Cory Klippsten Slams Mike Novogratz Over Bitcoin Trust Claims

Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan Bitcoin, responded to comments from Galaxy Digital’s CEO Mike Novogratz, rejecting the idea that Bitcoin’s value or usefulness comes mainly from trust or shared belief among its users.

Klippsten stated that Bitcoin doesn’t work because of trust, but because anyone and anywhere can verify.

His main point is that users don’t need to trust anyone: not governments, banks, exchanges, developers, big-name Bitcoin advocates, or even the whole crypto community. Instead, they can just check and confirm every important property about the network for themselves.

Swan Bitcoin’s CEO is leaning on one of Bitcoin’s original mottos: “don’t trust, verify.” That means anyone can download the Bitcoin software and check the blockchain themselves.

This involves verifying things like the total supply of Bitcoin in circulation, that the 21 million limit hasn’t been broken, every block ever mined, every transaction since Bitcoin launched in 2009, that miners are following the consensus rule, and that new coins are issued according to the protocol.

Because anyone can audit all of this publicly, Bitcoin is often called a trust-minimized system.

Klippsten also called Bitcoin antifragile, which is a term made famous by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, where systems grow stronger by enduring pressure rather than depending on centralized oversight.

Related: Corporate Bitcoin Holdings Surge as Companies Add 115K BTC in Q2

A Big Difference from Traditional Finance

It seems that with his post, Klippsten is also pushing back against the habit of treating Bitcoin like it works the same way as traditional finance. In TradFi, participants typically have to trust central banks to manage money, commercial banks to keep the funds safe, clearing houses to settle trades, regulators to watch over markets, and auditors to check the books.

Bitcoin replaces a lot of that reliance on institutions with math-based verification and a system where no single party calls the shots.

This is the complete opposite of Mike Novogratz saying that Bitcoin’s value is built on faith in its network and the people who use it. He called it the steadiest crypto out there simply because of how big it is, even when the overall market is having a slow year.