Your government is absolutely terrified of two things you can hold. One will kill you if you point it at yourself. The other will kill the entire financial system if you just... sit on it and wait.
They're not equally regulated. That's the joke.
Think about this: A gun gets regulated by laws. Bitcoin gets regulated by Reddit threads calling it a scam.
Which one is actually working?
A gun is a thing that does something.
Bitcoin is a thing that does nothing except exist and become more valuable for not obeying anyone.
It's like if your teenage kid refused to leave the house and got stronger and richer every single day they stayed home. Eventually you stop yelling and just pretend they're not there.
Except it's a government and trillions of dollars.
(One of these is someone banning something. The other is someone absolutely panicking in real-time.)
Here's what's funny: Both guns and Bitcoin exist for the same reason—because humans fundamentally don't trust other humans with power.
Guns said, "I'll distribute physical power."
Bitcoin said, "I'll distribute economic power."
And institutions are just standing there like, "Wait, you're creating a system that works whether we want it to or not? How is that legal?" (It is.)
One protects you from tyranny through force. The other protects you from tyranny through math. And math doesn't care what Congress thinks.
Your grandma said: "I don't trust things I don't understand."
She was talking about guns and Bitcoin without knowing it.
And she was right. Not because they're bad. But because they both represent power that won't answer to her. You can't call a number and negotiate with a bullet. You can't email the Bitcoin network and ask it to reverse your transaction.
They're both objects that say: "Your rules don't apply here."
And institutions—which are basically Grandma, but with a Treasury Department—absolutely lose it when they encounter objects that don't have an HR department to call.
Here's the real one: Your government spent 400 years getting really good at controlling:
So they created the internet to control everything, and accidentally invented the only system that can't be controlled. It's like trying to create a cage out of water.
The conspiracy is that there's no conspiracy—just institutions realizing their playbook doesn't work anymore and improvising by calling everything a scam until something else distracts us.
(They're pretending it's option one. They know it's option two.)
You're living in a time where power is migrating from institutions to individuals who understand the code.
Guns did this in 1776 (kinda).
Bitcoin is doing it in 2024 (actually).
The next thing will do it in 2035 or so. And institutions will panic about that too. And narrative-control it. And eventually realize they can't.
Your grandma was right: Don't trust systems you don't understand. But also—maybe learn to understand them. Because the ones you don't understand are already winning.
This is what happens when you have too much free time and too many opinions. No institutions harmed. Probably just a joke. Definitely not.