Learn Some Crypto retweetledi
If you're somewhat new to the space and you're wondering why self-professed Bitcoiners today cheered on SEC attacks against the two most important Bitcoin companies of all time, Coinbase and Binance, let me explain...
There's "people who use Bitcoin" aka Bitcoiners (the vast majority, ordinary people) and there's people that turned Bitcoin into a secular cult. Call this latter group "laser eyes" or "maxis", whatever you want, they know who they are, we know who they are. There's no uncertainty about this – they are people that elevated Bitcoin from a mere tool to a belief system, a way of life. (They like to quibble over the language but everyone knows who is who here.)
The vast majority of these cult adherents are actually new to Bitcoin. Look at their profiles – mostly created 2021 and 2022. They are latecomers, drawn in by the rally in 2021 and the promise of riches and endless price appreciation spun by gurus on Clubhouse during the Covid era. They believed in fallacies like the stock to flow model. They were also attracted to the idea that Bitcoin was not only financially sound, but morally superior too. It was better than the sh*tcoins, better than fiat. By merely tithing your Bitcoin every month, you could bring about a financial transformation to a fairer world, and when fiat and everything else collapsed, you'd be one of the chosen few to be the kings in the new world, a ruler among the ruins.
So why are they giddy about the possible obliteration of Coinbase and Binance, who have collectively onboarded 100m-200m individuals worldwide to crypto and, specifically, Bitcoin? These are de-facto crypto banks for the entire globe, and made owning Bitcoin easy and simple for tens and maybe hundreds of millions. More than anyone, these two firms have made mainstream adoption of Bitcoin possible. Why would the laser eyes cheer government attacks against them?
It's simple. The cultists are intellectually short crypto, more than they are financially long Bitcoin. For the most part, they don't actually have meaningful economic upside in Bitcoin. Since they joined in 2021/22 they mostly lost money in real terms "stacking sats". They think that they will eventually be rewarded for their piety, but for now, the amount of real goods they can buy with their sat hoard is actually dwindling. They aren't interested in Bitcoin adoption, or usage of Bitcoin increasing worldwide, because that's not what they're here for. They're here to find social kinship within an in-group of people that lives in a Bitcoiny way. They're here for the party, not for business.
So what attracts these people to Bitcoin? Simply, the secular cult. It's a way of life for people that live on the margins of society – people that would otherwise be conspiracists, goldbugs, radical libertarians, etc. Generally, they're unhappy with the status quo and find it convenient to blame central bankers and interest rates, and ultimately "fiat culture" for everything wrong with society. Whether this is financial cycles, debt, war, or even more far fetched things like culture, art, food, or fertility. It's all the fault of government spending, inflation, and the debauching effect of fiat money on society. These people believe that they can find a kind of liberation in Bitcoin, especially one that comes at the expense of their fellow man, who they believe is condemned to a kind of financial hellfire that will purge all fiat, Sodom and Gomorrah style. The great flood will come and only Bitcoin will remain. David Gerard once called the laser eye religion an “apocalyptic death cult,” and he’s mostly right. The entire ideology is premised on the End of fiat, the end of degeneracy, of debt binges, of credit, of largesse, and all of its symptoms in society, and the rebuilding of society around a more honest monetary foundation – after a period of complete destruction and anarchy, of course.
(Of course, there's a kernel of truth to everything here, but there's a vast difference between plain observations and the crafting of a literal secular cult around these ideas).
Laser eyes or Bitcoin maximalism isn't "like a religion," it's literally one. It has everything a religion has, and it makes specific claims about genesis, piety, and salvation.
There's a doctrine of absolution/salvation – any sin, no matter how heinous is forgiven if you repent, forsake sh*tcoins, and embrace bitcoin. They really mean this too – I mean look at some of the most prominent Bitcoin maxi gurus, with grim pasts involved in shilling ICOs to retail. All forgiven post Bitcoin baptism.
There's a conception myth. Bitcoin was created in a uniquely perfect and fair way, nothing else can come close to that, and nothing like that can ever exist again. Only Satoshi's divine Proof of Work and lack of premine can foster a truly global decentralized commodity money.
There's religious texts. Satoshi's original scripture, the white paper, the forum posts, and the subsequent exegesis – the Bitcoin Standard and many others.
There’s specific cultural rituals: eating meat, shooting guns, promoting masculinity, hierarchy, the nuclear family, disdaining progressivism and feminism, and endorsing a kind of ascetism and privation.
There's a tithe – stack your sats every two weeks from your paycheck and even if you're losing money (which these class of 2021 Bitcoiners generally have done), you are still doing good, because it's working for the benefit of the church of Bitcoin. (Contrary to what many people think, Bitcoinism isn’t like the ‘prosperity gospel’ strand of Christianity. In fact, it’s the opposite. Laser eye Bitcoiners actually celebrate privation, emphasizing the sacrifices they make to grow their Bitcoin stack (think of it as a financial equivalent of religious fasting). This is also why they call themselves “plebs” – as a way to claim kinship with the working class “little guy.” Again, remember that these are latecomers. They needed to find a moral high ground over the established crypto elites, that mostly made money from their participation in the space, and the pure, underprivileged Bitcoin plebs. If you lack skills or a means to contribute to the industry or to make money from it, the next best thing is to claim a kind of working class, honest virtue, by calling yourself a pleb and thus morally elevating yourself over the impure money grubbing opportunistic elites.)
There's an eschatology – the fiat apocalypse / hyperinflation / great debt bubble is coming and no financial asset will be spared, except for the Chosen One (Bitcoin). After the rapture, the Bitcoiners will inherit the earth, and a handful of sats in your wallet today will buy city blocks in the future. You may be a mere pleb today, but you are a baron tomorrow.
There's rituals: making the pilgrimage to El Salvador to make a lightning payment at McDonalds, sweltering in the heat at Bitcoin Miami to see your gurus spout platitudes on stage, paying some twitter influencer $500 for a gristly cut of steak, listening to the same six podcasts host the same dozen guests week in, week out. Trolling the nocoiners and the sh*tcoiners on twitter. Telling your own story of how you "found bitcoin" and how it gave you structure and purpose after your divorce. Recruiting new adherents to the cult.
So what does this have to do with Binance and Coinbase? Well even though these firms have done more for Bitcoin adoption and accessibility than literally any other companies in the industry’s history, they are impure, because they listed other coins. They built what people wanted, and that was tools and applications beyond just Bitcoin. The laser eyes harp about Brian Armstrong's early tweets about being focused on Bitcoin, before he learned from the market that to survive, he had to build what people actually wanted, not what a small minority of zealots insisted on. (This is why you wont find any maxis building real companies, because to be a founder is to be forced to accept market realities, rather than trying to impose your ideology forcibly on the world.)
Binance and Coinbase may have made questionable listing and product decisions (and to be clear, they're very different companies, with different regulatory strategies and risk appetites, so I don't mean to imply they are similar in that respect), but they did provide the tools for Bitcoin to achieve global adoption in a way that wasn't possible before.
But these laser eyes see the world through the lens of the sacred and the profane. They aren't focused on Bitcoin's success. They would rather live in a world of purity in which Bitcoin is marginal and niche (but all competing coins had failed), than a fallen world in which Bitcoin is much bigger, but other blockchains survived and thrived. To live in this second would would be to admit that Bitcoin wasn't Special and Uniquely Good and Moral, but it was simply a tool, one tool among others, some of which proved more successful and adaptive. If this second world came to pass, Bitcoiners would have to accept that their God was a false one, that their faith was misplaced, that their ordained future didn't and would never occur. Even if the fiat apocalypse did come, and Bitcoiners weren't uniquely saved, but others were too.
(1/2)
English
