Bitcoin isn’t “crypto”
An X post by Jack Dorsey revived an old query: Is Bitcoin a part of “crypto” or is it a category of its own?
On October 19, 2025, Jack Dorsey posted three words on X: “Bitcoin isn’t crypto.” The post quickly garnered attention across the platform and in media coverage. It reflected his long-held view that Bitcoin must be viewed as money with its own rules and history, not a part of the broader token market.
Source: Jack Dorsey
Dorsey argues that Bitcoin (BTC) belongs in a separate category. It was founded with out a foundation or bonus and is run conservatively. The network is designed for payments and savings, unlike smart contract platforms and app tokens which are rapidly evolving and serving multiple use cases.
Let's unpack the argument.
To understand why, it's helpful to try how Bitcoin's design, governance, and regulation differ from the remainder of the crypto world.
Did ? El Salvador was the primary country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The law was passed on June 9, 2021 and got here into force on September 7, 2021.
Monetary policy and issuance: Fixed rules vs. flexible policies
Starting with the availability, Bitcoin issuance follows a hard and fast schedule, while most other networks treat the availability as a tunable feature.
New coins are issued as block rewards, halving roughly every 210,000 blocks until the whole supply reaches 21 million BTC. The fourth halving occurred in April 2024 at block 840,000, reducing the reward from 6.25 BTC to three.125 BTC. Any reduction leads to miners becoming more depending on transaction fees and fewer depending on latest issuances.
Changing the issuance of Bitcoin would require overwhelming societal consensus amongst users running nodes, allowing investors to model supply years prematurely. This predictability stays a core a part of its “store of value” appeal.
Most other networks view monetary policy as a design decision. Take Ethereum for instance: Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 introduced a base fee that reduces net issuance when demand is high, and the Merge update moved the network to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), reducing gross issuance. Together, these changes create an offering model that dynamically adapts to network activity.
This flexibility can improve the user experience and enable latest features, while Bitcoin's rigidity is meant to take care of monetary credibility.
Consensus and security budgets: PoW minimalism vs. PoS upgrade speed
How a blockchain secures itself shapes every part that follows. Bitcoin pays security with work, while Proof-of-Stake (PoS) systems pay with stake.
In Bitcoin, miners use energy so as to add blocks and full nodes implement a small, conservative algorithm. The scripting language is deliberately easy and never Turing-complete. Fewer moving parts means less risk of something breaking. For this reason, changes to the bottom layer are rare and punctiliously limited.
As the block reward continues to halve, miners' revenue progressively shifts from latest coins to transaction fees – Bitcoin's long-term “security budget.” This raises vital questions for the long run, comparable to how incentives will delay in times of low fees. It also shows why a surge in activity that drives up fees, in addition to regular usage on levels just like the Lightning Network, matters to miner economics.
Many crypto platforms, especially Ethereum, use PoS. Validators lock Ether (ETH), receive rewards for proposing and confirming blocks, and will be punished for misconduct. This model has enabled faster upgrades: the 2022 merge moved to PoS, Shapella (2023) enabled withdrawals, and EIP-4844 (2024) reduced data costs for rollups.
Bitcoin emphasizes security, stability, and minimal changes at its base layer, while most PoS networks emphasize faster upgrades and better throughput.
Did ? A bug in 2010 briefly created 184 billion BTC before the chain reset as a part of a 53-block reorganization. The “Value Overflow” incident stays Bitcoin’s biggest restructuring. The second largest bug occurred in 2013 during a software incompatibility between versions 0.7 and 0.8 and spanned 24 blocks.
Governance and culture: “ossification vs. optimization” in practice
Who changes the principles, how quickly and the way safely? Bitcoin is inherently slow to develop, while app-oriented chains emphasize speed and suppleness.
Bitcoin is inherently slow to alter. Suggestions begin as Bitcoin improvement suggestions, are discussed publicly and only implemented when developers, miners and node operators broadly signal support. There are not any on-chain voting or foundation governance decisions. Upgrades are typically delivered as soft forks, maintaining compatibility with older nodes.
The Taproot upgrade leveraged the “Speedy Trial” signaling mechanism in 2021, achieved lock-in in June, and activated on November 14, 2021 at block 709,632. The lengthy process gave developers, miners and node operators time to coordinate and reduce activation risk. This rhythm (few changes, many considerations) is what people mean by the “ossification” of Bitcoin.
Smart contract platforms take the alternative approach. Ethereum introduces changes as a part of the EIP process that follow a gradual release cycle – e.g. B. Post-merge withdrawals and proto-thanksharding to scale back data costs.
Different goal, different pace: Bitcoin protects financial credibility through conservative changes, while app-focused chains emphasize delivering latest features and maintaining developer activity.
Did ? A good portion of BTC may very well be lost ceaselessly. Estimates based on chain evaluation suggest that around 2.3 million to three.7 million BTC might be permanently lost – a double-digit percentage of the availability cap of 21 million.
What's on top: Payments vs. general-purpose apps
Bitcoin keeps the bottom layer small: unspent transaction output (UTXO) settlement, a limited stack-based script (intentionally not Turing-complete), and comparatively modest logic beyond that.
Much of Bitcoin's payment activity is moving to second-layer networks comparable to the Lightning Network. It uses bi-directional channels and Hash Time Locked Contracts (HTLCs) to route fast, low-fee payments without changing base layer rules. Everyday transactions happen off-chain while settlement stays anchored on the major network.
Smart contract platforms take the alternative approach. Ethereum supports large-scale, stateful contracts at its Layer 1 and promotes composability – decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and on-chain games that construct on one another. This approach allows for faster experimentation, but requires a versatile, repeatedly updated base layer.
Bitcoin remains to be experimenting on the sides. The introduction of Ordinals and Runes across the 2024 halving drove fees to record highs, boosting miner revenue and providing a real-world test of fee-driven security. Crucially, none of this modified Bitcoin's currency rules or minimalist Layer 1 design. The pattern applies: keep the bottom stable and permit latest activities to grow over or alongside it.
Market Structure and What It Means: The Separate Section of BTC
Exchange traded funds (ETFs), options and flow data suggest that institutions are treating Bitcoin in another way than the remainder of the crypto market.
On January 10, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved rule changes that allow exchanges to list and trade Bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETPs) locally. The decision brought BTC to mainstream exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Arca, Nasdaq and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe).
These are the identical platforms utilized by brokers, registered investment advisors (RIAs) and pension funds. Whatever you call the asset class, retirement and wealth platforms now have a dedicated lane for Bitcoin.
From then on, the market infrastructure expanded. By the tip of 2024, US regulators had approved options on spot Bitcoin ETFs and Cboe introduced index options tied to a basket of those funds. In short, it's risk transfer and price discovery using tools that institutions already understand – something that almost all tokens still lack.
The flow data made this variation clear. In 2024 and 2025, launches and redemptions in the brand new funds became a every day fixture, with dashboards tracking assets and net flows. Investors gained Bitcoin exposure through traditional wrappers relatively than crypto-native platforms.
Political signals point in the identical direction. U.S. derivatives regulators have long classified Bitcoin as a commodity. In 2025, US SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission staff noted that registered exchanges could facilitate trading of certain spot commodity crypto products.
Taken together, the distribution channels, hedging tools, flow reports, and regulatory labels make a powerful case for Jack’s “Bitcoin isn’t crypto” argument. The markets have already put it in a separate bucket.
