Bitcoiners Don’t Want Change?
Nothing could be further from the truth! Bitcoiners want to change the legacy financial system and provide everyone with self-sovereignty. They want everyone to have the right to equal treatment and due process under law; to have freedom from interference and coercion; the right to worship in the manner of their choosing and the right to acquire and dispose of property. Bitcoin is one of the best ways to exercise free speech and maintain financial freedom from tyrannical governments (or Banks, which may not concern you until they close your account or freeze your funds). Bitcoin is freedom money and Bitcoiner developers are always looking for ways to make Bitcoin better money.
“Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.” - Satoshi Nakamoto
Bitcoiners themselves change. Let’s talk about identity. Greek Philosopher Heraclitus said you can’t step in the same river twice. We are shaped by our studies, experiences, and memories. Ever-changing. According to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s (The guy who invented calculus - ok, who also created calculus) principle of indiscernibility of identicals, we do not share the same properties as our former selves. We are of course the same person, based on the mental contents of our personal identities. Bitcoiners are nuanced and growing human beings, not what is ventriloquized by bag pumpers. Consider this when someone is insulting a Bitcoiner or ‘maxi’. Are they addressing the argument or simply attacking the person? The latter is a logical fallacy called an ad hominem in which an impotent LARP concedes their argument in favor of damaging the Bitcoiner’s reputation in the eyes of others. The ad hominem Bitcoiners don’t want change is really a veiled appeal to novelty (we’ll cover this more in future posts). If you witness this, you’re watching a conversation with an NPC.
People who make hasty generalizations about Bitcoiners misunderstand identity. Identity is the relation that a thing bears only to itself. The properties of a Bitcoiner educating everyone differ from the properties of the ‘toxic maxi’ you saw on Twitter. They may share properties, and in many instances seem identical but they are not the same. Here’s an example. Bruce Wayne and Batman are the same person right? Therefore they are identical? Bruce is the essence of Batman. But the person inside the costume is not what makes batman, well batman. Batman could have anyone under the suit. Bruce has the property of being a playboy billionaire, but Batman is all business. They have separate identities. All Bitcoiners and the mean ol’ maxi who taunted your crypto spokesperson on social media are not the same and the toxic maxis don’t all want you to become bankrupt. In fact, they care about you. They’re warning you. I don’t always agree with their approach but it’s all about perspective. The loudest are not the majority.
Bitcoiners want change. They want to change the reckless mindset of their friends, family, and coworkers who rush head-long into giving up custody of their hard-earned money to the likes of Scam-Bankrupt-Fraud. They want to change the vampiric, PvP paradigm of Defi Farms, captured chains, and the false promises of cash-grab NFT games by encouraging self-custody and being a sovereign individual. We have endured repeated cycles of watching those we care about fall victim to the folly of the likes of Mt. Gox, the ICO craze, NFT roadmaps, the collapse of LUNA, and rehypothecation of exchanges.
It may seem as though Bitcoiners want mass adoption but their revolution seeks the critical thinking, the engineers, the scientists, the analysts; but also the earnest, the skeptical, and the humble. Not the promoters, influencers, and the privileged who benefit from the current financial system and enjoy the cantillon effect. Bitcoiners don’t focus on mass adoption, they focus on selective adoption. That might explain why they don’t care so much about the inflationary DEX token created to draw liquidity and instead are speaking to YOU. If you’re reading this, you’re an objective and intelligent person worth reaching.
Let’s not forget the Lightning network. every day, developers are building new projects on Lightning and the network is growing. You can see for yourself what types of projects are springing up.
Additionally, Lightning Labs is not shy about retweeting a project being developed on Lightning. know someone developing a Bitcoin project on Lightning? Tag @lightning on Twitter and I bet they’ll retweet them!
Bitcoiners Change Others
Bitcoiners wake others from their beautiful prison. They change the perspectives and motivations of people. They become inspired to study physics, economics, computer science, mathematics, and philosophy. There’s an overabundance of Bitcoin research to explore. If you really want to sink your teeth into Bitcoin, there’s a repository of over 6000 scholarly articles to check out.
Bitcoiners have a culture of becoming more conservative with their spending and exercising more risk-averse decisions. There is a positive change in their lives. More often than not, the result of this is they fall prey to scams, bank runs, and collapses less than everyone else in ‘crypto’. This is because they become resistant to the ‘crypto’ narrative bias which causes altcoiners to rotate chains and move on to the next pump-and-dump. Not every altcoiner follows the herd. I have friends who are altcoiners which I respect despite their distractions. But these are very intelligent people. They’re worth investing time into orange-pilling. If someone isn’t rigidly close-minded or consumed by hubris and are critical thinkers, they will slowly see the importance of Bitcoin. Orange-pilling Bitcoiners will be patient and avoid belligerence. Twitter has that handled.
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” - Voltaire
Also, YOU can change Bitcoiners (maybe even those mean maxis). Consider tipping a Bitcoiner with bitcoin when they post something positive, reach across the aisle to have a civilized discussion or engage with nocoiners and altcoiners in a more compelling, inclusive manner. This will mean different things to different people. Before I became a Bitcoiner, if someone offered to teach me how to swap altcoins for WBTC then bridge to a supported chain for ‘releasing’ to bitcoin on-chain, I’d be happy to tip them (if only for their helpful spirit). Tips are commonly accepted by these methods:
QR-Code
Lightning Invoice
Lightning email address
If a Bitcoiner has not posted a means to tip them, just let them know you’d like to tip them!
Bitcoiners world-wide are busy orange-pilling everyone they can. Cory Klippsten of SwanBitcoin.com has been orange-pilling streetball legend The Professor who has a diverse social media following. Some attribute Michael Saylor as having orange-pilled Tucker Carlson, whose listeners and influence rival Joe Rogan. The message is spreading and reaching more people than ever. There’s even a list of orange-pilled Muslims to follow.
The Regulation Strawman Argument
***Trigger Warning***
Another related myth is Bitcoiners want regulation. This is what we call a strawman argument.
The response to this myth is inspired by Matthew Kratter of Trader University. Bitcoiners are motivated to disrupt the legacy financial system and give consumers the highest levels of protection. Unfortunately, altcoins put consumers at risk more than provide protection. On one hand, most Bitcoiners want freedom and less government intervention but on the other hand, They don’t want family, friends and fellow citizens to be scammed by ponzinomics. The low-time preference answer to this is to let the market choose Bitcoin in the coming years. However, Bitcoiners will not join the fight to prevent the SEC from pursuing illegal securities (altcoins). Refusing to support illegal security altcoins is not supporting regulation. It’s ignoring the distractions from Bitcoin. Furthermore, many of the leaders of these illegal securities actively attack Bitcoin and the antagonism promotes apathy for altcoin regulation. The modern free market involves surviving government attacks. Bitcoin has survived this. Altcoins must do this on their own. If they cannot survive a nation-state-level attack, it does not qualify as sovereign money for those who need financial freedom.
Bitcoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies that don’t pass the Howey Test. Coincidentally, the SEC under Gary Gensler believes Bitcoin is a commodity and almost every other cryptocurrency is an illegal security. Gary Gensler gave a speech on September 8th, 2022 (see Kennedy and Crypto) which highlighted some important points. “It’s not about whether you set up a legal entity as a nonprofit and funded it with tokens. It’s not whether you rely on open-source software or can use a token within some smart contract.”
“These are not laundromat tokens: promoters are marketing and the investing public is buying most of these tokens, touting or anticipating profits based on the efforts of others.” - Gary Gensler
Token projects had lawyers attend the speech. They represented clients, not “...on behalf of a dispersed, unidentified group of individuals in an ‘ecosystem’.”
It would seem Vitalik Buterin anticipated the legal issue of securities, as 24 hours after the Ether pre-sale he announced setting up a $1M legal defense fund from some of the pre-sale fundraising. It’s also interesting to note that William Hinman considered Ethereum a commodity (by putting aside the fundraising that accompanied the creation of Ether) but it has been alleged the Former SEC director made millions from a pro-Ethereum firm during his tenure.
Logical Fallacies Quick Reference
When you inevitably become a Bitcoiner, you’ll need to address Myths and FUD against Bitcoin and you’ll want to be able to quickly identify what logical fallacies are being addressed. Here are the logical fallacies related to this topic:
Closing Thoughts
Bitcoiners are deeply empathetic people. Just because they see your favorite altcoin as a distraction doesn’t mean they don’t care about you. Don’t confuse this for schadenfreude. They want a future where everyone is free of banks, not just themselves. I’ve tried to avoid alienating altcoiners as much as possible, but when you dive into the Myths and FUD surrounding Bitcoin, it can be hard to fully avoid that.
Do you have a recommendation to add to this Myth? Feel free to contact me at https://twitter.com/0billionUplink and help improve this topic. I will be making edits over time as needed.
Special thanks to SimplyBitcoin’s Telegram channel and DarthCoin for inputs and resources.
Bitcoin is the Future
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Amazing read. Exceptionally well done. It is the altcoiners that need our help the most. They have already started down the rabbit hole but they have been lead in the wrong direction by pump and dump masters and skilled fraudsters. I love the message in this article as it explains the true ethos of bitcoiners. We just want a better world for our family and yours.