In the previous post, I described a slightly less sinister explanation for the bitcoin community split between "core" and "cash". In this one, I’ll entertain a full conspiracy theory in order to explain how the blocksize dispute could escalate as much as it has.

I can’t help but think that the powers in place have been involved in breaking the bitcoin community. From the perspective of the State, the bitcoin movement can be considered as “subversive” and “radical”. Subversion is a process by which the values and principles of the system in place are contradicted or reversed to transform. Subversive movement are able to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and norm (social). And bitcoin has all these elements in it. Our community leaders are being very vocal about achieving these goals. We should know better than to expect them to remain indifferent and sit idly by watching how their status quo is disturbed or to let their power and wealth slowly erode. If you provoke a fight a counter-reaction is expected. But don’t expect them to play according to our rules, or even play the same game.

So what kind of tactics would the state use to bring a radical and subversive movement to a hold? I will only scratch the surface of possible strategies because one could write an encyclopedia about this subject. And I certainly have no ambitions to write an encyclopedia.

The most common strategy known is “Divide and Conquer”, a policy intended to keep someone in a position of power by causing disagreements among people who might otherwise unite against them. By dividing and conquering their foes, leaders throughout history have reinforced their ability to selfishly keep their positions of power and authority. One way to achieve this is by actively polarizing a community. A polarized community is a broken community because a lot of energy is being diverted to internal fights. Less energy is put in pushing the movement forward and the threat of them achieving their goals is reduced considerably.

Polarizing a community can be achieved by exploiting already existing differences and frictions within the movement. Agents infiltrate the community, trust is slowly won and then misinformation, hoaxes, and disinformation are spread to stir up fractions within the movement against each other. False information to deceive public opinion, credible, but misleading data. Infiltrating positions of authority is also an important tool because they are already seen as legitimate in the eyes of the community and provide a platform to express ideas. When infiltrating, the agent identifies needs of the organization and then links those needs to solutions that his ideology can provide.

"Agent provocateurs" can also be used to infiltrate a community with the aim of inciting members to unlawful acts, thereby creating legitimate grounds for prosecuting, banning or influencing public opinion to the detriment of a movement. Although greed is a common sin, and also a driver for crypto adoption, we have to ask ourselves whether there is more to all the crypto scams, fake ico's and crypto ransom stories. And even if no agents were actively involved in these practices, these stories find remarkably easy access to media outlets.

Our ambitions for more anonymity is self-evident, but it is also a weakness One of the foundations of the bitcoin movement, but also a weakness, is anonymity. As a result, there are many influential figures of which nobody knows who they are, what their agenda is, or whether their account has been compressed/taken over by agents. Who is currently controlling the Theymos account, who is behind this illusive twitter account called Cobra? We do not really know, but these are figures with a lot of influence. These are the most well-known but there are many other examples. Known community leaders are somehow easily discredited by unknown figures and unknown sources.

How can we prevent more damage being done to the community? To be very clear, we should never accept that one entity has control over a majority part of the crypto community. Not only network decentralization is important, but also decentralization of thoughts and action. So we should always prevent that central authorities emerge. How a single company called Blockstream was able to get control over a community that has decentralization as a motto is just astonishing. Bitcoin cash or crypto in general should uphold a leaderless resistance strategy. Every hierarchical organization is extremely vulnerable to infiltration tactics. A alternative is a hub and spoke model of organization, where leader hubs are in the center of semi-autonomous cells which can act at their own discretion and can determine when to act and what targets to use. A strategy often used by guerilla movements. Still this model is corruptible and should be avoided. The best option we have is a leaderless resistance strategy.

Without a leader whatsoever, small, clandestine cells are completely autonomous and have no lines of command among them. What makes them a collective is that they are motivated by the same principles, but mainly because they pursue common goals. This is a strategy used by movements such as environmentalists. What all movements have in common is a core motivation to a call or action.

it’s success is not in terms of the number of adherents it is able to attract, or whether it manages to develop a cogent philosophy or ‘‘world- view,’’ or even whether it is able to successfully lobby governments to pass laws friendly to the movement. Because the goal is immediate change, its standard of success is gauged by the number of ‘‘direct actions’’ it can mobilize, and the efficacy of these actions in putting a halt to the ongoing status quo.