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A lot of people think my interview with Roger Ver was a turning point when I left the church of Bitcoin maximalism

In fact, I started questioning it when the culture became obviously non-libertarian during the pandemic

Asking Gary Gensler’s SEC to label everything other than BTC as an unregistered security

Defending KYC & weird surveillance practices, by saying that at least the service is “Bitcoin only and doesn’t support any shitcoin”

Slaying guys like Andreas Antonopoulos who honestly is the reason many of us stuck around

Pushing idiots with nothing interesting to say to speak on conference stages just because they are “bullish”

Shitting on projects that have been nothing but nice and supportive to Bitcoin (Litecoin, Zcash) and others that do what Bitcoin cannot (Ethereum, Monero)

Replacing reason with dogma and enforcing everything with a weird sense of self-confidence that stalls progress

Acting like any network upgrade is an attack, despite intensive testing on other compatible networks

Vilifying developers to the point that they ragequit to build something else, while those who stay are incentivized to play along with the meme culture just to earn a paycheck

Worshipping Saylor, who is against the values of Bitcoin’s early days

Sucking up to politicians and selling out to government agencies because “everything is good for Bitcoin” and “Honeybadger don’t care”

Pretending that a federation like Liquid is decentralized and the L-BTC token is actually bitcoin (the market chose Ethereum for this use case, lol)

Repeating lies about Lightning Network’s success, when the project has been stagnating in terms of liquidity for years

Acting like bitcoin adoption in El Salvador (mostly custodial, surveilled by the state) is going the way it’s supposed to and other countries should copy the same example

Looking the other way while bitcoin payments get replaced by stablecoins and BTC adoption was in fact higher a decade ago

Changing history and erasing the contributions of OGs only to appeal to institutional investors that may make the number go up (who still remembers Gavin Andresen or Mike Hearn?)

Making up narratives on the go, manufacturing fake news in order to manipulate the market sentiment and get another pump

Suppressing conversations about serious improvement proposals, which would help Bitcoin scale to 8 billion people and offer monetary fungibility

Keeping builders away from Bitcoin with a hostile and cocky attitude which assumes victory before any significant battle has been won

Not giving a fuck about the disappearance of privacy products & research (Ethereum raised millions of dollars to defend the Tornado Cash devs, while bitcoiners simply shrugged when Samourai devs got arrested)

Normalizing a culture of complacency where you’re afraid of saying something wrong (or even remotely different from the social consensus) because you might just be excommunicated

Promoting sheepish mediocrity while pushing away radical reformists (Paul Sztorc, Jeremy Rubin)

Forgetting history (today was UASF day, does anyone still remember?)

Never giving the benefit of the doubt to other networks that build cool shit, only because they have tokens which compete with bitcoin

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I could go on all day, but I am sick of the hypocrisy and double standards.

Toxic Bitcoin maximalism is an inconsistent mess

A fucking death cult that leaves no true Scotsman standing

Though it may seem like a resilient culture, it ultimately leads to fragility via stagnation

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William ₿ Travis 5mo ago

This seems to disregard the many people who aren't involved in anything you've described. They stack bitcoin (and use it in different ways as I do) in order to take care of their families with as little interference as possible. Every revolutionary cause has to deal with reality, and almost none succeed. That's an interesting study in itself.

Bitcoin is a powerful idea, and as such, it's going to go many directions as revolutionary causes often do. As a powerful idea that works remarkably well technically, it has legs, regardless of the personalities and divergent actions they take.

The revolution was never going to go in a straight line, and it was always going to get captured in certain ways (it's people afterall).

I think, though, regardless of all the things you described above, the revolution will go forward because bitcoin actually works for people like me, the sort of average guy looking to take care of his family and sees that the fiat system cannot provide those long-term values I require to do so.

This might very well be me being naive, but I've been in since just after the block-size war, and bitcoin has repeatedly liberated me from the cuffs the system tried to place on me.

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Discussion

FEW_BTC 5mo ago

Bingo

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

Also, Vlad is mixing together toxic, ethically incoherent attitudes with attitudes that actually make sense and calling it all one thing, I might add. Communism is a death cult. A culture that emphasizes what keeps the money secure and at the apex of monetary commodities though? That's not death. That's life. When any one of them gives in to using government regulations, that is evil, that is a perversion, and it should be excommunicated from the bitcoin maxi cult, as he puts it.

William ₿ Travis 5mo ago

The idea of culture is generally tied to a coherent group of people, which bitcoiners are not. Our focus certainly should be on keeping the protocol free of interference, but that has nothing to do with the conditions under which the protocol is used. That is always going to be subject to human behavior.

I appreciate the conversations about the protocol, such as how to deal with the quantum threat. But bitcoin isn't a church, and if a person takes an immoral action like asking for a regulatory position from the government, you're talking about something other than bitcoin at that point.

What I don't care for is painting with a broad brush what "bitcoiners" are. I think that's all I'm trying to say without picking a fight with anyone.

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

We just have different concepts attached to the word "bitcoiner." No true bitcoiner is a statist. But to you, "plenty of bitcoiners are statist, they're just people who like bitcoin," is probably an accurate statement. Both are true. These are just words. It's the concepts that matter.

William ₿ Travis 5mo ago

Statist is a such a fixed word. I believe that a people incapable of governing themselves require an authority to keep order. Whether the inability to self-govern is an accident of factors s or is an intentional strategy is a separate conversation. I don't favor regulation and don't ask for it. But I'm not surprised when it happens. My believing that a state, even tyranny, can sometimes be necessary doesn't change my commitment to classical liberalism.

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

If you further take the position that people capable of governing themselves should prefer statelessness as a means of being free from aggression, then you are also an anarchist.

I have observed that it is just the course of things that some people and peoples are just unable to achieve statelessness because they are statists, because they choose it, and they choose it because they are incapable of thinking, and they are incapable of thinking because they choose to not think. They are immature, they have not mastered themselves. They need whatever they need, and they will follow the path they perceive to be appropriate for them. Consequentially we can say that because this or that is necessarily going to happen and there is no possibility of achieving a completely free market for these people within that possibility space, then all of the moral paths still necessitate a state.

But if you affirm that state aggression is bad, and that all states necessarily aggress by definition, and that there is a better alternative, then you must concede that you are yourself an anarchist, and have simply relegated yourself to acceptance, but never advocacy for, the pathetic state dependence of other people. Else you are inconsistent.

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

I also consider myself to be a classical liberal. A consistent classical liberal, which is an anarcho-capitalist. I got to ancap via classical liberalism and my own reason. States are just corporations. They don't have the right to steal or murder any more than any other corporation. Ergo, voluntary governance is the way.

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

So I think we actually agree on everything except definitions and preferred modes of language.

William ₿ Travis 5mo ago

I don't affirm that all state aggression is bad. I think it should be employed to protect life and property. I'm not sure that requires bitcoin regulation, and I am pretty sure I wouldn't be cheering people who call for it. On the other hand, there is practical value in lobbying the govt to eliminate CGT on bitcoin. I'm not sure that's what we mean by regulation, though.

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

I agree with you on all points, except either you are unfamiliar with the Rothbardian meaning of the term "aggression" I am using here and have misinterpreted it to mean force, or you believe in a contradiction. I presume it is the former.

In as much as states act in either protection of property rights or leaving people alone, they are not aggressing. It is the monopolization of this power through abuse of rightful property, such as theft, fraud, slavery, kidnapping, et c., that sustains the state (in addition to the lack of personal responsibility and the gullibility of its purported citizens). This is why I consider states to be inherently antagonistic against the protection of property rights and to be in all cases worse than a voluntary system of property protection, all else equal.

Aggression means the initiation of conflict over the control of a property, be it your body, your brain, your house, your car, your privately guarded nsec, etc. This can generally be observed whenever consent is breeched, as a rule of thumb.

William ₿ Travis 5mo ago

I agree with that definition of aggression.

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

Then you are admitting a number of unfortunate empirical facts into your analysis of the necessity of a state for our practical purposes, which kind of go without saying and muddy up the core of the message of classical liberalism if permitted to make us shy away from the logical conclusions of our normative stance.

Aggression is bad. Simple as that. You are taking the stance that attempts to behold things one can only behold if one is omniscient, of "well, it may be necessary for this thing to be here in an ultimate sense." I do that a lot of the time too, I try to think of things from a very holistic perspective. But regardless of whether the conclusions you are drawing from that necessitate some uncertainty regarding the technical or ultimate necessity of the state within that narrow subset of possible future particulars, our goal is to generally reduce aggression.

You probably agree that we want to do that as one of our top goals, through means consistent with our principles and in light of our own epistemological uncertainty, so the strategy of working to eliminate - or educate reasonable people about - state aggression within these bounds, and the ontological truth that aggression is always bad, are things we should agree on and perhaps be more clear about when presenting our desire for freedom and our practicable solutions toward that end. It helps us communicate to others who may join us on this journey or who would be amenable to alternatives to the authoritarian nightmare normies have been leaning into.

Kevin's Bacon 5mo ago

Rothbard has a number of essays about why radical, unrelenting consistency with the principle is crucial, and a large part of it is the efficacy of the message and the sustainability of the movement, and of the cause. Or you can just ask me my thoughts, I've thought a lottt about strategy, communication, and the interactions of sustainable individual libertarian lives keeping the movement going.

ede3d957... 5mo ago

Followed.

kyle-moore 5mo ago

NGU is both the most annoying thing and the most important thing.