In medieval Europe, power flowed from land. Kings granted it to lords, lords taxed their vassals, and the vast majority lived without sovereignty. You couldn’t own the land. You couldn’t leave. You worked it for someone else.
We often talk about Bitcoin as the opposite of this: open, decentralized, and empowering. But today, that original peer-to-peer vision is being challenged by a growing concentration of ownership. As more Bitcoin is locked away in institutional vaults and corporate treasuries, the system is beginning to reflect the very dynamics it aimed to replace.
“As of 2024, over 70% of Bitcoin is held in wallets with over 10 BTC. Less than 5% of wallets hold more than 95% of the supply.”
(Source: Glassnode)
The Rise of Bitcoin Gatekeepers
Bitcoin is frequently compared to digital gold. But what happens when that gold is hoarded by a small group of early holders, billionaires, corporations, and governments? What happens when the people it was designed to support, the unbanked and the excluded, are priced out entirely?
In both feudalism and Bitcoin, power consolidates around a scarce resource. In feudal times, that was land. In Bitcoin, it is the fixed 21 million BTC. Those who got in early or had the means to buy large amounts are now in a position of extraordinary influence. This includes not just visionary early adopters, but also institutional actors entering with massive fiat resources. While Bitcoin was designed to be an open monetary system, access to meaningful ownership increasingly depends on prior access to capital.
Just as castles once stored and guarded wealth, today’s equivalent can be found in cold storage wallets, custodial treasuries, and ETF vaults. Control doesn't just come from protocol-level rules. It comes from who holds the keys, literally.
Power and Ownership in the Age of Scarcity
Bitcoin is often praised for being permissionless. Anyone, anywhere, can use it. But that ideal breaks down quickly in practice.
And just like the old feudal order, those at the margins are being left behind. Many in the Global South, who stand to gain the most from an open, censorship-resistant monetary network, are increasingly excluded. As Bitcoin’s price climbs and transaction fees rise, the reality of sovereign access has the potential to become harder to reach. Even small remittances or day-to-day transactions are becoming inaccessible.
People without reliable internet, affordable smartphones, or basic financial infrastructure are struggling to participate in the system that promises liberation. And while the ethos of Bitcoin promotes decentralization and inclusion, much of that message has been repackaged as marketing speak; a feel-good narrative that doesn’t match the lived reality of most of the world.
Even those who manage to acquire Bitcoin often find they can’t actually use it. There’s nowhere to spend it, no peer economies built around it, and little to no local integration in the systems people rely on daily. The tools exist, but they’re not being deployed or taught where they’re most needed. What was meant to be peer-to-peer money has instead become, for many, a speculative asset with no utility. A vault, not a vehicle.
This is a failure of implementation. A failure of infrastructure, communication, and global inclusion. It’s not enough to build great technology. We need ecosystems that make that technology usable. That means embracing Layer 2 development, region-specific tooling, mobile-first apps for low-bandwidth environments, trusted local facilitators, and ways to actually spend Bitcoin and STX in communities that have been left behind by both the fiat system and now, increasingly, by crypto too.
If Bitcoin is to remain a tool of sovereignty, builders must ensure people can actually use it, not just hold it.
In Defence of Decentralisation
The base protocol remains decentralized. But the culture surrounding it is drifting. We are watching the rise of passive Bitcoin holders, ETF structures, and self-custody fatigue. The longer these dynamics go unchallenged, the more they harden into the culture of the network.
If Bitcoin becomes just another financial instrument for the already wealthy, it will have failed its mission. We can’t defend decentralization with words alone. We must build systems that reinforce it.
To be clear, Bitcoin is not feudalism. It remains a permissionless, borderless protocol. Anyone can build on it, move it, divide it, or exit from it. There is no king. No decree. No forced labor. Its power is emergent, not inherited.
But if we let that permissionless structure serve only those already closest to capital, then we risk recreating the conditions of exclusion that feudalism normalized. The surface looks different. The architecture is more elegant. But the dynamics underneath begin to rhyme.
The opportunity isn’t gone. But it is being lost to inertia, captured by convenience, and weakened by design choices that ignore social realities.
Real World Impact — The Stacks Solution
Bitcoin won’t achieve its potential through ideology alone. It will require choices that reinforce inclusion and decentralization. Here are five areas where action can create real-world impact. And this is where the Stacks ecosystem can help.
Stacks doesn’t magically fix access or inclusion. But it creates the environment for developers to build apps that serve local needs and help people actually use Bitcoin in everyday life. If we want to onboard the next million users, we cannot rely on speculative DeFi and institutional capital alone. We need to bring infrastructure, education, and real opportunity into the places that need it most.
1. Widen the Base of Participation
Grassroots hubs in places like Ghana (Bitcoin Akasi) and El Salvador are already experimenting with community-level adoption. We should learn from them.
Support for translation projects, like those coordinated through Bitcoin for Fairness, can make educational content available in dozens of underserved languages.
Builders can design mobile-first onboarding experiences, with UX tailored for low-bandwidth regions and intermittent internet access.
Real impact: Bitcoin adoption grows where it is culturally relevant, economically useful, and technically accessible.
2. Build Local Tools on Global Rails
Global financial tools should not all be designed in or for Silicon Valley. Layer 2 solutions like Stacks allow local developers to build culturally relevant apps while anchoring their security to Bitcoin.
A community in Zimbabwe might build a savings pool or rotating credit system using a Stacks smart contract. A collective in Lebanon could deploy a mutual aid system where Bitcoin is used as a long-term store of value, while day-to-day transactions happen off-chain using community governance tools.
To unlock this, we need regional hackathons, targeted funding from programs like the Community Led DeGrants, as well as educational, financial and mentorship networks that support builders with little to no Web3 exposure.
Real impact: People build systems for their own realities, not just adapt to foreign tools built for someone else’s market.
3. Defend Self-Custody as a Default
Wallet UX can be simplified and translated to help non-technical users onboard securely. Community workshops and “keykeeping collectives” can help people onboard in groups, reducing the fear of loss or confusion.
Real impact: Holding your keys becomes as normal as holding your phone, not an intimidating exception.
4. Challenge the Narrative of Entitlement
Proof-of-Work bounties in the Stacks ecosystem can help formalize compensation and reward ongoing contributions, not just capital.
We need to redistribute cultural clout, celebrating those who steward the network, not just those who profit from it.
Real impact: Status comes from contribution, not just capital.
5. Protect Bitcoin’s Cultural Layer
Decentralization isn’t enforced by code alone. It’s a social contract shaped by norms, narratives, and choices.
Media, art, and critical discourse help anchor principles. Conferences and governance forums should always leave room for voices outside the West and outside capital.
Real impact: We preserve a culture where decentralization isn’t just a technical feature, but a lived value.
Creating a Legacy of Self-Sovereign Usability
If Bitcoin is to fulfill its promise, we need infrastructure that connects sovereignty to usability. We need real applications that give real people reasons to use Bitcoin, not just hold it. That’s where Stacks can make a difference.
Builders in the Stacks ecosystem are uniquely positioned to make Bitcoin usable for the next generation, not just by coding protocols, but by shaping the culture and tools that bring Bitcoin to life.
But this is more than DeFi. It's about building tools for small business owners in Senegal. For informal traders in Johannesburg. For teenage creators in Manila. For parents sending remittances from abroad. It’s about fulfilling the promise of Satoshi, not just extending the profits of speculation.
The protocol is set. The mission is alive. What we build next defines the outcome.