In 2026, the cost structures, funding dependencies, and revenue models of the legacy system have made their way into nearly every layer of Bitcoin’s human infrastructure. If we looked at Bitcoin as a company, we would find that every department has been infiltrated by fiat incentives: Development, sales, marketing, funding, and even our own decisions as individual ‘consumers.’
This is to be expected in a global transition from a Fiat Standard to a Bitcoin Standard. The legacy system will naturally try to continue shaping human behaviour to preserve its own existence. To be clear, the people operating inside these incentives are not necessarily bad actors. Many of them believe in Bitcoin; but their actions clearly demonstrate incentives and motivations. The pattern I noticed is how fiat is rooting itself into every corner of Bitcoin while asserting the dominance of its incentives. This article is the first in a series on structural observations drawn from personal experience and independent research that maps the problem, department by department. A final companion piece explores what is actually within our power to change. Each section below links out to a deeper article.
Sales: The STRC Cantillon Reconstruction
Strategy holds over 845,000 Bitcoin as of June 2026.[13] On top of that balance sheet, the company has constructed five classes of preferred stock, the most marketed of which, STRC, pays retail investors 11.50% annualised yield.[1] The Ai-generated marketing positions this as Bitcoin “refined” into money, comparing it to crude oil processed into gasoline.[2] But Bitcoin already is money; it does not need a corporate intermediary to function. What Strategy actually does is convert Bitcoin into securities, which is fundamentally different. STRC is perpetual preferred stock with no maturity date and no redemption right outside a change-of-control event; the investor hands Strategy cash, Strategy buys Bitcoin with it, the Bitcoin sits on Strategy’s balance sheet, and fiat-denominated dividends flow back to the investor, who holds no claim on the Bitcoin for which there is no public proof of reserves.[12]
Many are asking if STRC is a Ponzi scheme and may rightfully be concluding it cannot be one since it’s built on top of the world’s scarcest asset; but the structural problem actually goes deeper. Approximately 80% of STRC shares are held by retail investors buying STRC rather than Bitcoin in self-custody.[3] Strategy is accumulating a scarce appreciating asset while distributing claims denominated in the debasing one. Essentially, STRC reconstructs the Cantillon Effect on top of a protocol that was designed for the opposite.
Funding: Why Bitcoin Companies Drift
Independent research across 169 companies in the Bitcoin space that position or have historically positioned themselves as Bitcoin-only reveals a striking pattern: 56% have introduced non-Bitcoin products or revenue lines. Among private companies with raises above $50 million, all sixteen in the dataset have drifted. The non-Bitcoin products cluster around stablecoins, Bitcoin-collateralised lending, Layer 2 “smart contract” platforms, ordinals, asset tokenisation, and yield products. Essentially, the fiat system is being rebuilt on top of Bitcoin and calling itself Bitcoin.
Most VC investors expect returns within seven to ten years. The dataset shows what happens under that pressure: Companies bolt on lending, yield, stablecoins. The companies that stay pure are overwhelmingly the ones that never took the money or took so little that the return expectations did not distort the product: More than four in five of the truly Bitcoin-only companies are bootstrapped, have no recorded raise, or raised under $5 million. The main observation is that fiat capital, deployed at scale, reproduces fiat incentive structures, even inside Bitcoin companies.
Development: Funded Compliance
Bitcoin Core is open-source software maintained by volunteers and grant-funded developers. Having no central authority or hierarchy was one of its greatest strengths, but also a major vulnerability. A detailed investigation by hodlonaut, published as a planned four-part series in Citadel21 with two parts released so far, documents how a small network of individuals, centred around the nonprofit Brink and the developer training program Chaincode Labs, came to exert significant influence over who entered Bitcoin Core development, who received funding, and whose technical objections were taken seriously.[5][6]
When a small number of organisations control the funding pipeline for protocol developers, they naturally face pressure to avoid positions that jeopardise their income. In 2025, a single Brink-funded engineer was responsible for merging 56% of all changes to Bitcoin Core.[7] Rather than providing decentralised maintenance and stewardship of the network, Core slowly migrated into concentrated authority over a protocol that was designed to have none.
When Bitcoin Core v30 increased the default OP_RETURN data limit from 83 bytes to 100,000 against community pushback, the immune reaction was swift. Over 22% of all reachable nodes have migrated to Bitcoin Knots. As of June 2026, approximately 12.44% of the network is signalling for BIP-110 (aka RDTS: Reduce Data Temporary Soft fork).[8][9][10] When the reference implementation no longer reflects what Bitcoin was created for, money,[11] the true stewards of the network take action. Bitcoin cannot function as sound money if it becomes a “blockchain, NFT, web 3, crypto.”
Marketing: How Money Shapes the Signal
Bitcoin conferences began as technical gatherings centred on cypherpunk principles, FOSS decentralisation, and technical depth. They now feature luxury lifestyle marketing, stablecoin issuers, legacy financial institutions, fiat games on Bitcoin (e.g. ordinals), and political campaigning. General admission tickets can range from $300 to $1,000, VIP passes can cost $3,000 to $9,000 or more, and corporate sponsorship packages at major Bitcoin conferences have offered stage access and elevated visibility as part of higher-tier packages.[4] Essentially, you can buy a microphone if you have enough money.
On the creator side, the incentives compound. Audience size attracts sponsors, sponsorship revenue funds hiring and conference appearances, more output generates more reach, and the cycle feeds itself until it becomes structurally impossible to compete with from the outside. A creator earning thousands in sponsorship revenue has a financial interest in never scrutinising the sponsor paying for their reach.
Plebs: The Consumer’s Dilemma
The sections above describe what is happening at the institutional level as if Bitcoin were a business. This one is about what is happening at ours; the individual nodes who interact with each layer. Every one of these dynamics, from development to marketing, ultimately lands on the same people: Us.
There is always a reason to remain in a fiat job, to chase yield, to not learn how to run a node, to buy an ETF instead of holding keys, to let an exchange custody the coins because self-custody feels complicated, to get sucked into mainstream narratives lamenting the death of fiat or celebrating NGU; even if you know it doesn’t matter. All of that channels your energy and Bitcoin back into the hands of the very fiat system we are trying to escape, perpetuating the extraction cycle; but it’s understandable, because the transition is genuinely hard. Funding the old world while waiting for the new one to arrive on its own is the trap most of us are still standing in. That dilemma does not resolve itself and it’s an ongoing process of daily decisions.
Data as of mid-June 2026.
Sources
Claude by Anthropic was used as a research assistant throughout this series: Cross-referencing sources, verifying figures across filings, and checking internal consistency. All analysis, conclusions, and editorial decisions are the author’s own.
[1] Strategy Inc. (2026, May 5). Strategy announces first quarter 2026 financial results. https://www.strategy.com/press/strategy-announces-first-quarter-2026-financial-results_05-05-2026
[2] Kratter, M. (2026). Michael Saylor promoting shitcoins [Video]. Bitcoin University, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbzUzrBaNPw
[3] Strategy Inc. (2026, May 5). Q1 2026 earnings call transcript. The Motley Fool. https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/05/05/strategy-mstr-q1-2026-earnings-transcript/
[4] Bitcoin Conference. (2026, February 14). Bitcoin 2026 tickets and pricing [Archived]. Wayback Machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20260214081432/https://2026.b.tc/
[5] hodlonaut. (2026, March 27). The capture: Article one of four – The network. Citadel21. https://www.citadel21.com/the-network
[6] hodlonaut. (2026, April 29). The capture: Article two of four – The lever. Citadel21. https://www.citadel21.com/the-lever
[7] Brink. (2026, March 26). 2025 engineering impact report. Brink. https://brink.dev/blog/2026/03/26/engineering-impact-report-2025/
[8] Dashjr, L. (2026, June 9). Bitcoin network statistics. https://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/services.html
[9] Coin Dance. (2026, June 9). Bitcoin nodes summary. https://coin.dance/nodes/knots
[10] Moody, C. (2026, June 9). Bitcoin dashboard. https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/
[11] Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
[12] Borovets, A. (2025, May 27). Saylor won’t publish Strategy’s proof of reserves: “It’s a bad idea.” crypto.news. https://crypto.news/saylor-wont-publish-strategys-proof-of-reserves/
[13] The Crypto Times. (2026, June 8). Strategy reaffirms Bitcoin treasury with fresh 1,550 BTC acquisition. https://www.cryptotimes.io/2026/06/08/strategy-reaffirms-bitcoin-treasury-with-fresh-1550-btc-acquisition/