1/ A paraphrased response to someone asking what I think is wrong with the level of understanding of bitcoin, blockchain and crypto right now:
2/ In 2013, when I first got into bitcoin, the vast majority of information online regarding blockchain was bitcoin-centric.
3/ If you got into bitcoin, you could not avoid learning about the economics, politics and philosophy behind bitcoin's creation. The problems it was built to solve.
4/ If you got into bitcoin for the Get Rich Quick, you stayed for the ideology.
5/ Since then, a growing number of people have realised the potential for distortions of the bitcoin story to extract money from others.
6/ This started with pre-mined altcoins, but has expanded to permissioned blockchains, utility & equity token sales, and most recently, forkcoins.
7/ All of these projects have very different, perhaps conflicting goals to bitcoin, often representing part of the problem that bitcoin was built to solve.
8/ Namely, to remove the need for trust in online value transfer, and to put constraints on monetary expansion.
9/ Now all the people behind these projects want, is for *you* to trust *them* as they freely print more and more money.
10/ What this has resulted in is an explosion of non-bitcoin-related information online. Misinformation has become a highly profitable business.
11/ Unlike in 2013, now a newcomer to the space really has to dig to find any quality knowledge. 99% of what they read or hear is going to be junk.
12/ There is no coherent ideology within these new blockchain or cryptocurrency movements. The noble goals are gone.
13/ Focus has shifted to efficiency gains for the trivial and the esoteric. Whacky economic theories are made up on the spot, based on zero references.
14/ In 2018, if you get into cryptocurrency for the Get Rich Quick, you stay for the When To Buy When To Sell.
15/ The scams are winning, for now. They're winning the information war that they started through sheer saturation.
16/ But ultimately, they cannot escape economic reality. If their models are fundamentally broken, they will fail, taking their investors down with them.
17/ To save money and time, it's critical that anyone getting into the space for the first time learns first about bitcoin. Not just the tech, but the economics and politics too.
18/ For some reason, ideology has become a dirty word. In the name of "open-mindedness" we're supposed to relinquish any form of structured reasoning.
19/ A priori and theory are also scoffed at. Instead, real-world observations are primary, understanding secondary. "X is worth Y, it must be valuable!"
20/ I think bitcoin's continued resilience vs. its stream of pale imitators will demonstrate why both ideology and a priori are powerful, and essential to taking productive action.
