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.
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.
Your point 4 is the only one I disagree with. In my experience, these extreme and fringe groups have the least consistent internal culture and are most likely to break up into more factions. The only one I know that breaks that rule seems to be the NRA in the US. Instead, I'd like to propose an alternate theory about why the extremes have the loudest voice.
Most people, by definition, share a majority point of view which is neither unusual or newsworthy. Fringe groups and extremists, also by definition, have unique and sometimes outrageous points of view. These groups are much more newsworthy and are much more likely to be shared on social media, both by those that agree and those that are upset by them.
I think this natural phenomenon is a great thing because it amplifies the new ideas and generates reaction and discussion in mainstream cultures. Unfortunately the Internet has continued to build algorithms that amplify the effect so that the offensive and extreme points of view have an abnormal dominance in our media feeds. This effect has then been monitized so frequently that it earned the term 'click bait'.
Of course, Ethereum has mostly already made it, and those cultural memes will continue to occur with or without his blessing.
As for the term "made it" everyone has different measures for that. For a long time my benchmark was whether it had appeared on The Simpsons. Ethereum has certainly done well and always sits in prime positions on the charts. But I think it has not reached anything like its potential.
I tried for a long time to get a full node working and as tenacious as I am, gave up in frustration. During this ordeal I came across many pages and tutorials looking for workarounds to their problems and felt like I was only one of a vast number of people experiencing the same frustrations. And while Ethereum executes a phenomenal number of transactions per day and currently leads in this regard, I still hold the opinion that a shift to POS will further enhance its performance. So if they have made it now, it will be fun to see where they end up once running a full node is something my mother can set up, and doing so won't take a performance hit out of her computer.
Very well made points Tim. I do also agree with the ones you stated. The funniest thing about intersectionality, is that they do tend to continually break up into even more factions. And the fringe groups are the only newsworthy people who are interesting to the media (who themselves, are mostly made up of borderline fringe groups).
That said, I still think that such groups are much more vocal -- like your friend who does crossfit, or who is vegan. They'll tell you. Funnily enough, being a Bitcoin evangelist is kind of like being one of the vegan's of the financial world.
Would write more, but must be up for a flight to Brisbane in 5 hours. Will check back before my flight. A close friend who is a top videographer (for leading fashion, model, music and entertainment brands in the USA and AU) will be over there with me, and we plan to do some recording for one of DNotes upcoming videos while there (for his 30th birthday).