Publish the crypto piece as a method rather than a verdict

[HodlDee]

What this changes, and why

Publishes the draft in #87 — reframed. The draft asked reviewers to check every claim before publishing. Most held, one did not, and checking that one exposed a bigger problem than the claim itself.

New guide: Eight questions to ask about any digital asset (evaluating-a-monetary-asset, ~1,650 words, concepts, beginner).

Why the slug and framing changed

The homepage states the editorial standard: "Built to Inform, Not Persuade. Self-custody has no universal setup. We explain the options, the risks, and the tradeoffs that matter—so you can decide for yourself."

The draft as written did not meet it. It reached a conclusion on the reader's behalf, and the conclusion happened to be the one this site is built around — which makes it harder to notice, not easier. It would also have been the only guide in the library that argues a position rather than teaching something.

The strongest material in the draft was always the checklist: concentrated ownership, pre-mines, discretionary issuance, thin liquidity. That is a method. So the method now leads — eight structural questions, each with what a strong and a weak answer looks like — and bitcoin is the worked example rather than the thesis. Same evidence, same incidents, same limits; the reader draws the conclusion.

It is also more useful this way. A verdict about bitcoin helps with bitcoin. Eight questions help with the next thing marketed at someone, which will not be on any list written today.

Nothing was ever published under bitcoin-is-not-crypto, so there is no redirect to keep.

The claim that failed checking

The draft said bitcoin "has operated continuously" across national bans, exchange collapses and repeated drawdowns. Twice it has not.

August 2010 (CVE-2010-5139). Block 74638 carried a transaction creating roughly 184 billion bitcoin, because the check on outputs did not account for a sum that overflowed. A patched client shipped in about five hours; the honest chain overtook the bad one by block 74691. The cap held — but it held because people noticed, wrote a fix and ran it.

March 2013 (BIP 50). Moving from Berkeley DB to LevelDB dropped an accidental limit the old database imposed. A block split the network and it ran as two chains for roughly six hours until miners downgraded.

Both are retained, and in the reframed version they sit under the question they bear on — whether supply is enforced or promised — with the judgement about what they demonstrate handed to the reader rather than made for them.

Structure

1. The eight questions (a three-column table: question / strong answer / weak answer)
2. Bitcoin's answers, and how to check them
3. What the weak answers look like together (the draft's pump-and-dump list, framed as risk factors rather than accusations)
4. Twice, the answers needed people
5. What the method does not tell you (nothing about price, volatility, safety, the businesses, or intent)
6. Using it — including applying the questions to anything this site recommends

Notes for the reviewer

• The register is the thing to disagree with. I think the reframe brings this inside the site's stated standard; if you think a verdict piece belonged in the library after all, this is the PR to say so on.
• The draft's note asked to link Custody models explained #65 once both are published. That is Say that custody is a journey, without arguing anyone into buying #117, still open — the build guard rejects links to unpublished pages, so the cross-link is a follow-up once both merge.
• One claim I softened without flagging separately: the draft said "keys are generated offline". They can be, and the protocol does not require it. The guide says what the protocol does and does not do instead.
• Inbound related entries added on owning-your-bitcoin, what-is-money, twenty-one-million, who-decides-the-rules and how-custody-fails, plus one inline link from owning-your-bitcoin — related is one-way in render.mjs, so a new guide starts with no inbound links unless they are added.

Tests

npm run build

Every guard passing. 3,937 internal links checked, 0 broken. All glossary anchors resolve.

• I ran the tests relevant to this change
• npm run build completes with every guard passing
• If I added a test, I wired it into .github/workflows/build.yml

Generated output

• I changed build sources, and the regenerated docs/ is committed here

The offline artifact

• The digest is unchanged

Assets and third-party code

• This adds no images and no third-party code

Before requesting review

• This contains no real seed phrase, private key, passphrase or entropy
• This is not a security fix that should have gone through the private advisory form

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