I'm still thinking about cypherpunks falling out of favor in geek culture. It occurred to me that people are very much still behind us on certain fights when carried out in a certain way.

For example, fighting against IoT crap that spies on you. People love seeing the alternatives to Nest and Ring and the like. They usually don't actually build/buy the open source versions and frequently still buy the corporate products, but they're rooting for us nonetheless. That's pretty much how it was back in the 90s as well. Lots of vocal support, and the punks were mainly building the things for us and make them available to others too. It is helpful to have people who collectively have enough money to hire a lawyer. It's helpful to have popular support when opposing laws that make cryptography illegal to export.

However, now, if we try to take on big corporate banks with basically any solution at all, we're the devil. Every time there's one bitcoin mining company doing something sketchy, critics jump straight to all of crypto is a scam and it's killing the planet. I know, #bitcoin != crypto and the energy consumption is more complex than they understand, but this is the perception.

To be fair, the power consumption even bothered Satoshi Nakamoto, so I can understand why that strikes a nerve. But of course trying to lay out the facts doesn't work because anyone who tries to have a conversation about it is an "other" and it's viewed as an "us vs them" situation.

Perhaps even more interesting is the people who self-identify as anti-capitalist. These are people whose core beliefs are that monopolies are bad, milking everyone to the maximum extent possible is bad, big banks (and finance in general) are the worst. Instead, the people who actually produce things should be respected. They don't like the idea of "extracting value" from people or engaging in consumerism. That we should be making durable goods, that can be upgraded and repaired instead of throwing phones in the landfill every other year.

These people seem like they should be excited about bitcoin. The idea that it's money that incentivizes postponing purchases as long as possible, doesn't directly benefit banks and big finance, and can be used in the solidarity economy or to donate to anti-corporate groups like Wikileaks. It seems superb.

But they are also generally concerned about the environment. If not climate change, then at least e-waste, clean air and water, aquifers not being drained and so forth. So we're right back at the bad/outdated/incorrect information being accepted as gospel. I'd be happy to have the conversation about whether bitcoin's transaction validation is worth the energy it consumes. But this nonsense about bitcoin using up all the fresh water, running on coal, or driving up energy prices for everyday folks... those are the ones that are frustrating.

I think the way to combat this is to post on legacy social media and the Fediverse about how you appreciate the progress that has been made and giving a hat tip to bitcoin for making it happen faster (or at all).

Example 1: post about the companies who are capturing methane to combat global warming and bitcoin is what incentivizes it/makes it cost effective.

Example 2: Post the surprising fact that rural Africans have electricity and pay less for it because of bitcoin mining, and since it's hydroelectric, it's completely free of fossil fuels.

Example 3: when the next popular crypto scam comes around, post about how messed up that is, compare it to the scam emails and phone calls getting people to do wire transfers to a criminal. If bitcoin fixes it, mention it in passing. And bitcoin doesn't fix the "I got tricked into sending money go a fraudster", so don't go there. On the other hand, if it's something like Bear Sterns, pointing out that btc was literally invented because of irresponsible bankers who never got any punishment for their actions because they were too big to fail.

Tell the good stories on their own, not in response to some hater who is probably preaching to the choir of other bitcoin haters. There's no point in trying to spread the message to bitcoin fanatics nor haters. You're either preaching to the bitcoin choir or it's falling on deaf ears. Either way, we're not moving forward. The point is to reach the people who don't already have a strong opinion about it and explain the benefits while smashing the misinformation. This is how we move forward. It's not by fighting (mostly), it's by educating and having empathy.