Thread by @minordissent

Why Is Crypto Twitter So Divided?

My preliminary thoughts (thread):

1. Bitcoin and not-Bitcoin are functionally two completely separate fields of study.

Bitcoin is in economics/government

The rest (Eth, DeFi, etc) are technology/finance.

Bitcoiners dont care about making wall street (leverage, derivatives, market making, etc) efficient or all the “cool tech” stuff of DeFi et al.

Non-bitcoiners don’t understand 50%+ of the world’s problems can be solved by replacing fiat money with hard money.

99% of both sides are peak dunning kruger about the other.

They fully understand why their side is hugely important

And do not know nor care enough about the other to understand why it matters at all (and dont even know that they dont know the other sides argument)

2. Both require significant study, however Understanding Bitcoin is an order of magnitude more difficult than understanding non-Bitcoin.

You can understand non-Bitcoin in a year. You can’t understand Bitcoin in less than 5 (assuming no prerequisites).

All these smart hip tech dudes come in without an AAPE (Autodidact Autistic PhD Equivalent) in Austrian Economics but a reasonable understanding of tech/finance and see Bitcoin as too simple, too inefficient, etc and are excited by what can be built upon not-Bitcoin.

When Bitcoiners are so religious about what the tech dudes see as the most basic and uncool crypto, they (reasonably, given their lack of expertise in the central banking problem) assume Bitcoiners are just crypto boomers who havent got with the times.

In reality, BTC maxi’s simply dont care about “cool tech”, they care about saving the world by fixing the money.

they see the former as not even 1/10th as important as the latter (and they arent wrong).

And the cool tech dudes see BTC as not even 1/10th as cool as not-BTC bc it’s slow, inefficient, not programmable, etc (they also arent wrong)

What Bitcoin will indirectly do doesnt cross their mind because they dont even know they dont know what problem its solving.

The cool tech dudes spend a dozen or even 100 hundreds learning all the tech stuff of Bitcoin and not-Bitcoin and (reasonably) focus on all the cool stuff not Bitcoin can do, and think they are informed about it (they are)

But then they see all these Bitcoiners and (reasonably) assume they are just slow for being so into the most technologically basic crypto.

The idea that everything may migrate to bitcoin seems retarded to them. Why move everything onto the old alpha version of a blockchain?

Similarly, Bitcoiners who spent 1K hours studying economics, govt, etc: wonder why have all these other chains when you can just build everything on the sound money? Why would you make a competing money that is far less sound other than to try and pump it to make yourself rich?

Sure i guess BTC Maxi’s could learn about the cool tech stuff but why? Why spend 100+ hours learning about some (relatively) unimportant shit when they can spend that energy furthering the cause of saving the world via sound money?

Sure not-BTC-maxi’s would think differently if they understood Austrian economics etc but why spend 1000+ hours learning some arcane sect of economics to end up able to *do* nothing with it other than wear laser eyes and say “Bitcoin fixes this” (it does) to everything?

Most Not-BTC-Maxi’s want to BUILD. They dont want to save the world. They want to play with/evolve cool tech.

Some NBM’s want to make money by doing cool defi stuff.

Some NMB’s want to make money by pumping shitcoins and getting out before they crash.

Most BTC-maxi’s want to save the world but are lazy af think boiz (i say this endearingly, as a lazy af think boi) so want the highest leverage way to do so: shitposting and sat stacking (they arent wrong)

Some want to build the sound money.

Some just want to number to go up.

So Bitcoiners in a sense are crypto boomers. They dont care about the 1 to n of 2nd and 3rd gen blockchains because only the 0 to 1 chain that is Bitcoin actually solves the problem they care about.

And new cool tech bros are the coolest bc they are new and innovating on the tech and finding other use cases for blockchain.

But its worth noting: they are new and cool bc they are late. Because they dont care about the problem Bitcoin solves.

And Bitcoiners are boomers because they were early and they dont care about all this 1 to n stuff of what might be possible on different chains.

So bc both sides dont understand eachother & have fully coherent perspectives in their respective echo chambers think the other is dumb and bad.

This wont change as it is the primary methodology humans use for progress (similar to left vs right) but interesting to observe.

TLDR:

Bitcoin maximalists are in it for the monetary revolution.

Eth et al maximalists are in it for the technological evolution.

Everyone else just likes that number go up.

/thread

@pointsixonefive did I get it right yet?