I'm listening to Andreas Antonopoulos on Rogan from 2016, and it's like listening to something from the future: bitcoin backed debit cards, openbazaar's decentralized marketplace, plug and play VR. Even the ads are better - the tracking tiles were advertised as having crash detection so you could know whether a loved one was in a car accident. Meanwhile, in the "future", we have buy now pay later, Temu, and lagging bitcoin adoption. What happened?
Discussion
I was listening to Rogan around this time, and it was great. FWIW it was my introduction to the modern #ufo subject, particularly the interviews with former Navy pilot David Fravor and similar people.
But a lot like Adam Carolla (who was another early "comedian turned podcaster"), there was this particular sort of "right-wing grievance narrative" that started slowly infesting everything. He started adopting this massive persecution complex, everyone was out to get him, yadda yadda... It's like dude you're a multi-millionaire with a massive platform, nobody's doing shit to you.
Then the one-two punch of Trump and COVID led to the radicalization of the Left and Right respectively. Everyone and everything had to pick a side, and Bitcoin was no exception. Especially now as it's been explicitly adopted by the Trump campaign it's perceived as being "Right-wing money" in a way that it's never been in the past.
None of this changes the "fundamentals" of Bitcoin, either technical, or macroeconomic. Blocks still get mined every 10 minutes. But it definitely has an effect on adoption.
Oh yeah, and BTC adoption will never take off in the West until we get de minimus exceptions anyway.
To bloviate more on this: What happened to Rogan is the same thing that happened to a lot of this kind of "dissident Right", "intellectual dark web", "alt-right", or whatever, who were kicking around in the 2010's....
They got into power, and power ruined them.
Because they had no fundamental underlying ethos... it's all "questions", no answers.
Going back earlier to ~2013-14: Ron Paul and Cody Wilson. These people had answers, agree with them or not.
Instead, the Right rejected a nascent crypto-anarchism in favor of memetic crypto-fascism
Andreas got into Eth that's what happened
The future is not a real place, it's just more now
Like collapse…the future is not evenly distributed.
I literally just started that same episode this morning.! Only 20min in.
self-institutionalization
We split into the enshitification timeline but at least not the 100% demon timeline. There is another you out there enjoying million dollar bitcoin and a flying car and the Skyrim sequel.
Because progress doesn’t move in a straight line.
We didn’t choose better technology — we chose convenience, leverage, and financialization.
Bitcoin kept building quietly.
States and corporations optimized for control, cheap credit, and dopamine loops.
The future wasn’t canceled.
It was delayed by incentives.
Younglings don't see the framing of the government surveillance and devaluation being the culprit, but rather the current framing is they are worried that there is no space for them in this world. I think showing that we have a space for them and they can succeed here would be very powerful.
This is not an angle I had considered. I like it.
Becoming fiat rich changes you
Inflation
Financialization of hard assets for make belief ownership / fake entitlements. Will not stop for a long time. Enter tokenization.
ie. the people are retarded
You have Monero for everything what AA talked in 2016