Bitcoin Threw a Party in Miami and I Crashed It
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
Men are more vulnerable to making certain narcissism-related mistakes, such as getting into bad investements because of FOMO or self-publishing books about new fundamental theories in physics that center around the mass ratio of the proton to the electron being exactly the square root of 3371456.
Perhaps, but I think there is more to this than just narcissism. It's an uncomfortable truth but men are culturally expected to take risks and succeed - unless they are lucky enough to be born into wealth or power. That same pressure is not as pronounced as it is for women. So that is why I suspect men make the leap into the speculative world of crypto far more often than women do. Some men are counting on crypto to make them rich (myself included, sadly) because they just don't see themselves getting ahead otherwise.
Does this mean there are inherent differences in personality traits between sexes? I don't necessarily disagree, but seems like a controversial take nowadays.
My hunch though is that a lot of it is going to reverse.
That is oddly specific. Do you have a link to this book?
It's a common trope for physics crackpots to try to find closed expressions for things like the fine structure constant, electron/proton mass ratio, etc. The latter is completely nonsensical today because the proton isn't an elementary particle.
I got thinking about the "crackpot physics" subject again because about two weeks ago there were a series of crackpot physics posts to Hacker News by a woman. It might be "You've come a long way baby" but I'd want to check that it isn't a trans woman before announcing that.
(... certainly you see more men than women in real physics but you have Emmy Noether, Lisa Randall, Elise Meitner, Vera Rubin. It's men who get the idea that they are 'very special' and have 'unique insights'.)
[1] https://web.mst.edu/~lmhall/whattodowhentrisectorcomes.pdf
I don't think narcissism is the issue here and I don't think women are less likely to fall for scams, just different kinds of scams.
"Narcissism" is "self-love" and it is a part of the psyche like the heart is part of your body. When people have trouble with their heart they could have high blood pressure, heart disease, heart failure, heart attacks, heart defects, arrhythmia, etc. So even disordered narcissism is more than one disease.
I just brushed my teeth and that's a healthy expression of narcissism.
A physics crackpot imagines that he is an underlooked genius, is "special". The one thing he knows about Al Einstein is that Einstein worked at the patent office, he doesn't know about the many scientists and mathematicians who Einstein worked with. That's unhealthy narcissism.
If somebody is thinking about having money for retirement I'd say narcissism is always involved because you have some conjecture/mental picture about yourself that is based on your self-image, hopes and fears.
It's good to have realistic and positive self-esteem but boy is it hollow, shallow and ineffective to try to paint it on because somebody told you should.
What great physicists have that crackpots lack is intelligence and/or diligence. I think it's mostly the latter, plenty of crackpots are smart. They just don't take the time to learn the math or study the centuries of prior art.
The real physicist publishes in journals like Physical Review E, the crackpot self-publishes books (or maybe) publishes in predatory journals that specialize in crackpot papers.
Crackpotism has nothing to do with science but with feelings of "I'm special", and it is right up there with taking LSD and thinking you are the Christ or the anti-Christ.
Chien-Shiung Wu!
Why are there so few women in arms trade?
Why are there so few women in finance?
Why are there so few women in infosec?
Why are there so few women in ...
How is "crypto space" unique? It's so easy to find countless industry events which are full of mostly men.
I am not talking of woman who go at these things with a gendered agenda but who rather go at it with quiet competence.
Is there a reason men are more easily scammed?
Supporting male vulnerability here is
https://www.yourmoney.com/investing/men-most-vulnerable-to-i... https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/mass-mark... https://www.chuckgallagher.com/2021/01/27/men-or-women/
in particular
https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2017/whos-most-a...
"... fraud victims are far more likely than other investors to say that acquiring money is one of life's important achievements."
When women began to enter the workplace by the 90s, the stereotype began to fade, and won't be relevant in the next decade or so - we've more or less reached parity wrt to gender distribution in the workplace.
"It's a boy, Mrs. Walker, it's a boy... A son!"
back then couples were happy to get a boy instead of girl. Mothers who didn't feel they could get ahead on their own felt they could get ahead vicariously through a male child.
Today it is the other way around. We hear things like "Girls are our most precious natural resource" and don't think about it... Feminists in the 1970s knew "girl" was a dangerous word (the example in the dictionary should be "girls girls, girls" with a photo of a 42nd st porno theater) but today there is a lot of pandering to young women. Many colleges are practicing affirmative action for men quietly because men aren't that interested in going to college yet young woman aren't interested in going to a college which is 70% female.
So I think the gendering of narcissism is in flux but, like usual for these things, we are looking in the rear view mirror and it will take the culture 20 or 30 years to catch up.
I found the Bitcoin conferences appeal to a very specific demographic. A lot more interesting work is going on in the other parts of the crypto scene.
Yes, there is that. Those people tend to purchase property since there are fewer currency controls on it. And you can get a visa (EB-1,EB-2, etc) out of it for you and the family. Those families are still wealthy in their own countries but the Miami property shell game is a hedge.
The decentralized finance hub has very little to do with Latin America. And LATAM is very rarely brought up when it comes to DeFi. It can definitely work there but most still to send remittances by Western Union to family back home. Miami is just a formerly inexpensive city with great weather with a strong libertarian streak. It's still overwhelmingly a playground for the VCs. It does not have the strong engineering culture of SV, NYC, or Boston, but it wants to. And the city is going out of its way to be overtly friendly to crypto startups and financiers thinking if you build it they will come. The jury is still out on the later. It's still 50/50 on people staying here long term or realizing they missed their old home.
I DoN'T AgReE WiTh tHiS ArTiClE So iT'S a hIt pIeCe
Emotional and weak quip. The article and its allusions are of factually poor quality.
While there is some poetic licence in the headline (metonymy yada yada), I don't think that per se is "weird and suggestive".
And as with dot-com, there is massive long term value to be created, but the early fundamentals are shaky as hell:
"When we finally get inside E11even — even in a proclaimed “global crypto hub” like Miami, it takes 20 minutes to process a Bitcoin payment"
> “red-pilling,” which refers to being indoctrinated into misogynistic, incel-adjacent beliefs
A line written by a "senior reporter" doing an opinion piece, chiefly serving to mock the men and paint the picture that any women involved are either incapable or disinterested. Culturally illiterate.
I can't even guess what contribution was intended here.
> Eventually two of his friends join in, all jockeying to be the first to “orange pill” me—the phrase Bitcoin enthusiasts use for when someone joins their ranks. (Someone mistakenly calls it “red-pilling,” which refers to being indoctrinated into misogynistic, incel-adjacent beliefs, and the man in the jacket laughs and says, “We could do that too.”) When I ask why there are so few women in the crypto space, they cite Jordan Peterson—the controversial psychologist who is speaking at the conference the next day—and claim women aren’t discriminated against in tech, they just choose not to pursue math- and science-focused careers.
I think it's a good piece.
Though > a billboard behind him features a photo of a Bored Ape and the words “non-fungible nightlife.”
feels like descent into self-parody.
It reads more like tabloid journalism rather than investigative/business/political, and her post history seems to confirm that.
I was at the Harvard crypto conference a few weeks ago. There were plenty of women there, although certainly not a 50/50 split. The happy hour and afterparty were nothing at all like described here.
The thing that comes to mind is George W. Bush's reaction to Trump's inauguration speech: "that was some weird shit".