What Bitcoin Did Is Bitcoin Culture Dead? | Pete Rizzo
Sep 19, 2025
Pete Rizzo, a Bitcoin journalist and commentator, discusses the evolving landscape of Bitcoin culture and institutional adoption. He explores how Trump's executive orders have shaped a strategic Bitcoin reserve and the implications for institutions. Rizzo examines the shift from grassroots self-custody to institutional financialization, highlighting Michael Saylor's vision. He raises concerns about the viability of treasury companies in a bear market, questioning if they can truly outperform Bitcoin itself.
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Tone Shift Drives Institutional Adoption
- The Trump administration changed tone and institutional incentives around Bitcoin, even without passing full legislation.
- That tonal shift accelerated institutional adoption and made previously unlikely integrations plausible.
U.S.-Led Path To Global Adoption
- A U.S.-led path—using stablecoins to entrench dollar hegemony, then moving to Bitcoin reserves—is a specific mainstreaming scenario that suddenly became plausible.
- If true, it collapses many alternate adoption outcomes and reshapes how Bitcoin scales globally.
Bitcoin Adopts New Utopian Vision
- Bitcoin culture cycles around competing utopian visions of mainstreaming, and the dominant vision often aligns with existing power structures.
- Michael Saylor's financialization thesis now fits regulatory comfort and institutional paths better than 2021's grassroots self-custody narrative.