Yeah, leftist hackers helped build the cage—but rightist crypto bros did the exact same thing from the other direction. Both chose tribal purity over actual freedom. Both preferred a small, ideologically correct community over neutral infrastructure that might include people they hate.
Authoritarians couldn't have asked for a better outcome: freedom tech divided against itself, forever marginal, proving to everyone else that alternatives don't work.
How exactly?
We have a saying that Bitcoin is for enemies. We won't and can't take them out.
I don't see this. Left used power of the state. Libertarians built tech that is for everyone.
In theory, yes - it's tech for everyone. In practice? Look at Bitcoin culture now. "Bitcoin is for enemies" turned into "have fun staying poor" and endless purity tests about who's a real bitcoiner over the last decade.
The infrastructure might be neutral, but the culture isn't. And culture determines who actually feels welcome to use the infrastructure. Bitcoin culture became tribal, exclusionary, and ideologically policed. Building neutral tech means nothing if the culture around it demands conformity.
A typical example of this would be groups like Jednadvacet who are not about freedom but primarly about spreading one particular ideology of bitcoin maximalism.
You, as one of the authors of Paralelní Polis, had a unique opportunity to build a culture in the Bitcoin community - to explore how we coordinate together across differences, to demonstrate what freedom actually looks like in practice. Build bridges.
Instead, we have tribalism and ideological gatekeeping. And people which supported authoritarians like Roman and embraced cronyism. Simply put, there is no morality or culture.
Everyone is different. As nostr:nprofile1qqsg86qcm7lve6jkkr64z4mt8lfe57jsu8vpty6r2qpk37sgtnxevjcpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqzrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqaktkhj says, there is no they. Only ourselves choosing the path we consider better. For me it is now the idea of removing fiat from our lives and minds, just removing and replacing with Bitcoin.
I think you read too much to it. Behind me is a painting by a Slovak artist. She is a bitcoiner, in her 60s. She uses Bitcoin, probably would have been leftist if she cared to express her political opinion. She hasn't even heard about Bitcoin maximalism.
Dvadsaťjeden - I like to troll them about maximalism, but to be fair, I've been to several meetups and they were helpful to everyone and didn't even mention shitcoins. Of course you can't expect Bitcoiners to cheer and help with Ethereum the same way you wouldn't go to a chess meetup to play go. But there has been no hostility, at least in Slovakia, don't know about the Czech or German.
> Behind me is a painting by a Slovak artist. She is a bitcoiner, in her 60s.
Well sure - just slap "bitcoin-only" on something and bitcoiners will go for it. In this way they're a perfect consumer demographic: books, art, butter, meat, whatever. As long as it signals tribal membership, critical thinking goes out the window.
21: The culture communicates hostility without needing to say it explicitly. When your entire community is built around inside jokes about "shitcoiners", you don't need to explicitly tell people they're not welcome - they already know. That's exclusion through cultural signals.
This is exactly why these technologies can't grow beyond their bubbles. You've locked people into echo chambers with the only acceptable perspective. Anyone curious but not already converted gets filtered out by the culture before they even encounter the tech.
Most people aren't like you or me - they don't have time to think deeply about these things. They navigate the world through social proof and trusted authorities. But it makes people vulnerable to social manipulation, even well-intentioned manipulation. Groups like Jednadvacet probably mean well, but they're providing a ready-made identity package: approved opinions, tribal markers, in-group boundaries.
For me, crypto was supposed to teach us to defend against this - to verify, not trust. To think independently. To resist tribal thinking. Instead, Bitcoin culture just swapped one orthodoxy for another. Central bank authorities became Bitcoin influencers. Government dogma became maximalist dogma. Same social dynamics... Most people still aren't thinking for themselves, they've just changed which tribe tells them what to believe.
They're free to choose their tribe.
Leftist - top down authoritarian control. GDPR/ MiCA or else...
Libertarian - here are the tools, join a tribe if you want. You can choose one of many, or start your own.
I don't see a problem. You can't force people into independent thinking. People are social creatures (at least most of them) and they will join tribes. Bitcoin provides the tribes, but people are free to do whatever they want.
I don't see a problem here. There are many people who think differently, even people going to dvadsatjeden meetups. Providing an option is not a problem.
Toxic maximalism is just annoying. Way different than authoritarian.
You're right that you can't force independent thinking. But you can build cultures that encourage it versus cultures that punish it. Bitcoin culture chose the latter, then acts surprised when it stays small and tribal.
Toxicity is just the first stage of authoritarianism. Right now everyone says "we don't block anyone, it's voluntary". But i'm sure when the masses arrive (if they ever do), most bitcoiners will want to vote out the "wrong" people.
You think smart bitcoiners won't allow capture, but it will come naturally through sheer numbers and social dynamics. The infrastructure might be neutral, but when the culture demands conformity, people will find ways to enforce it. First through social pressure, then through technical gatekeeping, eventually through explicit exclusion.
I would worry about this honestly more in Ethereum ecosystem. Bitcoin is super conservative and any blocking or exclusion is laughed out of the room. That's the positive part about Bitcoin culture. Ossification is bad in many aspects, but good in the fact that it's basically impossible to technically mandate censorship.
Bitcoin is also technically better in this than Ethereum (at least until the privacy upgrades, which I'm looking forward to). Zcash and Monero make it hard even now.
99.9% of Bitcoiners never went to 21 meetup.
You're reading too much into it.
BTW the artist does not advertise her affiliation to Bitcoin at all. She's working in her studio and saving in BTC. I wouldn't even know if she was not a friend. Most people are like this. They use it as a tool and couldn't care less about some imaginary culture war on some app.
You are probably right.
I just wanna point that If 99.9% of bitcoiners just want a savings or speculation tool and don't engage with the underlying philosophy, then Bitcoin culture gets defined by the loud, tribal 0.1% who do care. And that minority has made it increasingly hostile and exclusionary.
Yes. It's a tool and people are free to use it however they want. And it's a good thing.
0.1% has much less impact than people think if they read a small section of social media.
Most people will never get into contact with a toxic maxi. I think people usually overstate the impact. It's quite hard to find the entrance into this echo chamber.
And you have many people spreading Bitcoin among human rights activists, in Africa, in different communities, ...
I'm not talking about "toxic maxis" as some fringe minority you can just avoid. I'm talking about the entire current Bitcoin culture, where these people control the most important businesses, mining operations, media, and infrastructure around Bitcoin. That 0.1% you're dismissing control the whole network - or at least all the coordination layers that matter. They run the conferences, the media outlets, the major mining pools, the development funding. They define what's "legitimate" Bitcoin discourse.
You say most people will never encounter them, but that's only true if you never try to build anything, never participate in development discussions, never try to organize events. The moment you engage beyond just holding, you encounter the gatekeepers.
I think your view is distorted by who is loud.
Check there mining pools for example. Biggest pools are antpool and viabtc. Both are shitcoiners. 😊
Sadly I do find bitcoin culture (in general) to be not positive. I’ve been moving away from it to a community of artists, who are much more open minded than most bitcoiners I find.
And I agree it’s the small majority, but they are setting the tone. Is it possible to ignore this? Of course. But the crypto-anarchy roots have been co-opted into something else.
This also happened with the OG hackers. In the 90s we talked about fuck the man and all this and now these same people (I know) are working for defense contractors.
At this point, I think it’s much more a radical idea to go without money, like Mark Boyle, then to be an advocate of bitcoin.
I wish I had a more optimistic view. There are pockets of interesting developments and people still. But I’d rather go to a poetry meetup than a bitcoin one at this time.
