I don't get the popularity of this take

same with "Bitcoin gave up control to the banks via ETFs" 

this was always the plan, BTC takes over the world and everyone bends the knee

was the community supposed to rally around banning banks and presidents from buying?

intersubjective mechanism design @ poidh.xyz - come chill /poidh + follow @poidhbot

The conflict of the original vision versus the current outcome is that satoshi left before the massive consolidation of miners into just a handful of pools, and so they were left to only bicker about what satoshi really wanted instead of taking initiative in fulfilling the raw mission of being digital cash. I’m sure Satoshi, if Satoshi is still out there, considers leaving to be the biggest mistake. If they are out there, and attempting something new, I doubt they'll ever reveal who they once were, but I equally doubt they'll let go of the reins on whatever they're doing now.

BDFL of Quilibrium, Eng @ Farcaster, ex-Coinbase, always opinionated, never hydrated

/quilibrium

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=652.msg14729#msg14729

Even close to when Satoshi left, the mission hadn't changed: "The more standard Wiki thing to do is that we should have a paragraph in one of the more general categories that we are an instance of, like Electronic Currency or Electronic Cash.  We can probably establish a paragraph there.  Again, keep it short.  Just identifying what it is."

I think they are extremely happy that they left because it cemented the decentralized nature, otherwise we'd be stuck in the weird semi-decentralized w/ strongman leader space that Ethereum is (Vitalik) 

and it's still a massive success over a decade later so that backs up the decision 

I also disagree that the goal was digital cash, that's the whitepaper goal

the real goal is in the genesis block (separating money from the state)