Finance is Power. And today, the blatant arrest of Pavel is a stark demonstration of who has that power. It’s a direct fuck you to our faces, saying how dare we not comply with them and violate the trust the masses place with us. It’s a warning to all the other protocols developers out there that it does not fucking matter where you are or how popular you are - we can get you if we want. It’s an raw assertion of even rawer power, which chills me to the very inner core of my bones marrows, an age old formula for ensuring compliance. Decentralization is not just a way for us to print magic internet money, it’s a crucial tool for us to even out the power structures of the world. We need to gain as much independence from centralized systems as possible, that happens at 3 levels: At the technical level where we drive adoption of decentralized rails, at the money level where we break the ability of centralized parties to disable the livelihood of entire economies and finally, at the power level where we have as much say as giant corporations and governments in deciding the global agenda and ethos. Without this decentralized power base, we are destined to forever be under the thumbs of the few, rats stuck in a maze designed by the owners of those very thumbs. Lastly, cases like this needs to be a rallying cry for us to stop kissing the asses of all those who offer us ETFs, fancy campaign slogans and the “friendship” of 3-4 letter agencies, we are so fucked as an industry since we are always sucking someone’s cock instead of fighting for what the world needs. Build for the future we want to see, for the friends we want to be with, and to become the individuals we want to become. And we might just have a shot at building up this decentralized power base that the world so desperately needs.