Think Progress believes Bitcoin is racist...

[Wilikon]

Every once in a while — most recently with the collapse of online exchange site Mt Gox — the world starts paying attention to Bitcoin, the hacker-project-cum-digital-currency that has garnered the love of a certain subset of people on the internet. Who are those people? According to an online poll from Simulacrum, the average user is a 32.1-year-old libertarian male. By users’ accounts, those men are mostly white.

Breaking that down, about 95 percent of Bitcoin users are men, about 61 percent say they’re not religious, and about 44 percent describe themselves as “libertarian / anarcho-capitalist.” On the last point, the political ideology of Bitcoin users is evident from the fact that the whole idea behind Bitcoin is that it segregates economic markets and currency from a country’s government. Bitcoin aims to be a universal currency, connecting people “peer-to-peer” instead of through set institutions. It wants to replace our current economic system and practices in their entirety — changing the way we buy goods and distribute money. The libertarians, or anarcho-capitalists as the case may be, don’t trust the government to handle their money. They’re the same people who want to “end the fed.”

Those libertarian tendencies are generally held by white men. “Compared to the general population,” an American Values survey reported last year, “libertarians are significantly more likely to be non-Hispanic white, male, and young.” Specifically, 94 percent are white, and 68 percent are men.

Why does Bitcoin specifically have this demographic makeup? Well, there’s a fair amount of privilege built directly into the currency: In order to buy the sometimes wildly expensive currency, Bitcoin users need to be wealthy. And they can afford to put their wealth into a currency that isn’t widely accepted or even recognized. Plus, they move easily through the financial and digital space — the process of “mining” bitcoins demands it; it is all about knowing coding and decryption and how to use an exchange. The sum total of these things — advanced knowledge of computer science, wealth — are also markings of the young, white male.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/02/27/3341411/bitcoin-privilege/

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[hostmaster]

they are not really wise in using brain

[TheButterZone]

Comment backup:
I have practically no advanced knowledge of computer science, am poor (but refuse all welfare), and a white male. But hey, using surveys non-representative of worldwide demographics, is all you need to justify defamation of and infringement upon those who want to exercise fundamental liberties, including economics.

[dank]

Bitcoin is a great means of establishing wealth for population that wishes to resist government oppression and tyranny, but it can never practically be used as a tool to end this.  Bitcoin does not end the extraordinary disparity of wealth.  As it stands, a handful of people own vast amounts of bitcoins with a relatively low adoptance throughout the world.

If this were to become mainstream as a global standard of commerce, we would find ourselves with the same state of existence where a majority of the wealth is in the hands of few people and the remaining population has relatively very little.

Furthermore, it would be very simple for a couple banksters to drop their wealth into bitcoin and buy up extensive amounts of the market and thereby withholding their power and influence over the world.

Bitcoin was a wonderful tool to spread free market as well as decentralized ideology while simultaneously enriching the liberty aspiring common man, though it can not and will not bring us the change we envision in the world.  Bitcoin's purpose has been fulfilled.  To truly find freedom, peace and a lasting change in humanity, we must relinquish our greed based society for one structured around love and sharing.  The greatest advancements in human history await the day we act as the family that we are, that is when we will truly reap the rewards of what we are seeking.

[Elwar]

Think Progress is racist.

[Initscri]

The Facebook comments should suffice in describing how horrible this article is. The minute the writer tried to include the premise that Bitcoin enthusiasts use the currency to sway away from traditional banking systems ONLY because they are including "women and people of color" was the minute the facepalm came up.

I often wonder if these blog posts are deliberately and completely ignorant just to gain media and publicity buzz.

[tinus42]

Some of us bought Bitcoin when it was less than 20 dollars.

You can still buy less than 20 dollars worth of Bitcoins and probably do nicely in the future.

I'm not rich (far from it) yet I own Bitcoin. All the people I know who do have a lot of money don't want to put money in Bitcoin because they believe in the established order and hold their money in a "secure" savings account. They have 0 Bitcoins.

[Kiki112]

Comment backup:
I have practically no advanced knowledge of computer science, am poor (but refuse all welfare), and a white male. But hey, using surveys non-representative of worldwide demographics, is all you need to justify defamation of and infringement upon those who want to exercise fundamental liberties, including economics.

HA!

it is racist

just kidding, the bitcoin community has plenty users from all nations and therefore making everyone wealthy and full of prosperity, nothing racist to see here

[dancupid]

They should repeat the survey in China

[Lethn]

Comment backup:
I have practically no advanced knowledge of computer science, am poor (but refuse all welfare), and a white male. But hey, using surveys non-representative of worldwide demographics, is all you need to justify defamation of and infringement upon those who want to exercise fundamental liberties, including economics.

Middle class, unemployed white male and also refuses welfare out of principle and the fact I just don't need it because me and my family get by on careful money management, I also follow a mixed ideology of Libertarianism as well as Anarchism and have had to re-learn basic mathematics and most thinks at home because school failed to 'educate' me properly and also their books have quite a bit of propaganda in them. I am mixed in my way of thinking as well when it comes to tackling problems but I tend towards right brain stuff like Art and Jewellery but I do like dabbling in extremely logical things because stuff like mathematics tends to only have one correct answer.

Maybe we should make a list to make people like this woman look foolish, if I were rich I wouldn't be here and I'd be hanging out in Japan

[Spendulus]

.....Well, there’s a fair amount of privilege built directly into the currency: In order to buy the sometimes wildly expensive currency, Bitcoin users need to be wealthy. .....

Well, that's a ridiculous error or lie.

I know many people who have half or a tenth a bitcoin.  They are not wealthy, they just have some and trade it for stuff.  Then they get on somewhere like coinbase and get another hundred dollars worth of coin.

But one think you can take for sure.

ThinkProgress is told what to say, and this is what they were told to say.

[Wilikon]

.....Well, there’s a fair amount of privilege built directly into the currency: In order to buy the sometimes wildly expensive currency, Bitcoin users need to be wealthy. .....

Well, that's a ridiculous error or lie.

I know many people who have half or a tenth a bitcoin.  They are not wealthy, they just have some and trade it for stuff.  Then they get on somewhere like coinbase and get another hundred dollars worth of coin.

But one think you can take for sure.

ThinkProgress is told what to say, and this is what they were told to say.

"Think Progress". With such a name one would think they would be Occupy WS lovers, not banker gangbangers. Just on principles. This tells you who their real masters are.

[skilo]

"Racist" is the liberals new favorite word, They throw it around very loosely at people that disagree with their views.

"Oh you don't like Obama? You're a racist!"

[Lethn]

"Racist" is the liberals new favorite word, They throw it around very loosely at people that disagree with their views.

"Oh you don't like Obama? You're a racist!"

Actually, it's something that everybody on the internet does now, remember when everybody ( mostly Americans ) who had a disagreement called people Nazis? It's kind of like that but that got either too old or ridiculous to throw around now so they've stopped it and moved onto racist instead.

Funny thing is though that Americans still like to use the word 'Liberal' like it's an insult when it comes to people they disagree with, yes, I really do think this is the kind of shit only Americans tend to do.

[Wilikon]

"Racist" is the liberals new favorite word, They throw it around very loosely at people that disagree with their views.

"Oh you don't like Obama? You're a racist!"

Actually, it's something that everybody on the internet does now, remember when everybody ( mostly Americans ) who had a disagreement called people Nazis? It's kind of like that but that got either too old or ridiculous to throw around now so they've stopped it and moved onto racist instead.

Funny thing is though that Americans still like to use the word 'Liberal' like it's an insult when it comes to people they disagree with, yes, I really do think this is the kind of shit only Americans tend to do.

Err... What?

The word "liberal" is not an insult for many americans; those who believes average humans cannot move around without being ordered by a centralized power with billions of red tapes. "Liberal" or "progressive" is the same thing in the US.

The word "Liberal" is an insult only for any human with a brain :-)

[tinus42]

"Racist" is the liberals new favorite word, They throw it around very loosely at people that disagree with their views.

"Oh you don't like Obama? You're a racist!"

Actually, it's something that everybody on the internet does now, remember when everybody ( mostly Americans ) who had a disagreement called people Nazis? It's kind of like that but that got either too old or ridiculous to throw around now so they've stopped it and moved onto racist instead.

Funny thing is though that Americans still like to use the word 'Liberal' like it's an insult when it comes to people they disagree with, yes, I really do think this is the kind of shit only Americans tend to do.

Err... What?

The word "liberal" is not an insult for many americans; those who believes average humans cannot move around without being ordered by a centralized power with billions of red tapes. "Liberal" or "progressive" is the same thing in the US.

The word "Liberal" is an insult only for any human with a brain :-)

In Europe being a liberal means that you are pro-business, anti-taxes and for a smaller government.

In the US it means the exact opposite.

[Spendulus]

In Europe being a liberal means that you are pro-business, anti-taxes and for a smaller government.

In the US it means the exact opposite.

That's economic liberalism. Liberty, from latin "Libertas" just means "freedom". In an economic sense, this means less taxes, less trade regulations and workers' rights, whereas in a social/domestic policy sense this means you're allowed free speech, freedom of religion, allowed to be gay etc. In the US you use "liberal" to refer to antiliberal economic policies because they are traditionally held by politicians with liberal social policies. Just a quirk of US English .

only if you consider NSA loving, privacy hating censors of freedom in the US "liberal".  But I'd have some trouble putting that under "liberal social policies".

"Liberal" used to mean standing up for basic constitutional rights.  Now it means getting around them any way possible or outright ignoring them to suite the fancy of the current Fascist Obama.

[luv2drnkbr]

Haha I like all the racist assumptions made that go into the conclusion that Bitcoin is racist.

[r0ach]

Bleh, your post beat mine by 3 hours somehow:

Far leftist Jewish woman goes on racist rampage against "white male" Bitcoiners

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=493800.0

[herzmeister]

again, replace "Bitcoin" with "Early internet"

Breaking that down, about 95 percent of internet users are men, about 61 percent say they’re not religious, and about 44 percent describe themselves as “libertarian / cyberpunk.” On the last point, the political ideology of internet users is evident from the fact that the whole idea behind the internet is that it segregates telecommunications and information systems from a country’s government. The internet aims to be a universal network, connecting people “peer-to-peer” instead of through set institutions. It wants to replace our current telecommunications system and practices in their entirety — changing the way we get information and provide newscast. The libertarians, or cyberpunks as the case may be, don’t trust the government to handle their propaganda. They’re the same people who want to “end the information monopoly.”