Crypto culture has a peculiar landscape. To the outsider it appears mysterious: armies of anonymous characters with colorful profile pictures on Twitter representing obscure internet money with a market cap as large as Amazon.
In part this mystery is rooted in the unfounded belief that technological genius is needed to navigate the space.
One look beneath the surface reveals the multiple layers of this complexity, and the ideological division that this can foster. Various factions warring against each other, each with their core figureheads, fighting for their core values.
The roots of this divisivenesses can be traced back to the inception of crypto culture. On the genesis block of Bitcoin, a commemorative message was inscribed: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
This reference to the Global Financial Crisis was both a protest against the bailout of the "too big to fail" banks and a manifesto for the general public to take control of money into their own hands. Bitcoin is the answer: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, decentralised, trustless, with a fixed inflation rate and capped at 21 million tokens forever.
It is no wonder that crypto's libertarian, even anarchist, roots have resulted in comparisons to Occupy Wall Street. Crypto OG's tend to be independent, self-starting, and distrusting of institutions; venture capitalists and institutions are not welcome in this space. Even selling courses and educational content is frowned upon because all information should be open-source.
In a 2021 political survey carried out by Metagov, 45% of respondents believed that crypto is a political philosophy, as opposed to an economic technology, of which 42% identified as libertarians and 19% as anarcho-capitalists. Web3’s revolutionary roots remain strong.
Even through these prisms, the tribal nature of crypto culture can seem mysterious. Crypto is, after all, technological infrastructure that enables a range of use cases. But in the web3 subculture, arguments will erupt around apparently trivial topics, like blockspace, which reveal the philosophical underpinnings of the blockchain itself.
“Crypto loves killing the main character.”
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