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.
