What is Crypto Culture?
In this post I will cover the goings on, the edgy stories and the crypto culture people, of which there is an abundance in our wonderful crypto community. I hope you enjoyed the first clip with Rock Shreller from a recent trip to Thailand. I’m based all over Asia and will keep interesting stories coming your way. Please engage and give me feedback in the comments below on what you would like to see.
What is Crypto culture, It is many things. There are plenty of Libertarians, many of who turn out to be Carnivores! Read about that here
We have hardcore Cypher punks, 15 year old day traders who probably made a fortune last year. There is a tidal wave of Millennial’s coming in for whom a tokenised society is not as far fetched as it is to Mums and Dads trying to figure out what this Bitcoin stuff is. There are many many subcultures and a growing internal media world. I will take a look at how we are being covered in the main stream press, in this weekly article also. Bit of a forking rant coming up on that!!
Check out the footage from Hacker Congress happening right now in Prague. The World Crypto network was my go to channel last year where I learnt a huge amount for this team. The World Crypto Network have splintered of into many channels on Youtube now but as individuals they continue to make great content.
Who makes up the world of Crpyto
Crypto ownership is primarily male, with many estimates putting the figure at 90%. Here in Asia I am seeing a growing number of Women in the space and we will meet some of the key people in the coming weeks. Arguably, the most important person in Crypto is Elizabeth Stark from Lightning labs. More of her hugely important project this week.
Crypto culture is full of amazing characters, and as you come on this journey you will see that a battle does often rage between the communities. Most of the time, the debate is intelligent, other times is can be pretty nasty.
I’ve introduced the some of the other hardforkers in our team but if you missed that check out this article.
Where do I sit in Crypto culture? And what is Hardforking?
Terms like Libertarian, Voluntarism, Anarco captitalist just don’t sit well with me, mainly because they sound shit or are misunderstood. It is a mine field when you use certain words to describe yourself especially some of the ones you find in crypto culture. I am very much a free marketer, minimal government, minimal tax and I have a strong belief I should have the right to do whatever I want with my own body and my own money. I like what Voluntarism is all about, but come on, who ever came up with that term, hasn’t had much media training. Not that I have had any media training either and therefor I went with Hardforking. People in the community get it and it always elicits a laugh, so I’m happy with that.
I use it to describe a hard fork for Fiat. Fiat is your local currency, backed buy nothing and controlled by the whims of a few people. Do I want to see Crypto taking over Fiat, no. Fiat is 90% digital already! Many Crypto currencies are not that decentralized so they don’t offer much that is new in my opinion. Bitcoin though, is decentralised and that is why I love it! Once Fiat is 100% digital we run the massive risk of being under total control. It is no surprise to me that China is trying to control Bitcoin because Bitcoin can’t be controlled!! That is scary to some people. Central control, communism and Totalitarianism terrify me.
I want to see Bitcoin given a chance to flourish globally. It is the first time in human history we have a censorship resistant store of value. The last year have seen better knowledge of what it is all about the the general argument of it being for criminals is now gone as people understand a blockchain is transparent to a large degree. Cash is what criminals use.
Hard forks of Bitcoin itself, may well work as peer to peer cash. They already do to some extent. We are just starting. Many in the Bitcoin community argue that something first has to be a store of value before it can become a currency. This is central to the debate between the Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash communities with the later seeing Bitcoin as diverging from the Satoshi white paper. In my opinion Bitcoin could end up being the global currency Satoshi intended it to be, and or, a global reserve currency. There are some amazing things happening with the tech and some incredible years are ahead.
What is Hardforking all about?
We also use the term to describe hardforking from the accepted way of doing LIFE. I have made many great new friends in the Bitcoin and Crypto space. You have to as it is easy to become obsessed and you lose old friends who just get utterly sick of hearing you talk about Bitcoin all the time. If Bitcoin goes to zero I will see if they will have me back, if not I will make new friends with the weird and wonderful characters that are abundant in this space. Bitcoin and Crypto has been seen by many as a joke but I sense that is changing fast. Institutional money is dipping a toe in, it is naive to think they would not be. It is a cheap commodity right now in my opinion and I think a huge bull run could take place at anytime in the next year. If it happened tomorrow I would not be shocked. I am seeing massive demand in the OTC market, watch this space for more on that.
What is a Hard Fork? Are you still confused?
For those that do not know, a hard fork is how many coins have been created. Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin for example. The Bitcoin Cash people, many who I met recently, wanted bigger block sizes to enable Bitcoin to be used as peer to peer cash to but a coffee with for example.. Others in the Bitcoin community did not think that Bitcoin needed to increase its block size, bang, Hard fork, and there you have a new blockchain and coin, get it? You can hard fork a coin and create a new chain if you think you have a better idea for how it should work. That is a very simplistic way to explain it but I hope you understand the general concept. There are other reasons for Hard forks but that will do for now. So far we have had 74 Hard forks of Bitcoin. You can learn more about them in our other articles.
What do I think of Bitcoin and the Crypto Culture?
I am very much a Bitcoiner but I do my best to learn as much as possible about the important coins, blockchains, people, and I will cover that in this series and hopefully entertain you with a bit of Crypto culture too.
In our team we have a real variety of people and we are looking for more, especially good writers to cover the news. Me, I am passionate about creating content to help a mass market understand Bitcoin, Crypto and Blockchain better. To that end I am making a series on people Living the Dream. It has a strong Crypto element to it while being of general interest to a wide audience. I think it could be a great vehicle to introduce what we at Hardforking are all passionate about, mass adoption of Bitcoin and good Crypto projects. If you would like to know more subscribe and send me a note.