Tribalism in Crypto - The Daily Gwei #114
Why do we fight?
Over 3 years ago I published one of my first pieces titled ‘Tribalism in Cryptocurrency’ that focused on the “war” between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash at the time. I wanted to do a little follow up on the core points of that piece - namely around tribalism as it exists in crypto today.
Unfortunately, tribalism within the “inner circle” of crypto people (aka “crypto twitter”) is basically baked into our DNA and I myself am very guilty of contributing to it all. Many of us have attached our identities to these systems which means that any attack against them is perceived as an attack against the individual. Though, I actually think this is sometimes a positive thing and is one of the main reasons why the Bitcoin and Ethereum systems have been so incredibly resilient to any form of “competition” or “attacks”. The communities are the immune system that kick in to expel perceived threats but just like any other immune system, it can end up kicking in for the wrong reasons.
Beyond this though, I think it works to the detriment of the space in that most of the fighting is mentally exhausting and frankly, a waste of time. Correcting someone who spreads misinformation can indeed be a positive thing but gas-lighting and verbally attacking people is just unproductive and leads to poor outcomes (this is the immune system kicking in when it shouldn’t). It just creates further division in an already small community when we should be working to build bridges and expanding the adoption of this technology to the masses.
Speaking of the masses, 99.99% of the people who will be using these systems will not care at all about this tribalism nor will they care about what platform they are using. To use some examples, most people don’t care about Apple vs Android or Windows vs Linux vs Apple - people simply want to get value out of whatever they use - whether that be via swapping tokens on decentralized exchanges on Ethereum or by holding BTC as a “store of value”. This is what we should be focusing 100% of our energy on and it’s why I’ve personally stepped back from engaging in silly Twitter fights over the last few months. Make awesome products, not war.
At the end of the day, we are all human and tribalism is unfortunately part of us whether we like it or not. This doesn’t mean that we have to embrace it though - we should generally be keeping it at bay and be open to new ideas, hearing people out and generally being kind to one another. As I said in my original piece: “if we have to rely on propaganda, smear campaigns and outright lies to advance this revolutionary technology, are we really any better than the society we are trying to change?”
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.
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