Ethereum founder to crypto fans: Grow upThe co-founder of Ethereum has a message and a warning for the cryptocurrency community: cut out the “lambo memes and immature puns.”
On Wednesday, Vitalik Buterin ranted on Twitter about how discussions among cryptocurrency traders and fans appear to be taken over by immature jokes and memes, and are increasingly focused only on wealth.
“*All* crypto communities, ethereum included, should heed these words of warning,” he wrote. “Need to differentiate between getting hundreds of billions of dollars of digital paper wealth sloshing around and actually achieving something meaningful for society.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ethereum-founder-to-crypto-fans-grow-up-2017-12-28
Good on Vitalik. He came up with a brilliant innovation, had nothing but the best of intentions, and is well deserving of the fortune he's made. It's a shame that his creation is being exploited by a bunch of low life scam artists. But unfortunately, big money draws all kinds of people looking to make an easy dollar.
I read this earlier today, and found his comment quite interesting.
I agree with the point he is trying to make, and your sentiment -- we all need to build something meaningful for society, and the wealth that may come will be as a direct result of that value that we create. Bill Gates ammassed a fortune because he built something that revolutionised the way that people work in the office, with one another, and online. Unfortunately, as is the case of a cryptocurrency trader, the objective is to ride along, often with the pure intention of making money.
I have a couple (ended up being a tirade) of 1am thoughts to add, which I ask be taken as discussion inducing as opposed to being views I hold.
1. People who trade and invest with the pure profit motive serve a crucial purpose for cryptocurrencies as liquidity vehicles that allow those currencies to grow, and gain even more attention, both from that growth and through word-of-mouth to the mainstream population by those who have vested interest.
2. Meme culture is a thing that is common in all aspects of millennial life today. Many of the ideas and concepts that we have are easily captured by a meme that is merely a few words, and often humour is an excellent vehicle to convey a message -- whether to those who are in the in-group, or those outside.
3. Given that there are humorous memes for absolutely everything these days, the chances of people not making them about "lambos on the moon" when their crypto portfolio could well move up 100% in a matter of days (and often does) would appear slim. Cryptocurrency is as much a cultural phenomenon as it is technological, economic, entrepreneurial, and philosophical / ideological. No doubt when people share memes on their social media about cryptocurrency, people who have been seeing the same "glorious" and "excited" memes about this "cryptocurrency" / "hodling" thing for months on end may start to take notice, and begin to do some googling on what the fuss is all about.
4. The cultural aspect of any group will always be the loudest and most widely seen. When you think of politics as an example, on the left-wing side of things you have inter-sectional fringe groups making a lot of noise on behalf of the whole (think black-lives-matter, communist groups, radical gender-focused groups, antifa etc), and then on the other side, the people who make the most noise are probably the alt-right and the rising nationalist groups seen in the USA. While I can't personally stand politics, I can see that these groups have strong and consistent internal cultures that allow them to make noise that receive much greater media attention than their actual member size would suggest when contrasted with the more relaxed general population who have much more varied views on things, and don't band together to distribute their belief systems, despite being much greater in number. A small group of people who think the same, can make a lot more noise than a much larger group built from those of more varied belief systems.
5. In my view, point four encapsulates a major reason why some businesses are successful and others are not. If everybody is not on the same page, working towards the same vision, then half the team is going to the wrong place, or won't care about where things are going. DNotes don't compromise on internal culture, which is one of the many reasons why the group will remain strong going forward. One of the reasons why we will be able to make the most noise.
6. Vitalik's point is good, but the reality is also that those people who put money into ethereum to make it what it is today have an internal meme / joking immaturity culture. One way to look at it as a mature person would be in frustration, though someone as brilliant as Vitalik would likely be looking at a way to harness the potential of this reality about his userbase/ownerbase were his project not already where it is. This culture developed in part because of ethereum, and really took off some time after its deployment.
7. This actually brings about an interesting pascal's wager -- A french mathematician who argued that people who believe in god bet with their lives to prove that god exists. Being that they only stand to lose a small amount of time on earth, in exchange for infinite harmony in heaven if they are correct. Following with the political example, the president of the united states, Donald Trump, caused quite a stir with many people over his use of language and derogatory insults that were targeted at his political enemies. In particular I was quite interested in the thinking of people who agreed with Trump on certain key issues like border control, audit the Federal Reserve, cut spending and regulations etc, yet found his demonizing of political enemies absolutely abhorrent. In my experience many of these people who had these policy alignments with Trump, but vehemently hated him for his "manner" were often Ron Paul supporters from 2008/12, who had run on some of the same policies as Trump had.
Ron was very likeable, and courteous towards his political opponents. He used logic and reason (which tends to be how I prefer to view things), but he never came remotely close to winning even the presidency, let alone the republican primary. Trump by comparison was gruff, abrasive, and direct, and yet easily rode to electoral college victory in 2016. So my question became -- why were these people not prepared to tolerate some 'mean words' in exchange for winning policy target wins that aligned with their vaunted 'principled beliefs', if it was those political tactics that were patently conducive to winning? Could they still truly have the principle they claimed of wanting x/y/z, if they weren't prepared to tolerate a/b/c in order to get it? I think it's time though to wrap this back to crypto:
Vitalik is a principled person, and I personally share his view on the crypto scene. I also believe that traders that want to make money and post funny memes aren't doing anything like what Vitalik does for the community. But we are not all as brilliant as Vitalik is, and everybody can contribute in their own way -- even if it is just sharing a funny meme with their friends about a supercar they want. I don't think anybody enters crypto with the unrealistic expectation of winning an actual supercar (though it is possible). I hope I'm not incorrectly portraying his view here, but for Vitalik, pascals wager is that there is a casual 'meme' community that are the strongest cultural bridge between the crypto community and the mainstream that we hope to invite to join our realm -- would Vitalik by preference have ignored this reality and have gone with a business to customer (developer to customer) advertising model, just because he didn't like the immaturity of *joking* fantasy expectations seen in a few memes?
Of course, Ethereum has mostly already made it, and those cultural memes will continue to occur with or without his blessing. I also understand that the valuation, community, and cultural models in crypto are subject to change in the next few years as more mature investors come in, which may result in a community that we prefer to engage in. But I also read in a pretty good book that you always need to understand your customer -- perhaps Ethereum are lucky enough to choose which? The book is called the
Four Pillars of Business Success
