A Latecomer's Guide to the Cryptocurrency Industry
In the coming years, the wealth and ideology of the cryptocurrency industry will become a transformative force in our society.Original Title: The Latecomer's Guide to Crypto
Original Author: Kevin Roose, New York Times
Compiled by: Ze Yi, Chain Catcher
Crypto has a lot of things, including bad explanations, and we are here to clarify this.
Until recently, if you lived outside of San Francisco, you might not have heard about cryptocurrency for days or even weeks.
Now, suddenly, you are hearing about cryptocurrency everywhere. Look to one side, and there’s Matt Damon and Larry David advertising for crypto startups. Turn your head--oh, hey, it’s the mayors of Miami and New York arguing over who likes Bitcoin more. Now there are two NBA arenas named after crypto companies, and it seems like every corporate marketing team in America has jumped on the NFT--or non-fungible token--bandwagon. (Can I introduce you to Pepsi's newly launched "Mic Drop" Genesis NFT? Or the "Metaverse Meals" series of NFTs from Applebee's, inspired by the chain's classic dishes?)
For years, crypto seemed like the kind of fleeting tech trend that most people could safely ignore, like hoverboards or Google Glass. But its economic and cultural power has become too significant to overlook. A recent survey by Morning Consult found that 20% of American adults and 36% of millennials own cryptocurrency. Over the past year, the crypto trading app Coinbase has topped the App Store charts at least twice. Today, the crypto market is valued at about $1.75 trillion--roughly the size of Google. In Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are flocking away from cushy jobs to join the crypto gold rush.
As crypto goes mainstream, it has sparked an unusual polarization. Its loyal fans believe it is saving the world, while skeptics think it is entirely a scam--a speculative bubble crafted by fraudsters and sold to greedy fools, likely to lead to an economic collapse when it bursts.
For nearly a decade, I have been writing about crypto, and during that time, my own views have swung between extreme skepticism and cautious optimism. Recently, I often describe myself as a crypto moderate, although I admit this might be a form of evasion.
I agree with skeptics that a large part of the crypto market consists of overvalued, overhyped, and possibly fraudulent assets, and I am unmoved by the most utopian views held by crypto enthusiasts (like former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s claim that Bitcoin will bring world peace).
But as I have experimented more with crypto--including accidentally selling an NFT for over $500,000 at a charity auction last year--I have gradually accepted that it is not all a cynical money grab, and that there is something genuinely substantive being built. In my career as a tech journalist, I have also learned that when so much money, energy, and talent flow into something new, it is usually a good idea to pay attention, regardless of how you feel about the thing itself.
However, my most steadfast belief about crypto is that it is explained very poorly.
Recently, I spent months reading everything I could find about crypto. But I found that most beginner guides took the form of dull podcasts, a handful of YouTube explainer videos, and blog posts written by biased investors. On the other hand, many anti-crypto arguments are weakened by inaccurate and outdated claims, such as the assertion that crypto benefits criminals, despite growing evidence that crypto’s traceable ledger makes it less suitable for illegal activity.
I could not find a calm, fair explanation of what crypto is, how it works, who it serves, what the stakes are, where the lines are drawn---and answers to some of the most common questions it raises.
This guide--really a super-sized FAQ--is meant to address that. In this article, I will explain the basic concepts as clearly as possible and try to answer questions that a curious but open-minded skeptic might have.
Crypto supporters may nitpick my explanations, while stubborn opponents may feel they are too generous. That’s okay. My goal is not to convince you whether crypto is good or bad, whether it should be banned or celebrated, or whether investing in it will make you rich or bankrupt. This is merely to lift the veil on some of the mystery. If you want to dive deeper, there is a reading list at the end of each chapter.
Crypto Will Bring Revolutionary Change
It is important to understand crypto now, especially if you are naturally skeptical, for several reasons.
First, in the coming years, the wealth and ideology of crypto will become a transformative force in our society.
You have heard the stories of overnight Dogecoin millionaires and people buying Lamborghinis with Bitcoin. But that is just a small part of it. The crypto boom has created vast new wealth in a way we have never seen before--the closest comparison might be the discovery of oil in the Middle East--and turned its biggest winners into some of the richest people in the world, essentially overnight. If the market crashes, some of that wealth may disappear, but enough money has already been cashed out to ensure that crypto's influence can last for decades.
The frenzy and meme-driven culture of crypto can make it seem frivolous and superficial. It is not; cryptocurrencies, even the joke coins, are part of a powerful, well-funded ideological movement that has serious implications for our political and economic future. Bitcoin was born in the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis, initially embraced by libertarians and anti-establishment activists who saw it as the cornerstone of a new, clean monetary system. Since then, other crypto sectors have set similar lofty goals, such as building a decentralized, essentially unregulated Wall Street on the blockchain.
We are beginning to see more and more cryptocurrency flowing into the American political system. Crypto entrepreneurs are donating millions to candidates and causes, and lobbying firms have spread out across the country to win support for pro-crypto legislation. In the coming years, crypto tycoons will fund campaigns for candidates who support crypto or run for office themselves. Some will spread influence in familiar ways--forming super PACs, funding think tanks, etc.--while others will try to completely break free from partisan gridlock. (Crypto millionaires have already purchased land in the South Pacific to build their own blockchain utopia.)
As politicians around the world are forced to take sides, crypto is about to become one of the few truly wedge issues. Some countries, like El Salvador--whose pro-crypto president Nayib Bukele recently announced plans to develop a "Bitcoin City" at the base of a volcano--will adopt crypto entirely. Governments in other countries may see crypto as a threat to their sovereignty and crack down on it, as China did last year when it declared cryptocurrency trading illegal. The divide between regions of the world that support crypto and those that do not may ultimately become as significant as the divide between the Chinese internet and the American internet, or even worse.
In the U.S., we have already seen how crypto disrupts traditional party loyalties. For example, former President Trump and Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren are skeptical of crypto, while Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden take an optimistic stance. We have also seen what happens when the crypto community feels politically threatened, as it did last summer when crypto groups banded together to oppose President Biden’s infrastructure bill’s crypto-related provisions.
I think, despite how silly it may seem on the surface, crypto is not just another weird internet phenomenon. It is an organized technological movement with powerful tools and a large group of wealthy, loyal believers whose goal is nothing less than a comprehensive economic and political revolution.
Crypto Can Be Destructive
The second reason to pay attention to crypto is that understanding it now is the best way to ensure it does not become a destructive force later.
In the early 2010s, the most common criticism of social media apps like Facebook and Twitter was that they could not operate as businesses for long. Experts predicted that users would eventually tire of their friends’ vacation photos, advertisers would flee, and the entire social media industry would collapse. This theory did not claim that social media was dangerous or bad, but rather that it was boring and cliché, a fad driven by hype that would quickly fade away.
At that time, no one loudly asked: What if social media actually becomes very successful? What kind of regulation would need to exist in a world where Facebook and Twitter are the dominant communication platforms? How should tech companies with billions of users weigh the trade-offs between free speech and safety? What product features could prevent online hate and misinformation from escalating into offline violence?
By mid-2015, when people clearly saw that these were urgent questions, it was too late. The platform mechanisms and ad-based business models had become entrenched, and if those skeptics had taken these apps more seriously from the beginning, they might have steered them in a better direction.
Are we making the same mistake with crypto today? It’s possible. No one knows yet whether, in the grandest sense, crypto will "work." (Anyone claiming to know is selling something.) But there is real money and energy behind it, and many tech veterans I’ve spoken with tell me that today’s crypto scene feels like a replay of 2010--this time, technology is disrupting money instead of media.
If they are wrong, then they are wrong. But if they are right--even partially right--the best time to start paying attention is now, before the road is set and the problems become difficult to solve.
The third reason to study crypto is that learning about it is genuinely interesting.
Sure, much of it is silly, dubious, or self-refuting. But if you can look past the hype and parse through the baffling jargon, you will find a bottomless pit filled with strange, fascinating, and thought-provoking projects. The crypto agenda is so vast and multidisciplinary--drawing from economics, engineering, philosophy, law, art, energy policy, and more--that it offers many entry points for beginners. Want to discuss the Austrian school’s influence on Bitcoin’s development? There’s probably a Discord server for that. Want to join a DAO that invests in NFTs, or play a video game where you pay to win with crypto tokens? Dive right in.
Crypto is a cross-generational master key
Note that I am not saying that the population distribution in the crypto world is diverse. Surveys show that high-income white men make up a large proportion of cryptocurrency owners, and libertarians with dog-eared copies of "Atlas Shrugged" may be overrepresented among crypto millionaires. Participants in the crypto world are not consistent in their goals. There are right-wing Bitcoin maximalists who believe crypto technology will liberate them from government tyranny; left-wing Ethereum supporters who want to overthrow the big banks; and apolitical speculators who just want to profit and exit. These communities constantly fight among themselves, and many have very different ideas about what crypto should be. It is a fascinating study, especially with a bit of emotional distance.
If you do learn some basic crypto knowledge, you may find that a whole world opens up to you. You will understand why Jimmy Fallon and Steph Curry changed their Twitter avatars to cartoon apes, and why the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, spent considerable time last year discussing a digital currency named after a dog on Twitter. The strange vocabulary and phrases you encounter online--rug pulls, flippenings, gm--will become familiar, and eventually, headlines like "NFT collectors sell People’s Fursonas for $100,000 in Right-Click Mindset War" won’t leave you questioning whether you are losing your grip on reality.
Crypto can also be a cross-generational master key, perhaps the fastest way to refresh your cultural awareness and decode the beliefs and actions of today’s youth. Just as a little knowledge of New Age mysticism and psychedelics can help people understand the youth culture of the 1960s, understanding some basic crypto can help those confused by new attitudes toward money and power feel more grounded.
Once again, I really don’t care whether you are influenced by these explanations to become a true believer, a loyal skeptic, or something in between. Engage or disengage, as you wish! What I seek is understanding---to free myself from the question that has plagued my social and professional life for the past few years: "So, can I ask you a question about crypto?"
Let’s start from the beginning: What is crypto?
A decade or two ago, the term was often used as shorthand for "cryptography," but in recent years, it has become more closely associated with cryptocurrency. Today, "crypto" typically refers to the entire technological field involving blockchain--the distributed ledger system that powers digital currencies like Bitcoin, but also the foundational layer for technologies like NFTs, Web3 applications, and DeFi trading protocols.
Can you explain what blockchain is without getting too technical?
At a very basic level, a blockchain is a shared database that stores and verifies information in a cryptographically secure way.
You can think of a blockchain as a Google spreadsheet, except that the blockchain is not hosted on Google’s servers; it is maintained by a network of computers around the world. These computers (sometimes called miners or validators) are responsible for storing their own copies of the database, adding and verifying new entries, and protecting the database from hackers.
So, a blockchain is……. a complicated Google spreadsheet?
Pretty much, but there are at least three important conceptual differences.
First, blockchains are decentralized; they do not require a company like Google to oversee them. All of this work is done by the computers on the network, using something called a "consensus mechanism"---essentially a complex algorithm that allows them to agree on what is in the database without needing a neutral arbiter. Supporters argue that this makes blockchains more secure than traditional record-keeping systems because no single person or company can control a blockchain or tamper with its contents; anyone trying to hack or alter the records in the ledger would need to simultaneously hack multiple computers.
The second major feature of blockchains is that they are often public and open-source, unlike Google spreadsheets, which means anyone can check the code of a public blockchain or view the records of any transaction. (There are private blockchains, but they are not as significant as public ones.)
Third, blockchains are typically additive and permanent, meaning that unlike Google spreadsheets, data added to a blockchain usually cannot be deleted or altered afterward.
Got it, so a blockchain is a public, permanent database that no one owns?
Yes.
Now tell me: What is the relationship between blockchain and cryptocurrency?
Blockchains did not emerge until 2009, when a pseudonymous programmer named Satoshi Nakamoto published the technical document for Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency ever.
Bitcoin uses blockchain to track transactions, which is notable because it allowed people to send and receive money over the internet for the first time without involving a central authority like a bank or apps like PayPal or Venmo.
According to CoinMarketCap, many blockchains still execute cryptocurrency transactions, and there are currently about 10,000 different cryptocurrencies in existence. But many blockchains can also be used to store other types of information, including NFTs, self-executing code known as smart contracts, and mature applications--without needing a central authority.
Okay, but can we take a step back? A few years ago, weren’t techies telling us that crypto was an exciting new form of currency? Yet now, no one I know uses Bitcoin to pay rent or buy groceries. Were those people wrong?
Good question. Admittedly, very few people use cryptocurrency to buy things today. To some extent, this is because most merchants still do not accept crypto payments, and high transaction fees can make it impractical to use small amounts of cryptocurrency for everyday expenses. It is also because the value of popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum has historically gone up, making it somewhat risky to use them for in-person shopping. (The counterexample is the often-cited story of someone who bought two Papa John’s pizzas for Bitcoin in 2010, when the Bitcoin worth $40 is now worth about $400 million.)
Similarly, since the early days of Bitcoin, the value of cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed, even though they are not used for most people’s daily spending.
Part of this growth is due to speculation--people buy crypto assets hoping to sell them later at a higher price. Part of it is that blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, which emerged after Bitcoin, have expanded what the technology can do.
Some crypto enthusiasts believe that the prices of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will eventually stabilize, which could make them a means of payment.
What are the practical uses of crypto beyond financial speculation?
Currently, many successful applications of crypto technology are in finance or finance-related fields. For example, people are using crypto technology to send cross-border remittances to family members overseas, as well as using blockchain to settle foreign transactions for Wall Street banks.
The boom in crypto technology has also led to a surge of experiments outside of financial services, including crypto social clubs, crypto video games, crypto restaurants, and even crypto-powered wireless networks.
These non-financial uses are still relatively limited, but crypto fans often argue that the technology is still young, and it took decades for the internet to mature to its current level. Investors are pouring billions into crypto startups because they believe that blockchain will one day be used for various things: storing medical records, tracking streaming music copyrights, and even hosting new social media platforms. The crypto ecosystem is attracting a large number of developers--which is a good sign for any new technology.
I’ve heard people refer to crypto as a pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme; what does that mean?
Some critics argue that the cryptocurrency market is fundamentally fraudulent, either because early investors get rich at the expense of later investors (pyramid scheme) or because crypto projects attract unsuspecting investors by promising safe returns, only to collapse once new money stops flowing in (Ponzi scheme).
Of course, there are many examples of pyramid and Ponzi schemes in the crypto space, including OneCoin, a fraudulent crypto operation that stole $4 billion from investors from 2014 to 2019; and the Virgil Sigma Fund, a $90 million crypto hedge fund run by a 24-year-old investor who admitted to committing securities fraud and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.
But these cases are not typically what critics are discussing. They often believe that crypto itself is an exploitative scheme with no real-world value.
Are they right?
Well, let’s try to understand their reasoning.
They say that unlike buying stock in Apple, which reflects a belief that Apple’s underlying business is healthy, buying cryptocurrency is more like betting on the success of an idea. If people believe in Bitcoin, they will buy it, and the price of Bitcoin will go up. If people stop believing in Bitcoin, they will sell, and the price of Bitcoin will go down.
Thus, crypto owners have a rational incentive to persuade others to buy in. If you do not believe that the technology behind cryptocurrency has value, you might conclude that the whole thing is like a pyramid scheme, where you primarily make money by recruiting others to join.
I sense you are about to say "but."
Even if there are scams and frauds within crypto, and crypto investors certainly love recruiting others to buy in, many investors will tell you that they got in because they saw the value.
They believe that crypto technology has intrinsic value, and the ability to store information and value on a decentralized blockchain will attract various people and businesses in the future. They will tell you that they are betting on crypto products, not crypto ideas--which is somewhat similar to buying Apple stock because you believe the next generation of iPhones will be popular.
Noted investor Matt Huang (co-founder of Paradigm) tweeted: "From the outside, crypto may look like a speculative casino. But that distracts from a deeper truth: this casino is a Trojan horse hiding a new financial system."
You can argue against this viewpoint or debate how valuable this "new financial system" really is, but clearly, crypto investors believe it has value.
Is crypto regulated?
There is relatively little regulation; in the U.S., certain centralized crypto exchanges, like Coinbase, are required to register as money transmitters and comply with laws like the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires them to collect certain information from customers. Some countries have enacted stricter regulations, while others, like China, have completely banned cryptocurrency trading.
But compared to the traditional financial system, crypto regulation is very lax. Crypto assets like "stablecoins"---which are pegged to government-backed currencies---have almost no regulatory rules, and even the IRS has not provided clear guidance on how certain crypto investments should be taxed. Certain areas of cryptocurrency, like DeFi, are almost completely unregulated.
To some extent, this is because we are still in the early stages, and it takes time to create new rules. But it is also a property of the blockchain technology itself, much of which is designed to be difficult for governments to control.
This question comes from rapper Cardi B: Will cryptocurrency replace the dollar? Clearly, he is curious about crypto.
Sorry, Cardi. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency, and replacing the dollar would be an enormous undertaking that is unlikely to happen in the short term. (Just to illustrate how daunting this task is: every financial contract priced in dollars would have to be re-priced in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrencies.)
For crypto to replace government-issued currency, the crypto industry would also need to overcome some technical hurdles. Today, the most popular blockchains--Bitcoin and Ethereum--are slow and inefficient compared to traditional payment networks. (For example, the Ethereum blockchain can handle about 15 transactions per second, while Visa claims it can handle thousands of credit card transactions per second.)
Of course, to get a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to replace the dollar, you would need to convince billions of people to use a currency that is highly volatile, lacks government backing, and is often unrecoverable if stolen.
What kind of people are investing in crypto? To quote a recent episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," are they all "nerds and Nazis"?
It is hard to say who is investing in crypto, especially since many activities are conducted anonymously or pseudonymously. But some surveys and studies suggest that crypto investment is still dominated by wealthy white men.
The cryptocurrency exchange Gemini estimated in a recent report that women make up only 26% of crypto investors. The organization found that the average age of crypto owners is 38, with an annual income of about $111,000.
However, crypto ownership does seem to be diversifying. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that Asian, Black, and Hispanic adults are more likely to use crypto than white adults. Outside the U.S., the adoption of crypto technology is also growing. Some studies suggest that countries like Vietnam, India, and Pakistan are experiencing the fastest growth in crypto adoption.
My colleague Tressie McMillan Cottom suggested that crypto technology is particularly appealing to marginalized groups because it relies on a permanent, indisputable record of ownership of digital products and currencies, which their property may have been unjustly stripped of in the past.
"If I lived in a community where the police absolutely used eminent domain to seize my private property and I had no recourse," she wrote, "that daily sense of powerlessness would make the promise of blockchain sound pretty good."
Recent studies have also found that a small number of people own the vast majority of crypto wealth--so it is not necessarily an egalitarian paradise.
What about extremists? Are they getting into crypto?
Some have, as the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrency without using your name or having a bank account made crypto naturally suited for those with reasons to avoid the traditional financial system in its early days. They include criminals, tax evaders, and those trading in illegal goods. They also include dissidents and extremists, some of whom have been kicked off more mainstream payment services like PayPal and Patreon.
Because the timing of entering the crypto market was just right, some extremists have become wealthy. A recent survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that several prominent white supremacists made hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars by investing in crypto.
Of course, there are millions of cryptocurrency owners, the vast majority of whom are not white supremacists. And the anonymity and censorship-resistant qualities that make cryptocurrency useful to white supremacists may also make it appealing to Afghans fleeing the Taliban. Therefore, labeling the entire cryptocurrency movement as extremist would be an overreach. Regardless, it can be said that cryptocurrency has attracted various people who are unwilling or unable to engage with traditional banks.
Another criticism I hear is that crypto is harmful to the environment; is that true?
This is a real trouble spot--and one of the most frequent objections to cryptocurrency.
Let’s start with the established fact that most crypto activity today occurs on blockchains that require massive amounts of energy to store and verify transactions. These networks use a proof-of-work consensus mechanism (PoW)---a process likened to a global guessing game, where all the computers compete to solve cryptographic puzzles in order to add new information to the database and earn rewards. Solving these puzzles requires powerful computers, which in turn consume a lot of energy.
For example, according to the website Digiconomist, which tracks cryptocurrency energy usage, the Bitcoin blockchain is estimated to use 200 terawatt-hours of energy annually. That is equivalent to the energy consumption of Thailand for a year. The associated carbon emissions from Bitcoin are estimated to be about 100 million tons per year, comparable to the carbon footprint of the Czech Republic.
How do crypto supporters justify this environmental impact?
Crypto supporters often nitpick these statistics, and they also argue that:
Our existing financial system also consumes massive amounts of energy, including powering millions of bank branches, ATMs that sit idle for most of the day, gold mines, and other energy-intensive infrastructure.
Many of the computers mining cryptocurrencies are powered by renewable energy or energy that would otherwise be wasted.
Most newer blockchains are built using consensus mechanisms that require much less energy than proof-of-work. (For example, Ethereum plans to switch to a new consensus mechanism called proof-of-stake (PoS) sometime in 2022, which could reduce its energy usage by 99.5%.)
Are these arguments correct?
Partially. Most newer blockchains are designed to require much less energy than Bitcoin, and Ethereum’s switch to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism (PoS) would significantly reduce its environmental impact, if it happens.
However, it is also somewhat convenient to shift attention away from Bitcoin, as Bitcoin remains the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world. Bitcoin’s energy demands are not expected to drop significantly in the short term. Even if every Bitcoin miner were to use entirely renewable energy--which is clearly not the case--maintaining the blockchain would still come with environmental costs.
Overall, it is clear that the cryptocurrencies we know today have a significant environmental impact, but it is difficult to measure just how significant. Many frequently cited statistics come from industry groups, and it is hard to find trustworthy independent data and analysis.
But few crypto fans would dispute that blockchains consume more energy than traditional centralized databases--just as a hundred refrigerators consume more energy than one refrigerator. They simply believe that the environmental impact of cryptocurrency will diminish over time, and that the benefits of decentralization are worth the cost.
Got it, so what are the benefits?
Some supporters of cryptocurrencies will tell you that the biggest benefit of decentralization is the ability to create currencies, applications, and virtual economies that resist censorship and top-down control. (They might say, imagine a version of Facebook where Mark Zuckerberg cannot unilaterally decide to kick people off.)
Others will argue that the biggest benefit of decentralization is that it allows artists and creators to have more direct control over their economic destinies, giving them a way (in the form of NFTs and other crypto assets) to bypass gatekeepers like YouTube and Spotify and sell unique digital works directly to their fans.
Still others argue that cryptocurrencies are most useful for those who do not live in countries with stable currencies or for dissident groups living under authoritarian regimes.
There are countless hypothetical benefits of decentralization and cryptocurrency, some of which are real and some may not be.
How do you actually use cryptocurrency? Is it like paying through PayPal or Venmo?
It can be. The fastest way to start using cryptocurrency is to set up an account on a cryptocurrency exchange like Coinbase, which can link to your bank account and convert your dollars (or other government-issued currency) into cryptocurrency.
However, many cryptocurrency users prefer to set up their own "wallets"--secure places to store the cryptographic keys that unlock their digital assets.
Once you have some cryptocurrency in your wallet, the process of transacting is very simple--just enter the recipient’s cryptocurrency wallet address, pay the transaction fee, and wait for the payment to settle.
Other types of crypto transactions, like buying and selling NFTs, can be much more complicated, but the basic act of sending money to someone usually only takes a few minutes.
I’m ready to dive deeper into the rest of your explanations. But first, I have a question about crypto culture: Why is it so weird and insular?
This may be the question I get asked most about crypto. People see their friends, colleagues, and relatives jumping down the crypto rabbit hole, and a few days or weeks later, there’s a new obsession, a new meme, a whole new set of terms that seem to dominate the conversation. There’s even a term for it--becoming "cryptopilled." Believers in crypto often really believe in it---to the point where, from the outside, they seem more like evangelists for a new religion than fans of a new technology.
I used to be a religion reporter, and I don’t think this analogy is entirely inappropriate. (It is not necessarily a bad thing: many people find meaning, community, and intellectual stimulation in religion.) As Bloomberg reporter Joe Weisenthal pointed out, cryptocurrency has elements similar to a new emerging religion: a mysterious founder (the still-anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto), sacred texts (the Bitcoin white paper), and rituals and ceremonies that mark one as a believer, such as sending "gm" (the crypto way of saying "good morning") to your peers on Twitter or photoshopping laser eyes onto your profile picture.
It is amusing to mock the ways crypto fans try to entertain and motivate each other. However, focusing too much on their behaviors and habits may mean missing the genuine novelty of the technology itself---which, depending on where you stand, can be either exciting or dangerous. That is why when my friends ask me how to talk to their crypto-enthusiast relatives, I suggest they start by trying to understand what has them so excited in the first place.
Further Reading:
This article from The Atlantic, written by Jonathan Zittrain and Will Marks from Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, raises the question of what NFT investors are really buying and interprets the ancient philosophical question of why we value things.
This 2021 TED talk by Kayvon Tehranian--founder of the NFT platform Foundation--makes the foundational argument that NFTs are "the internet where economic control is in the hands of creators rather than platforms."
This 2021 blog post by pseudonymous programmer Antsstyle is a lengthy critique of NFTs, based on the assertion that "no system can prove ownership of anything."
This YouTube video by Dan Olson provides a two-hour critique of the flaws of NFTs and the broader cryptocurrency space, going viral online and garnering millions of views.
