Bitcoin vs Crypto Culture

Living with a system built on truth.

(A video discussion of this article is available on my YouTube channel.)

“Thank you Satoshi.”

I woke up this Thanksgiving morning like I always do. Went to the basement to workout, then to the kitchen to do dishes while the coffee brewed. Once seated at the desk, I checked my Twitter feed to see if any fresh hell had broken out in the 2022 bear market. My feed was inundated with Bitcoiners tweeting the three words at the beginning of this article. Thank you, Satoshi.

The trend appears to have been started by Michael Saylor, and it got me thinking. I was embedded in the crypto community for the last three years, though I never stopped following Bitcoin, and not once do I remember anyone thanking any of the crypto project founders in this way. Just to be sure I wasn’t being unfair I also checked the feed of my old crypto Twitter account. Nope, nothing like it to be found.

This moment illustrated a fundamental difference between the crypto and Bitcoin communities. Bitcoiners believe they are changing the world, even saving it, through decentralized and secure hard money. “Fix the money, fix the world,” they say. People in crypto don’t think that way. They believe the projects they support are improving the world, but those projects are building on top of the current fiat system, trying to correct inefficiencies and give access to more people. Bitcoin is different. Bitcoiners lay blame for most of the world’s socioeconomic problems at the feet of fiat, and rightly so. There is no “correcting” fiat. It has to go.

That fundamental difference in worldview creates a notable difference in culture. Those in the crypto community are generally more self-interested. Don’t get me wrong: we’re all in it for the money to some degree. But hardcore Bitcoiners aren’t just in it for the money. In my experience crypto folks invest in the projects they do because they believe the superior tech and network effects will eventually make them wealthy. There’s nothing wrong with that perspective, but it’s not a noble one.

The Bitcoin community seems to understand that what they’re supporting isn’t just going to make them rich. It’s going to change the world. Sound money removes the theft of inflation. It removes the theft of money printing. It returns sovereignty to the individual, which naturally reduces the size and influence of government and the corruption that emerges from that power.

I was listening to an interview with Jeff Booth on the What Bitcoin Did podcast yesterday. It was a sobering discussion. Booth explained why fiat is a system built on theft and asked what kind of world you would expect to emerge from that system versus one built on truth. It’s a good question, and the barrage of “Thank you” tweets from the Bitcoin community this morning illuminated the answer.

A system built on truth inspires gratitude and strong community because the members of that community don’t need to be paranoid about their money. In a sound money world, your stack is safe. There’s less stress because you’re not on the hamster wheel of inflation, constantly chasing gains while watching your earning power get whittled away. There’s less pressure to “get mine” at the expense of others. There will always be competition and people who enjoy it, but most folks want to work so they can live and not live so they can work.

As a kid I loved the beach but was never good at building sandcastles. They usually looked like deformed huts when I was done, so I settled for “sand hills”. I would pile sand up and see how tall I could get the hill to be. It was a difficult endeavor because most of the sand would just slide down the sides of the hill. Very little of it stayed on top. Fiat is like that. You keep pouring your effort into making more money to try and grow your stack, but most of it slides down the slippery slope of inflation.

When that’s the world you live in, it’s hard to put other people’s interests first, because when you do, you fall behind. Everyone that relies on you falls behind, too, which makes it an even more difficult decision. Not so with sound money. Through deflation caused by technology, your stack continually grows in value, making it an easier decision to stop and help someone else.

This truth is reflected in the Bitcoin versus crypto communities. Crypto folks are driven by money, Bitcoiners, by principle. We all have the same biological impulse to fight for what’s ours and improve our status, but the belief in sound money tempers that by removing the anxiety associated with inflation and the necessary paranoia it creates.

We don’t live in a world of sound money yet, though, and as such the Bitcoin community isn’t immune to these evils. But at times like this, on a sunny Thanksgiving morning, you get a glimpse of the light at the end of this fiat tunnel and a taste of what it will be like to live in a world driven not by theft, but by truth.

Thank you, Satoshi.