In the history of human economic relations, wealth and power have always had only two sources:
a) you hold a resource others depend on;
b) you hold an instrument of someone's obligation (others owe you)
Whoever holds the key to someone else’s dependence is free. Whoever depends on others is a slave. Quite simple.
If you hold oil, grain, or electricity, people and companies must come to you and pay you to drive their vehicles, feed themselves, or heat their homes and factories. Without that resource, their normal functioning stops.
If you hold most apartments in a city where there is not enough housing, individuals and families must pay you rent or the purchase price, often handing over a large part of their income for decades. Without access to an apartment, they cannot normally live and work in that city.
If you hold supermarket gift cards, airline "miles," casino chips, or shares in a company, the issuers owe you goods, services, cash, dividends, or liquidation proceeds.
If you hold dollars or euros, bank debtors must come to you or they will lose their house or factory, and the state will be unable to pay its bonds. This is because that money is created through bank loans. Every person with a mortgage must bring that money to the bank to get the lien removed from their house. Every company with a loan must bring it to get the lien removed from its factory. Every state with bonds must bring it to avoid bankruptcy. That is why millions of people work, sell, and beg just to obtain those same dollars or euros and close their loans. You, who hold that money, don't have to do anything. Others work for you.
In all these examples, you possess leverage over others: people must come to you, beg you, work for you, or bring you something to get what they need or to get rid of their obligations.
Bitcoin gives you none of that.
It gives you neither a physical nor a systemic resource on which the functioning of others depends (as with energy, housing, or dollars). There is no issuer who owes you anything (as with stocks, casino chips, or gift cards).
In short, Bitcoin does not give you control over others. Instead, it gives you control over a number in a shared database.
To obtain that "number," you had to give up things that gave you real power: other people's obligations, other people's dependence, other people's fear of being left without what you control. The moment you traded that power for Bitcoin, you traded leverage for emptiness. You no longer have anything that others depend on. All that remains is the naked hope that the market will voluntarily accept your number.
In other words: before, others had to come to you; now you have to beg them.
Before, you held an instrument that was someone else's obligation or the key to their functioning. Now you have thrown it away and are left with a number that obliges no one to anything. You gave up power and received pure dependence.
That is why all the talk of "digital gold," "sovereignty," and "financial freedom" is just a marketing trick. True freedom and sovereignty exist only when others depend on you, when you hold something without which they cannot function or something that obliges them to do something for you.
With Bitcoin it is the opposite: you are the one who depends on other people's acceptance, on other people's will.
That is not liberation; it is a voluntary entry into slavery.