Was Bitcoin hijacked? How institutional interests reshaped its narrative

Aaron Day argues Bitcoin has shifted from a decentralized peer-to-peer currency toward an institutional asset, a change he traces back to the collapse of the Bitcoin Foundation and the ensuing influence of the MIT Media Lab. Drawing on his early experience using Bitcoin in New Hampshire, Day recalls a time when the coin circulated as spendable digital cash.

By 2017, rising fees and slower confirmations had eroded that utility, and the asset increasingly stopped functioning as a medium of everyday exchange. As discussion moved from cash to a store-of-value framing, technical fixes such as SegWit and the Lightning Network gained prominence.

Day links those debates to a shift in who funded core development, noting that the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative began supporting several developers after the foundation’s collapse. Bitcoin’s integration into traditional finance—via exchange-traded products, institutional custody and nation-state reserves—prompted Day to question whether the project’s original mission was redirected.

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