Thread by @davetroy

1/Cryptocurrencies are a social phenomenon driven by a few distinct factions of people, and drawing in recruits into what @FoldableHuman correctly calls a “self-organized high control group.” Here is how this works.

2/In the nucleus are the true believers, the people who read “The Sovereign Individual” (1997) and take it as gospel. This is Thiel, Musk, Sacks, Buterin etc and the people who directly orbit them; this network effectively birthed both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

3/Circling them are people who got rich on Web 1.0 and 2.0, and now want to do it again, but this time with fake internet money and “decentralization” schemes. This is the Saylor, Dixon, and the web3 VC opportunist crowd who follow trends. The Ayn Rand stuff is a bonus.

4/Another band of rich religious converts like Dorsey exists, who for whatever reason didn’t care about John Bircherism until undergoing some sort of “sound money” born-again moment. True believers, they are perhaps the most zealous, as they recently joined.

5/Now, the rank and file… the vast layer of participants who follow tech and believe in its mystic capacity for transformation. They don’t care about libertarianism, Gold bugs, the New Deal, and might admire Musk but not know Thiel. Their goals are simple: success, belonging.

6/Perhaps excluded from the traditional financial ecosystem, they are looking for better, smarter ways to get wealth, status and power, and believe they have found it in the world of crypto and NFTs. Ample role models exist and they aspire to be like them. However,

7/to make the ecosystem work requires a kind of relentless optimism, an unshakeable belief in the utility and “goodness” of the projects. Being a doubter becomes a kind of heresy. The new-found “community” just walks away if any strong doubts are expressed, no matter how valid.

8/As Dan Olson noted, it is steeped in a kind of “toxic positivity” and tremendous pressure is exerted on members to conform to specific attitudes and even language and behaviors. While schisms definitely exist in the crypto church, those schisms serve to reinforce each sect.

9/And those sects serve to reinforce each other’s existence. A self-organizing “high control” group that exerts influence on the behavior of participants, as described in the BITE model by @CultExpert Steve Hassan.
freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-cont…

10/Language is “loaded” and “coded” to have specific meanings inside the group, and which is meaningless to outsiders. Terms like “HODL,” “NGMI,” “WAGMI” and “gm” in addition to myriad technical terms and details that describe (often inaccurately) how systems work are pervasive.

11/Robert Jay Lifton identified coded language as a key element of totalitarian thought reform and a common element in “high control” groups. Also notable: milieu control, mystical manipulation, sacred science, doctrine over person, confession (spaces). Honestly, all of this.

12/As is often the case in cult groups, rank and file participants are unaware of the true purpose of the people who benefit most from its existence. In this case, that purpose is to challenge the legitimacy of governments and institutions that protect the public from harm.

13/To understand that, it is necessary to know the motive for the scheme. This 2013 article about the birth of American libertarianism captures it well. These two paragraphs in particular.

ia800901.us.archive.org/2/items/pdfy-q…

14/I have talked about this before, but it beats repeating that libertarian ideas about “sound money” are inextricably connected to eugenics and evolution.

Basic idea: “rich” people should survive, “poor” people should not. Hence, the cult’s use of GMI, WAGMI, NGMI.

15/There is no part of this “high control” cult ecosystem that is ethically defensible. Bitcoin is a “bigger fool” scheme; NFTs help recruit those fools into the network; Tether and stablecoins launder dollars fraudulently to prop up the scheme. It’s all one big fugazi.

16/I really recommend everyone watch Olson’s brilliant, funny, and incisive video. But I felt there was more to be said about his observations of the cult aspects of the scheme. Reality will win out over this stuff, but it takes awareness and effort on the part of the public.

17/Here’s the Dan Olson “Line Go Up” documentary. Please watch, enjoy and share with your friends. And great job on his @FoldableHuman! Incredible work. Oscar-worthy.

*bears repeating