Between ideological purity and strategic compromise: choosing to build bridges without betraying the direction.
I’ve been in the Bitcoin environment for several years now and, especially in Italy, I’ve seen various communities born and grow. Not that I’ve ever had a significant role, far from it: I’m just a humble pleb who, after delving into the cypherpunk rabbit hole, has always wanted to stay close to this world and give, in my own small way, a contribution.
My journey within the community (not in Bitcoin, that had started a bit earlier) began on Clubhouse. I still remember several rooms I participated in and in which I asked various questions to the evening’s guest: the excellent Rikki6ixx. I had discovered Bitcoin a few years earlier, but I hadn’t yet thrown myself headfirst into it: the click hadn’t happened yet.
Since I was a child I’ve always been a nerd — among manga, video games, graphics cards and disassembled computers. I’ve always been fascinated by new technologies and innovations. Bitcoin, up to that moment, gave me exactly that impression: a mysterious but not yet revolutionary technology. Despite this, even without having studied it in depth yet, I already sensed I was facing something enormous.
Time passed, and I found myself more involved every day. Block after block, I fell into an infinite cultural chasm. Bitcoin pushed me to deepen many subjects. Economics, for example, which I had previously approached in a more traditional way — studying financial markets and investments — now took on a completely different role. It was yet another epiphany born from Bitcoin: if before I saw economics as a static discipline, almost passive with respect to the great world players, now I perceived it for what it really was — a technological, dynamic tool, in continuous evolution.
I saw the economy move. I perceived its social implications, its political roots, and understood how all this could be — I won’t say “solved” — but certainly improved.
I grew up in a left-wing family environment and have always been interested in politics. Even then I had doubts about the Italian scenario and, more generally, I had the feeling that something didn’t really work. It was easy, therefore, to “radicalize” and feel increasingly close (even if not perfectly overlapping) to the libertarian current.
With freedom and awareness of one’s choices as beacons, I embarked on a different life path from the one I had followed up to that moment. Wanting to make a concrete contribution, I also created a podcast in which I talked about Bitcoin and bitcoiners from the ground up: ordinary people who had embraced Bitcoin and were trying to do something for the community.
It was, personally, a small success. Of course, I didn’t get the numbers of the big ones like the BIP Show or the “turtle-shaped” colleague (Turtlecute) I often met at Bologna meetups, but still thousands of people, every week, listened to an hour and a half of my episodes.
The problem of adoption
As I deepened my understanding of Bitcoin — and in my small way contributed to growing the Italian community — I began to perceive a problem.
Many supported Bitcoin as NGU technology (Number Go Up) and not as a “philosophy of life.”
The Friday meetup in Bologna, for example, was born precisely from this vision. I and three other brave plebs founded it within an initiative called Satoshi Spritz. The format was very clear: no shitcoins, no discussions about price or other nonsense of that kind.
Obviously they weren’t iron rules — the group was ours, we managed it. Even though the “board” of Satoshi Spritz was rather intolerant and closed to dialogue, people interested only in understanding how to diversify their investments or talk about shitcoins came to us. And we never kicked anyone out but always discussed and debated why we held our positions. The key has always been confrontation, mutual exchange, wanting to teach and learn something.
At the time, given the enormous growth of communities in just a few months — we had gone from zero to fifteen/twenty people every Friday in about a year — I was convinced that exponential curve would continue forever. I lived the enthusiasm of pioneers, of those who believed that everything would change rapidly. Indeed, some things hinted that the trajectory was inevitable. We had certainly grown in number but “the city,” after several years, still seemed not to notice us. The places that accepted bitcoin could be counted on the fingers of one hand and several belonged to the same guy. Were we really growing? Was adoption really progressing?
At a certain point, one must distinguish between the perception of mass adoption and a more organic, concrete and underground adoption. There’s often a tendency to dismiss the “Bitcoin project” as failed simply because it’s not seen employed daily in everyday life. But this claim is paradoxical: the common use of Bitcoin presupposes — by its very nature — an enormous socio-political upheaval.
It’s obvious that a change of this caliber cannot happen overnight. Indeed, it’s equally obvious that in the short term it’s not even realistic to expect it. Organic adoption, however, grows. Inevitably. People interested in the topic, for one reason or another, increase every day. Courses grow, meetups grow, educational initiatives grow. Organizations that want to spread Bitcoin as a cultural and technological tool grow, and capital invested in sector startups increases, as do companies that choose to enter it.
We are building infrastructural foundations for that fateful “event” that, when it arrives, will make all this evident even to the rest of the world. After all, you certainly don’t start from the roof to build a solid house. The foundations are those parts that most people — except those in the trade — don’t see. It’s natural, therefore, that the majority of traditional media, excluding a good dose of intellectual dishonesty here and there (and a bit of malevolent political agenda), don’t perceive what is being built beneath the surface.
Adoption exists. It’s slow, constant, and grows every year that passes. The foundations are becoming solid (disputes about Bitcoin Core aside, but we’ll talk about that another time perhaps).
Why maximalism isn’t enough (but remains the only thing that matters)
I think it’s necessary to clarify a point before going forward, because it’s precisely from here that many misunderstandings arise. I have never thought — and still don’t think — that “more people” automatically means “better.” I don’t believe in adoption at any cost, I don’t believe that Bitcoin should be made simple, welcoming or reassuring to be acceptable, and I don’t even believe that its price increases in proportion to the number of users who use it superficially.
On the contrary, I continue to think that a few aware maximalists are infinitely preferable to millions of people jumping from one shitcoin to another convinced they’re participating in something revolutionary, when in reality they’re just feeding the umpteenth iteration of a system they’ve never really questioned. On this I’ve never changed my mind.
Bitcoin is not for everyone. It never has been and probably never will be. It requires study, responsibility, time, and above all a non-trivial willingness to revise some deep certainties. Those looking for shortcuts, easy returns or quick confirmations will hardly find in Bitcoin what they’re looking for. And that’s fine.
The problem, however, is not this. The problem is that those people — those we today call with contempt “apes,” neophytes, shitcoiners, opportunists — exist anyway. They exist independently of our will, our ideological purity or our refusal to dialogue with them. And above all, someone will speak to those people.
If we don’t do it, someone else will. The grifters will do it, who will transform Bitcoin into a motivational slogan good for selling courses. The exchanges will do it, who will reduce it to an asset to buy and leave in custody, emptying it of any deeper meaning. The shitcoiners will do it, who will use Bitcoin as a term of comparison to legitimize yet another useless project.
Ignoring this phenomenon doesn’t reduce it, doesn’t educate it and doesn’t make it harmless. Simply, it leaves it completely in the hands of those who have every interest in distorting it.
Maximalism, as we have built it over the years, works very well as a defense tool. It’s a cultural fortress that has had — and continues to have — a fundamental role: preserving key concepts like Bitcoin-only, self-custody, individual responsibility and rejection of the crypto narrative. Without this fortress, Bitcoin would probably already have been watered down, neutralized or co-opted.
But a fortress, by definition, is not a place of passage. It’s a place of resistance. Who is outside stays outside, who is inside stays inside. And over time there’s a risk of confusing the defense of the perimeter with the idea that nothing should exist outside of it, as if everything that is not immediately maximalist is automatically useless or harmful.
I don’t believe that everyone should enter the fortress. I don’t even believe that everyone can or wants to. But I believe that leaving everything outside completely in the hands of those who don’t understand Bitcoin — or worse, who consciously use it for other purposes — is a huge strategic mistake.
It’s not about lowering the bar. It’s not about watering down the message. It’s not about making Bitcoin “for everyone.” It’s about deciding who speaks to whom, before it’s too late.
Maximalism works perfectly as a destination. Much less as a first contact. And if the first contact with Bitcoin, for most people, continues to be a scam, an unrealistic promise or an app that never really gives you the keys, then we shouldn’t be surprised if the majority will never get beyond that.
The problem isn’t that these people don’t understand Bitcoin. The problem is that, in most cases, they’ve never had the chance to approach it without being scammed.
And it’s here that my fracture is born. Not with maximalism, which I continue to consider the only sensible compass. But with the idea that it’s enough to be pure and consistent for the rest of the world, sooner or later, to automatically do the right thing.
Giving a Ferrari to someone who can only drive a 500
There’s an image that, more than others, helps me explain what I’m trying to do, and why I continue to think that this choice, however debatable, is consistent with everything I’ve supported so far.
Bitcoin is a Ferrari. It’s powerful, extremely efficient, and potentially dangerous. It has no assists, doesn’t forgive gross errors and does nothing to protect you from yourself. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you crash. And often you crash badly.
The vast majority of people, today, don’t know how to drive a Ferrari. To tell the truth, in most cases, they can barely drive a 500. Automatic cars, full of controls, designed to make it difficult to make mistakes, and above all to not require any real understanding of what’s happening under the hood.
The hardest maximalism — the one I too shared for a long time — would say that this is a sacrosanct distinction. Until you learn to drive properly, you don’t touch the Ferrari. Until you study, until you understand, until you fully accept the implications of what you’re doing, Bitcoin is not for you.
It’s a consistent position. And it’s a position I continue to respect. The problem, however, is what happens in the meantime. While we defend the Ferrari, out there millions of people are driving wrecks sold as supercars. Tokens passed off as innovation. Apps that promise autonomy but retain the keys. Products that simulate Bitcoin without really being it.
And not because these people are stupid or in bad faith, but because this is exactly the language they know. It’s the world they live in, the level of complexity they’re used to, the compromise they accept every day without even thinking about it.
At a certain point I realized that leaving this space completely in the hands of those who exploit it was, in fact, a choice. A comfortable choice, perhaps consistent on the ideological level, but with very concrete consequences.
From here comes the decision, less elegant and certainly riskier, to do something different. To put the Ferrari in the hands even of those who, today, only know how to drive a 500. Not because they’re ready. Not because they deserve it. But because, otherwise, they’ll never even see it from afar.
This doesn’t mean eliminating every friction, nor pretending that Bitcoin is simple or harmless. It means reducing the initial friction just enough to allow someone to take the first lap, without demanding they become a professional driver before even starting the engine.
I know very well that many won’t go beyond that. That many will use Bitcoin without really understanding it. That many will stay on the surface, just as they do with anything else.
But I also know that, among those thousands of people, someone sooner or later will ask one more question. They’ll wonder why this machine is different. Why it requires more attention. Why, unlike the others, it does nothing to protect you from your choices.
And it’s in that moment that a different path can begin. Not imposed. Not moralized. Not preached from the height of a position of purity.
BitRound.App is born exactly here. Not as a destination, but as a first contact. Not as a definitive solution, but as a transitional tool. A way to speak the language of those who today only know that of consumerism and simplification, trying to use the same dynamics to bring someone — even just someone — a little closer to what Bitcoin really is.
I’m not trying to teach everyone to drive a Ferrari. I’m just trying to make sure it’s not sold as an electric scooter.
Bent, not broken
I don’t consider myself less maximalist than before. I consider myself less naive. Maximalism is not an aesthetic, nor a moral pose. It’s a direction. And directions don’t change just because the terrain becomes more rugged. Bitcoin remains Bitcoin-only. Self-custody remains non-negotiable. Individual sovereignty is not a compromise: it’s the goal. Everything else – tools, paths, interfaces, even legality – is context. And context is traversed, not worshiped.
This is why today I operate on two different but consistent levels.
On one side there’s BitRound.App: a tool designed to intercept those who today live immersed in consumerism, who only know how to drive a 500, and try to move them – even just by one degree – toward Bitcoin, without immediately asking them to change their life, identity or ideology.
On the other side there’s DataSapiens: an activity that works exactly where compromise ends. Education, consulting, infrastructure. Privacy, real self-custody, conscious use of Bitcoin for individuals and companies. No shortcuts. No simplifications. No concessions.
They are not two souls in conflict. They are two phases of the same journey.
BitRound.App is not the destination. It’s the gateway. DataSapiens is what’s needed when someone decides to go all the way.
I’m not trying to convert the masses. I’m not interested in making Bitcoin popular. I’m interested in it not being left entirely in the hands of those who reduce it to a product, to a number going up, to a financial instrument without responsibility. If even just one person, starting from a 500, decides to learn to drive a Ferrari for real, then the risk will have been justified.
The broken maximalist is the one who stops building for fear of getting their hands dirty. I chose to bend to the real world rather than leave it in the hands of those who have never understood Bitcoin – and don’t want to understand it. Bitcoin doesn’t need pure defenders. It needs consistent builders. And I know exactly which side I want to be on.
