Bitcoin has experienced significant growth in the 15 years since its creation, and with it have come many major changes to the culture of the entire ecosystem, as well as the individual small communities that make it up. Of course, this is to be expected, as the network has grown from a tiny niche in a corner of the internet into a global phenomenon that is now becoming a serious political issue around the world.
Bitcoin is no longer a little niche thing in a corner, or a toy that a few autistic nerds play around with. It is a global economic asset and currency network that sends billions of dollars around the world every day. Things have obviously changed in its growth, and I think those changes have had major negative effects.
Bitcoin has always been perceived as having a libertarian or right-wing bent. Some of Bitcoin’s early adopters and community were grounded in libertarian philosophy, which makes sense from a theoretical perspective. Libertarianism is ostensibly about individuals asserting and maintaining their own freedom and independence in their own lives. However, such groups of people and philosophies were not the only ones present early in Bitcoin’s history.
Many people came to Bitcoin through left-wing movements such as Occupy Wall Street, a mass protest movement that emerged in response to the same great financial crisis that gave birth to Bitcoin itself. They too felt the need to disintermediate banks in the global economy after the disastrous results of their reckless and irresponsible gambling of ordinary people’s savings and investments on the course of economic management. They too felt the need to remove control over the economy from the hands of governments that had selectively deregulated to allow such gambling in the first place.
These two groups are here for the same reason: disintermediation; that is, the removal of big banks and governments as middlemen involved in everyone’s financial transactions and, by extension, the running of the global economy as a whole. But in the collective cultural psyche, it is libertarianism, the right wing of the political spectrum, that is widely associated with Bitcoin.
The problem is that most of them don’t actually live up to their declared beliefs.
Bitcoin was designed to be an open, disintermediated system that anyone can use. I’m not talking technically. Anyone reading this article absolutely understands that Bitcoin needs constraints at a technical level to maintain the decentralization that gives it its value in the first place, and that breaking those constraints would be fatal. I’m talking philosophically.
On a technical level, scaling Bitcoin to make it available to as many people as possible is an ongoing challenge and will remain a challenge for the foreseeable future, if not forever. These are constraints imposed by the nature of the technology.
On a human, personal level, Bitcoin has no need for constraints. Bitcoin is an open, voluntary consensus system whose nature and function are defined entirely by the voluntary consensus produced by the opt-in interactions of all users and participants. Many so-called libertarians seem deeply outraged and upset by this.
The actions of most of the active community, at least online, are completely inconsistent with the principles of libertarianism: freedom, rights, and voluntary interaction. Many right-wing or libertarian bitcoiners promote the exact opposite, trying to intimidate and threaten people into accepting their worldview.
Their actions represent pressure to conform, to behave a certain way, or to believe in certain things, rather than respecting the choices and beliefs of individuals different from their own. They seek to instill the idea that being a Bitcoin user, or even being involved with Bitcoin, is equivalent to holding their beliefs and worldview. They engage in constant blame campaigns, often bordering on or even reaching the point of harassment, attempting to enforce the equivalence of their worldview with “being a Bitcoin user.”
I don’t believe this is actually the dominant attitude among people in this field, but it is certainly dominant in some subcommunities and is certainly perceived as the dominant attitude in public spaces on internet platforms. And it is completely inconsistent with the tenets of libertarianism, individual freedom and respect, and self-determination for people on how they want to live their lives.
In fact, it is only on the left (some readers will find this ironic) that we see such beliefs widely reflected in actions rather than in individuals’ words. Progressive, left-leaning Bitcoin advocates seem to be the only ones willing to meaningfully engage with people who think and see the world in radically different ways, without shaming people or pressuring them to accept their worldview. They are the ones working to pave the way for people with diverse views, backgrounds, and different needs to adopt Bitcoin, and to ensure that Bitcoin works for as many people as possible.
In contrast, right-wing Bitcoin advocates tend to vilify, attack, and discourage people who have a different worldview than their own, and generally ridicule attempts to address their needs and problems with Bitcoin. Common slogans and responses are “Bitcoin isn’t for everyone” or “Poor people will never use Bitcoin in a self-regulating way”. This embodies an “I’ve got my own, so get the ladder up my back” attitude towards things.
This is usually expressed through appeals to technical arguments, but the vast majority of people making such claims do not actually articulate coherent technical reasons for their “forget them” arguments: rather than raising coherent technical concerns, they appeal to fear and uncertainty to bolster their arguments.
Many of these people subscribe to and indulge in the fantasy of power, wealth, and influence. They convince themselves that because they were “smart” enough to buy Bitcoin early on, they deserve a place in the world, and others who were “not smart” do not. This borders on a fetishism of becoming the people Bitcoin was trying to eliminate the middle class from our lives.
Yes, Bitcoin has technical limitations, and they almost certainly mean that third parties will never be completely removed from our lives, but that doesn’t mean we should embrace and defend it. Have fun thinking about being that middleman yourself, or pretending that governments don’t exist and magically say “the market will sort this out,” and constantly exploring the search for new private entities to become proxy pawns in control of our financial transactions and lives.
Speaking of government interference in the market, this is another area where right-wing Bitcoin advocates compromise on principle: they excuse or even openly encourage this sector’s influence on services and products, while at the same time attacking anything that tries to evade enforcement or regulation. It’s a state of cognitive dissonance, where a blanket appeal to the market magically prevents “poor” Bitcoiners from being abused and taken advantage of in the same way as the financial system, while pretending that Bitcoin’s mere existence is enough to stop governments from forcing large private actors to act as enforcers of that abuse.
When co-managed solutions like ecash and other systems built on Lightning that can operate in a cost-effective, non-highly centralized (at least at scale) manner in places like Africa are discussed, they are ridiculed. They are portrayed as fraud waiting to happen or completely broken solutions, while critics fly around as if Bitcoin will magically win, as if there are no problems to solve to make it more widely accessible in a way that scales to bring about an avenue more people can use free from those risks.
I got mine, so you’re screwed.
Bitcoin liberals have almost completely lost sight of what Bitcoin was originally created to do: disintermediate people’s financial lives. They celebrate Wall Street influence, politician pandering, and the growing institutionalization of the entire system as progress.
“I’m going to be at the table now, so don’t disrupt the game!”
They no longer care about uplifting people as a whole, or about everyone being free to experiment, live how they want, and build their communities and societies how they want, based on a neutral, disintermediated system. They have succumbed to their worldview in favor of conformity, homogeneity. They see Bitcoin as a means to make the world conform to their beliefs, will, and way of life. Many no longer see Bitcoin as a framework for diverse experimentation and differentiation.
Progressives, leftists, and people coming from avenues like Occupy Wall Street still seem interested in getting the most out of Bitcoin for everyone. It’s time to recognize this and ignore the parasitic pressures that are trying to get people to conform.
For those who know what that means, infinite variety in infinite combinations. That’s what Bitcoin should be.
