Bitcoin BTC is digital gold.

In 1933, the American authorities decided to confiscate all their citizens gold. This happened in the land of freedom. It can happen again. It can happen anywhere, anytime.

People talk about the 51% attack. But that is not the only way to attack Bitcoin. All those Bitcoin sitting in centralised exchanges? They can be seized. All that KYC data that Bitcoiners have handed over to exchanges, the IRS wants it.

Defence-in-Depth (DID) is a concept invented for medieval citadels and adapted to modern IT security. In a citadel, you don't just have one layer of defence, you have many. A moat, a wall, a keep...

In modern IT security, you have technical controls (cryptography), physical controls (hardware wallets) and also administrative controls (self-custody). Bitcoin as a system is secure because of PoW and cryptography. But Bitcoin, as a social and economic structure, needs additional layers of defence.

We need to make sure we don't have to use centralised services and pool our Bitcoin in places that make it easy to seize funds or taint coins. We need to make sure that there are not obvious points of centralised control where politicians can exert pressure. Coinbase and Binance, if they became dominant enough, could have the same centralising effect over Bitcoin as Facebook and Google have over the web. Binance already suggested they would try to re-org Bitcoin Blockchain.

Centralised services are walled gardens of convenience that you are not in control. They are honeypots. They rob us of our sovereignty.

DID is about expanding the envelope of decentralisation and uncensorability. DID is about expanding what we understand Bitcoin to be. It is more than just a blockchain or a coin. It is a social, political and economic structure.

Defence-in-Depth is about expanding the protections we provide Bitcoin and, as a result, expanding the protection Bitcoin provides us.