because from my own past experience there is no such thing as hero in this space, you should not invest based on how someone talks about the asset, do your own research and have your own reason why you choose to invest in Bitcoin or any other digital assets. Don't have heroes in this space, it takes nothing for them to turn on their past behaviour, someone who hails Bitcoin today can come out tomorrow and say that Bitcoin sucks and if they are the reason why you invested in Bitcoin you will get depressed. Some of these heroes pretended to understand Bitcoin but they don't, they said what they said to pump their bags and once they get the money they are leaving or they might even turn into villains straight away.

Yes, Satoshi gave GA keys, but not the ones you're thinking of - they were keys for the Bitcoin alert system that was used for security notifications. Furthermore, most of those who were Satoshi's collaborators at the time had nothing against Gavin going to talk about BTC anywhere, including that famous three-letter agency. At that time, many already began to question the role that Satoshi had in all of this and were looking for decentralization in decision-making. Gavin just imposed himself as someone who was left to continue being the figure behind BTC, but he was never really even close to being some kind of successor to Satoshi. By the way, somewhere in 2016, the same GA was convinced that CW Faketoshi was the real Satoshi and even announced it publicly, so if anyone ever asked for confirmation of his "genius", they got confirmation that this man was born to make a lot of wrong decisions.

Bitcoin does not necessarily need to have a hero as it does not need anyone to save it. It is a decentralized infrastructure and governed by community consensus, hence the idea of bitcoin heroes is just narrative coined by people who wants to achieve relevance riding on bitcoin. They easily show their true hands when they gain the popularity they desire. From the least, many of them abandoned bitcoin and followed other part for their selfish reasons which means they were no heroes in the first place.

No, Andreas Antonopoulos should not be in this discussion, he was never anti-bitcoin, rather, he only explored and educated people on other crypto and blockchain technologies he felt was safe to use, again,you don't expect a helpless sick man to be as active as before, he retired earlier this year due to his health challenges.

It's this visit and Gavin announced it too. Gavin will visit the CIA. About the CAlert key, it's archived there https://riski.wiki/wiki/User:Gavinandresen/Blog/2022-04-26_Eleven_years_ago_today%E2%80%A6 Gavin Andresen is a person with early contributions for Bitcoin development and communities but later he made some big mistakes as you described.

I don't really know what the criteria is to be called a 'BTC hero', if that even makes sense. I have never thought about anyone in the network and saw them as a hero. Yeah we have OG's, early adopters and contributors, people who spent BTC or gave it out to others for free, etc. All of these people were important to BTC's success. As for what they chose to do later on, it does not matter. People are free to choose a different path and i am not going to sit and judge them for their choices. There was no action taken that could stop BTC's growth, so that makes it all irrelevant.

No Hero!, No Villain!, No Victor!, No Vanquish! All played their beautiful role to the growth of the new, strange and unknown technology. They fought for what they believed and their collective efforts kept BTC till date. What matters is what they did when they were on stage, we shouldn't judge them by what they did when they left the stage. Like it is Saylor on the stage today, another will emerge tomorrow and that doesn't make Saylor a villain

People in Bitcoin should never have heroes because nobody is right all the time. Even smart people can make bad calls, change their views or put their own interests first. If you blindly follow someone you stop thinking for yourself which goes against what Bitcoin is about. Listen to different opinions, check the facts and make your own decisions. Respect people for what they contribute but never treat anyone like they can’t be wrong.

People who are participating in Bitcoin market must understand things and principles like it's their money, their investment capital, their lives, and it's their full responsibility to do with decision, investment and results after all. They can make their investment decisions one way or another, from their own thinking or rely on investment advice from the others. However at the end, investment results are what they got and had to deal with that, profit or loss, it's theirs and no people on social media are responsible for their investment results. No blame to influencers on social media can bring their loss back, so people must understand it and become more thoughtful and careful with their decisions.

Its strange how things go, that the biggest advocates or influential figures around Bitcoin can make a move which almost goes against what Bitcoin is about or even against their own teachings. It has happened as per the OP with Michael Saylor being the most recent example. Another relevant example is Plan b, who decided to move his Bitcoin into ETF's. One way if looking at it is that we can take the messages and examples created by these influential people but when they branch off down a different road we dont and shouldnt follow them.