 Technology is a tool. As a tool, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is dropped into a society. Society decides how every person uses that tool in a very decentralized manner. As you use the tool, you change the tool. Your interaction with technology changes its nature, its modes, to become what you want it to be. That is true of centralized technologies. It is ten times as true of decentralized, open systems, where innovation does not require permission, where the development is guided by consensus in an open system. It is absolutely naive to assume that just because the founder thinks this is what it will be, that is what it will be. It turns out that Ethereum is not a system of applications that run exactly as written, without third-party interference, censorship, etc. Bitcoin is not simply a system of period-to-period digital cash. They evolve. The tricky thing about evolution is, even when it is directed, when you make a choice on any feature of the system, you are constrained by two things. One, you have no idea what the market plays, what society will do with that choice, and what path it will send you down. More importantly, when you make that choice, you are always making a trade-off. If you choose one path, you close the possibility of pursuing other paths. If you are a shark, and you have gills, you can breathe in salt water. But by necessity, you cannot breathe in open air. If you are a lion, and you develop claws, you will not have the dexterity of primate fingers. Every choice opens one path and closes billions of other possibilities that could have been pursued. Even if you knew exactly where you were going, choices have consequences. They limit things. They are trade-offs. They are inherently trade-offs. The reason I am using the lion and the shark as an example is because I think that is one way to look at these systems of blockchains that we have, Ethereum and Bitcoin, when comparing them. If Ethereum is a shark, it is the apex predator within its own environment. It is a fast swimmer. It can breathe underwater. It eats anything that bothers it. If Bitcoin is a lion, it rules the land, but it doesn't swim very well. You can never really put these two apex predators in a ring together and say, Let the best one win, because the outcome is decided entirely by whether you fill that fighting ring with water or not. Fitness for purpose is something that is decided through this evolutionary process in a marketplace. There is no such thing as best. In evolutionary terms, fitness does not mean the strongest. It means the one that has the best adaptation for its environment. Then the question becomes, what is the environment for Ethereum? What is the environment for Bitcoin? What applications are the ones that are most suited to be solved with something like Ethereum? What applications are the ones that are most suited to be solved by Bitcoin? Or any of the other systems out there? And necessarily, some choices have consequences. What is Ethereum best suited for? Ethereum has made some very specific trade-offs, and these were not accidental. They were very deliberate. It is a Turing-complete language, which offers enormous flexibility in programming, and brings Ethereum applications very close to the actual platform. Bitcoin is not Turing-complete, and that is not an accident. It is not Turing-complete for a very specific purpose. It is designed to be extremely limited in its flexibility in order to deliver very robust security. Simplicity is a fundamental security practice. If you choose to do things in a very simple way to make them robustly secure, you necessarily close the door on billions of applications that we have never thought of. You do not have the flexibility to do. If you choose to create the flexibility to do those applications, you are also signing up for a much more rapid pace of development, but also for much more complexity, which means many more bugs, many more unexpected conditions, many more unpredictable and unintended consequences. One necessitates the other. Ethereum and Bitcoin have launched themselves on different paths. Those paths do not cross. Bitcoin cannot do many of the things that Ethereum does. Ethereum cannot do many of the things that Bitcoin does, but they can both do something miraculous. They can reorder the fundamental institutions of society around network-centric systems of organization instead of institutions. They can create opportunities for innovation without permission. I am a maximalist for open, borderless, decentralized, permissionless systems that allow us to solve problems in society with technology that is open for everyone. Celebrate the line, celebrate the shark. They are both kings of their own unique environmental niche. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe, like, and share. All my work is shared for free. So, if you want to support it, join me on Patreon.