About 2.5y ago I built a thesis that still stands today and I believe will end up shaking the financial system. The first step is now live: Mainnet. First of all, I can’t be more proud of the team bringing this to life. Building something net new takes time, dedication and relentless pursuit of a vision higher than ourselves. Botanix is exactly that, it can be the rails of a global financial system with Bitcoin as the money that’s more transparent, open, public, permissionless and censorship resistant. That vision, made before any of the bitcoin layer 2 hype, still stands strong today and funnily enough I believe probably less than 1000 people in the world align on this. In this world you have to be contrarian and right. The thesis is quite simple and can be deduced from first principle analysis which I’ll go deeper into here. But first the “Botanix assumptions” I 100% believe to be true. (1) Bitcoin is the winning money. (2) EVM is the winning virtual machine. (3) Anything will be bigger on Bitcoin. (4) Payments and capital markets are synergistic and both are needed for a medium of exchange. (5) The financial system will go on-chain as it’s more permission less, open and transparent. (6) A Bitcoin L2 needs FULL censorship resistance to run a global, open, transparent financial system. Each of these are believed to be true in certain areas of crypto and the world, but very few would agree with all of them. (1) Bitcoin is the winning money. While fully accepted within bitcoin circles, the non-bitcoin crypto world somehow still disagrees with this even though the data and numbers stare them in the eyes. It’s the most perfect tradeoff to be the best money ever made. It doesn’t change anymore, it’s credibly neutral, has no rulers, and code wise is optimized to be as simple as possible while providing the benefits it exactly needs. Immutable, censorship resistant, decentralized. Best money ever. (2) EVM is the winning virtual machine. While obvious when building it out, this is certainly not broadly accepted. The infrastructure network effects are undeniably large. Over 20 infrastructure companies are currently supporting Botanix mainnet on day 1, imagine trying to rebuild that from scratch. There’s thousands of infrastructure companies supporting the EVM. Maybe Virtual Machines are like operating systems and maybe the EVM might not be the best or most secure but was windows? (3) Anything will be bigger on Bitcoin. Liquidity begets liquidity is a common saying and this statement would be easily accepted by tradfi and outsiders while most of non-bitcoin crypto would disagree here. “We haven’t seen any application gain traction on Bitcoin, bitcoiners just want to hold”. Ofcourse the proof is in the pudding but have you seen an EVM on Bitcoin, with Bitcoin, that’s decentralized, with the right infrastructure and user experience? I have not. (4) Payments and capital markets are deeply synergistic, amplifying each other's potential. Bitcoiners often equate medium of exchange with payments, while non-bitcoin crypto enthusiasts focus on DeFi. On-chain capital markets—encompassing borrowing, lending, liquidity provision, and diverse interest rate structures—offer a superior version of today’s financial systems. It’s no coincidence that many DeFi participants come from private equity or banking. Payments and capital markets are interconnected: your checking account (LN wallet) fuels daily transactions, while your savings account, tied to capital markets, drives investment and growth. (5) The financial system will go on-chain. The traditional financial system will never be able to compete with an onchain global, permissionless, transparent financial system. The same game theory for money will play out for capital markets. Robinhoods tokenized equities is a first sign of this. Now anyone in the world, without any hurdles can buy Tesla stock. Borrowing against your bitcoin with Strike at 10%+ while it’s 3% onchain is another. The permissionless nature of onchain markets will trump any local markets and it’s a question of time before more and more of this moves onchain. (6) A Bitcoin L2 needs FULL censorship resistance. Enter the Spiderchain, the only Bitcoin L2 design going after full decentralization. But what about rollups, what about BitVM? The most important aspect of the upcoming financial system will share the same values as Bitcoin. It needs to be credibly neutral, borderless, permissionless and censorship resistant. Over and over again the financial system is used as a weapon. When more and more countries are banned from SWIFT and citizens’ their bank accounts are closed, the more pull a decentralized financial system will have. Rollups, while a fit for purpose on Ethereum, are censorship blackholes. Full censorship resistance is needed. FYI this is not an issue on ethereum since Ethereum combines the expressivity and money on the base layer. Bitcoin separates these duties: L1 = Money, L2 = Capital markets & payments. We need FULL censorship resistance and no compromises. Each and every one of the points makes sense from a first-principles perspective, yet most are biased toward circles of one another. Either way, this is a short version of a vision put together 2.5 years ago that still stands today and still proves to be contrarian. More to follow.