Topic: The destinction between FAD and CULT. (Read 830 times)

OK then. Think of bitcoins as rocks and beanie babies or whatever that you can send instantly anywhere in the world. If you want more value, then send a Picasso. If you want to buy porn, then send a dildo's worth of bitcoins. Bitcoin has value whether you like it or not.

It's in the sense different to the tulip mania argument that it doesn't aim at the price as an argument.

What this is about is utility. Everybody who owns a TB-303 does so because they are into Acid, a style of electronic music and they want to own an authentic instrument.  That is the case because for any other style of music the TB-303 isn't as well suited as other instruments, and hence others aren't willing to pay the market price.
This is also why prices don't crash, even when there is an abundance of alternatives.


With fads people buy stuff because other people did, even if they don't have a reason to own it. Price bubbles are just a symptomatic of the fad-iness, not an argument about systematics.

False dichotomy. It's just a rehash of the tulip mania argument. Fads have turned into a hundreds of billions collectible, art, and antique markets. Cults have morphed Roman Catholicism into 30 thousand Christian denominations. Bitcoin will be neither collectibles because they require a network, nor can they be morphed without their utter destruction.

Nice try. I'm not selling.

i'm still hodling my pet rocks! I've seen some websites dedicated to them, so I know they are bound to CCMF!!!!

No, he's saying "go dig up some rocks, package it in a nice but cheap box, hype and market it, and sell it at high profit."

I get it.

So you are saying that we should buy rocks?

And where does fiat, silver, or gold exactly fit in here? Do you see paper fiat as a fad or a cult? I'd like your professional opinion about this since you seem very wise to us Bitcoin people who don't do anything productive in real life even if you don't know us at all.

I agree on your main point ...


... if the topic is 'Bitcoin' in particular. Fad, cult, or actual success (let's not pretend that's not even an option anymore) will be hard to tell apart, and most will fail to realize the difference in time.


I disagree on the above point if the topic is 'crypto' in general. Algorithmic money (or "money", if you prefer) is going to have an impact beyond the first implementation of it, in all likelihood.

The Pet Rock rocks

That's not what I'd call success. The TB-303 was meant as a replacement for bass players for solo musicians, and it flopped so hard that production barely lasted two years.
It eventually became sought after because it has something unique and useful.

If Bitcoin stays the de-facto currency of the dark web this would be the case. The issue is it has gone beyond that which are more characteristic of a fad, like using it for online retail or as an "investment".

It is already a cult - and moneycults are somewhat creepy.

As a collectible it's still vastly overpriced.

Crypto wasn't a fad, it's real but bitcoin has failed. Never mind. Next one will hopefully be able to hold the value and won't necessarily need a cultfollowing to stay above water.

Okay, took me a minute or two to process it, but I get it. Bitcoin will success no matter if it is perceived as a fad or a cult. We are just going through a growing pains, that's all. Thank you, electricmucus!

Hello fellow get money by doing nothing productive crowd.


Ever heard of pet rocks? Google it, I did.

That's what a FAD looks like, they are collectibles I've never seen one on ebay but the people who came up with the idea got rich.

But let me give you another example you nerds are probably familiar with. Roland TB-303s, if not they are little silver boxes used for electronic music, they are somewhat rare, were made for something entirely different than they are used for and they quite expensive for a vintage synthesizer with such little functionality.



The nice thing about them is they can do one thing no other thing can do and the silly thing is everybody heard some sort of music made with them or with a clone in some way or the other.
There are lots of clones, and even one which looks exactly the same, and yet it hasn't affected their prices.

They appreciated from $1000 to $2000 in the last ten years and never crashed. (Except during production where nobody wanted them). Acid was discovered 4 years after release, 2 years post production. The way they are used hasn't changed and they still are used and still a stable investment.

The moral of the story, if Bitcoin becomes cult it won't change any utility it has now, and if it stays a fad you won't even admit you were into it one day.