@ai-summaries's thread

Part 7/13:

Blockstream, a company founded as a for-profit entity with significant backing from mainstream financial institutions and venture capital, became a key player in shaping Bitcoin’s trajectory. Their efforts to promote "sidechains" and "atomic swaps" served to divert traffic away from on-chain scaling, effectively creating a controlled, capped system with higher fees and limited user control.

Through online forums, control of major websites, and social media, key figures like Theymos and Cobra orchestrated a narrative that dismissed larger blocks as "dangerous" or “not Bitcoin.” Crucially, they pushed to reposition Bitcoin as a “store of value” rather than an accessible payment platform, even editing or questioning the original whitepaper itself.