A big long rant on the madhouse that is Bitcoin...
Ever find yourself in a room full of people who just give you the ick—and you can’t help but wonder, “How did I end up here?”
That’s been me looking around at the Bitcoin world for the past ~3 yrs. It’s been a rough few years on the personal front. I changed my social circle and parted ways with dear old friends. But don’t get me wrong, there are still amazing people here and the Bitcoiners that I now hangout with I genuinely find to be the most interesting and impressive people on the planet. I’d pass on a ticket to the Met gala to go to a dive bar with my fav Bitcoiners! But, looking around at the broader space… it’s ugly out here.
Blatant misogyny, political boot licking, tyrant worship, nonsensical infighting. This is not the behavior of humanity's best and brightest. And we think so highly of ourselves in this space, we are geniuses… right? Well how did all this madness wind up here, with us?
The breakdown of my relationship with one particular Bitcoiner friend of mine is very illustrative of what’s been happening here. This is a person who was a long time anarchist deep in the libertarian world. We connected over shared values, or at least I thought we had. Then the values got eroded, one by one. Liberty! …unless you are a woman, because of course women want to be led by a man. No rulers! …well except Trump, because he’s going to beat those evil libtards with the satanic agenda.
Pain will motivate you, and so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened there. I see three recurring patterns: the perpetual rebel, the disillusioned, and the power hungry.
1. The Perpetual Rebel
Someone suffers a deep injustice at a formative point in life. They engage in righteous rebellion, and that becomes their identity. When one fight ends, they seek another, just to keep feeling like themselves. They aren’t just fighting for something—they’re fighting to stay someone.
2. The Disillusioned
Sometimes there are reality breaking moments in people’s lives. Someone has been told their whole life that the sky is blue, but one day, they look up and it is red. Their whole model of reality breaks, they question everything, they trust no one. They become stuck in disillusionment, always doubting, never grounded.
3. The Power Hungry
Some rebel against their rulers. Their rulers are unjust and are suppressing them. They are filled with righteous anger and join the movements to remove the oppressive leaders. But, while they may have spent years chanting it, it wasn't that they actually wanted “no rulers”, they didn’t want “freedom” in a general sense. They wanted to not be ruled themselves. They wanted freedom and power for themselves. And so, when the time comes, they will support the tyrant that they see as giving them the power to be the ruler of others.
My former friend was to some extent, all three of these things, and the Bitcoin world has a way of attracting these types of people. Bitcoin is a wildly powerful and “disruptive” technology. When you see that, when you get it, it’s mind blowing! It’s a powerful tool for the rebels. It’s a bit of hope for the disillusioned trying to find a new map of the world. It’s also a method of enrichment for those who wish to be above others.
But the perpetual rebel and the disillusioned don’t just get caught up in Bitcoin, they also get caught up in social causes, politics, and all sorts of movements that offer them an enemy to fight or a new grip on reality. And when those seeking power are feeling wealthy, they will exert that power and seek to expand it. And when we recognize the high concentration of these volatile people in the Bitcoin world, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that we have the madness that we do.
But then, it gets worse. Bitcoin gets picked up by a lot of these people and becomes their identity, their religion. … In some circles, Bitcoin is a cult. Beards, guns, steak, and toxic maximalism. Those with a cult-like mindset are also drawn to Bitcoin.
I was born into a Christian doomsday cult and I have to admit, that’s probably a factor in why I find myself standing in this room.
My family left the cult that I was born into when I was 7, and both of my parents then drifted away from Christianity and religious extremism. But that mind set, the us-vs-them, the occult knowledge elitism, the righteousness obsession, that mindset was installed deep in the back of my head during those 7 years, and parts of it have stayed with me.
What really stuck with me was a sense of elitist righteousness as a form of safety from the evils of the world—a kind of magical thinking that promised security and fulfillment if I could just follow a rare, enlightened path and avoid the sinful, misguided sheeple. Given my history with religion, I couldn’t find this path through a church, though I did try a few times. Instead, I found it in economic and political ideologies—first in Austrian economics, where I railed against the evils of communism; then in Libertarianism, railing against the evils of collectivism and authoritarianism—and ultimately in Bitcoin, which seemed to unite these ideas and offer both a sense of purpose and a righteous path.
Bitcoin with its fringe status and world altering potential can really appeal to those seeking elite knowledge—the kind that feels like a righteous path to salvation.
But not everyone in this space is a cultist, a perpetual rebel, the chronically disillusioned, or power hungry. There are brilliant, principled people here. And people who came for the wrong reasons but stayed for the right ones. Still, it’s undeniable: Bitcoin is a magnet for the unbalanced, and that causes real problems.
It’s kinda an asshole move to rant about a problem without offering a solution. But I needed to find the patterns before I could start addressing them. I’m finally in a place where I can begin looking for solutions. And I will.
What do you think the solutions are? What do we do about this? What can we do about this?
