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Comment by r32a_ | Hacker News Reader

Many people on HN who talk down against Bitcoin are indoctrinated into the current ideology. Anything that goes against the current ideology is refuted, ignored, dismissed as fads, bubbles, scams..etc Ideology is a powerful thing and it's hard to break out of it.

If you want to learn more about this concept, you should research about Slavoj Zizek's work on ideology. Bitcoin is not just technology, but a multi-faceted ideology founded around cypherpunks ideas, liberty, sovereignty, austrian economic system, free markets.

Even the way Bitcoin is developed (slow, methodical) and Bitcoin apps are built is different to SV way which is move fast, break things, iterate.

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>Bitcoin is not just technology, but a multi-faceted ideology founded around cypherpunks ideas, liberty, sovereignty, austrian economic system, free markets.

This is the narrative that people use to make it seem more savory. But it's just about the money. No one cares enough about any of those ideals for them to be a meaningful part of what Bitcoin is. Those ideas have existed forever in the back channels of the web, and are memorialized in the endless plethora of abandoned decentralized technologies that were never profitable. It's money, plain and simple. There's nothing wrong with that, but for whatever reason the crypto community has some kind of chip on their shoulder about hiding the fact that it is just about profit.

You're absolutely right, It is about money and profiting. Aligning yourself with Bitcoin's ideology is supremely profitable.

It’s about money to me in-so-far it is an enormously profitable way to earn a living given we are at the earliest of days in a ground breaking technology. That’s the same logic as internet entrepreneurs in the 90s.

The main difference between myself and HN groupthink is I believe crypto and blockchain have inherent value and revolutionary potential. There is a loud group here that says all of blockchain is a scam, refuse to look into it deeply, parrot the same bullshit, and when they are proven wrong by the market they just say “Well wait 5 more years and you’ll see!” which is impossible to prove as the crash can always be in the future. It’s so exhausting and the only thing that makes me feel better is the fact I was super right they were super wrong and I’m rich and don’t need to spend my life building some stupid middleware that powers the middleware that powers the privacy-violation pipeline for some SV dweeb or megacorp. I just keep delivering value that frees people from the corrupt state and earn insane money because few talented people know how to do it or grasp how useful it is.

Bitcoin _is_ money though. It's only logical that buying into the concept will have returns.

Yes people speculate on it, does it mean no one really believes in it's value propositions? This argument has very little weight when you compare it to anything else. Is the majority of the stock market all about profit? There's very little of the traditional stock pricing going on anymore.

Imagine using Žižek to argue for Bitcoin.

I invested, work in, and continue to believe in bitcoin / Ethereum / crypto ecosystem because of my beliefs in exactly those things. Austrian economics made so much sense to me the first time I sat down and properly studied it. Keynesian / mainstream economics was always shoved down my throat but it came down to “there is a man with a money printer and when shit gets bad he will print money” which made no sense to me logically. I think many of society’s problems come down to easy money which has caused enormous malinvestment and warped incentives.

I didn’t buy crypto as a Ponzi. I bought it because it makes perfect sense if you have a libertarian / Austrian / free market / individualist / free people mindset. Which I do!

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