The Tribes We Form - The Daily Gwei #429
The Tribes We Form - The Daily Gwei #429
Becoming a part of a tribe is inevitable - but you don't have to be toxic about it.
It’s always amusing to me that whenever I’m scrolling through Twitter and I see a bunch of people upset over something, it’s quite easy to find out why by reading between the lines. For example, I was scrolling through my feed today and saw a bunch of Bitcoiners complaining about Ethereum’s monetary policy for the millionth time. Then, I went ahead and checked the ETH/BTC ratio chart and sure enough, it had been gaining quite nicely over the last week or so.
“The Flippening” is a well-known meme in the crypto ecosystem and refers to the potential future where Ethereum flips Bitcoin in market cap (and stays there). Of course, every time someone brings this up on Twitter there are holy wars fought between Ethereans and Bitcoiners while non-affiliated onlookers simply enjoy the entertainment. I think as the ETH/BTC ratio continues to rise over time, the anger and “cope” from Bitcoiners will only get worse. Though, to be fair, this also happens in Ethereum-land where some Ethereans get mad whenever an alt-L1 chain’s token is outperforming ETH - it’s funny how it’s all very similar no matter the tribe!
The other day I wrote about how this has been happening with NFTs too - the more success that NFTs achieve, the angrier people get. Hell, there was a 2-hour long video going around recently that was purported to be the greatest takedown of NFTs ever - but in reality it was simply a grossly misinformed video that cherry-picked certain things to make its point. Meanwhile, the NFT ecosystem just continues its march up and to the right - and I believe that eventually even the most ardent detractors will be involved with NFTs in some way - it is inevitable.
Okay so what’s the point I’m trying to make here? Well, it’s that there are plenty of tribes that form in this industry and you need to be careful about which one(s) you align with. If you venture too far into one tribe, you risk losing yourself into whatever that tribes biases are and the end-state of that is to become toxic to everyone that the tribe perceives to be an “outsider”. Obviously this isn’t unique to crypto - it’s happened in the real world since the dawn of humanity - but since crypto is 99% online, the tribalism is much worse due to both the anonymity factor and the “keyboard warrior” phenomenon.
Obviously I identify strongly with the Ethereum tribe - it is basically my entire life and it probably will be for a very long time - but I try really hard not to get toxic with other tribes/communities. I don’t think it’s really worth it to be mean - it doesn’t get anyone anywhere - all it does is further entrench each party in their respective tribes. The best things to do are to be open to new ideas, be constantly curious, challenge your assumptions and, of course, don’t let your emotions dictate all of your actions.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.