GM, GN, WAGMI, HODL, DYOR, probably nothing, ser – do these terms sound familiar? They are part of an ever-growing thesaurus of crypto-speak. A lexicon that the says is reflective of a cult. And not in a good way. Like Jonestown. skeptic’s guide to crypto If you think about it though, all cultures and subcultures develop their own lingo. They create their own customs and rituals. Social behaviors. In-groups and out-groups. Sub-communities. Idiosyncrasies. And so on. These subcultures are born out of political, technological, art, or other contemporary movements. Influences which also shape their vocabulary. For example, a combination of politics, economics, cryptography, computer science, and current affairs influenced Bitcoin’s creation. As a result, its culture and diction are also influenced by these. Subcultures can be niche like Goth or Steampunk. Or more popular cultural phenomena like Hip Hop. The Furry fandom falls somewhere between. And so does cryptocurrencies, or crypto – not niche anymore, not a mass movement yet. But . getting there People more competent than me have written at length trying to explain the who, what, why, and how of this movement. The most recently popular of them being a by finance columnist Matt Levine. 40,000-word treatise In spite of all the ink spent on crypto, its culture remains one of the lesser-explored aspects in popular media. With this guide, I hope to take a stab at it in fewer words than Levine. “Crypto” Explained For semantic clarity, “crypto” was originally used to refer to cryptography only. Cryptocurrencies use applications of cryptography. With their growing popularity, “crypto” is also now common parlance for cryptocurrency-related stuff. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum, public blockchains, NFTs, and more. I will be referring to the newer connotation when using “crypto” here. Now coming back to the original question, do the terms mentioned above sound familiar? If you are into crypto, it is a resounding yes. If you dislike crypto, these phrases may invoke negative sentiments. But if you are unaware or indifferent to them, you may be a nocoiner. Or a precoiner, to be more specific. Nocoiner and Precoiner Explained What is a nocoiner? Someone who doesn’t own any cryptocurrency or related assets like NFTs. As with many things in crypto, “nocoiner” has turned out to be contentious. Even among crypto advocates ( , ). 1 2 Urban Dictionary currently five explanations. All have polarized votes. Two of those are disparaging of people who like cryptocurrencies. The other three down-talk critics. has two definitions of which the first one says: lists Wiktionary Elsewhere, there is resentment added towards crypto in the description of the term. From to to to Wiktionary’s second definition. What of those who are unconcerned one way or the other? VICE CoinDesk CoinMarketCap Entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan make this distinction. He “precoiner” i.e. a nocoiner who has no grudges against crypto. suggests As Matt Levine’s “Crypto Story” points out, “disciples” (coiners) and “skeptics” (anti-coiners) are at loggerheads. “Normies” (precoiners) are undecided. Hence, this guide may find a more receptive audience among precoiners. Nonetheless, it is addressed to all nocoiners. All who wish to peek into the layered and esoteric world of crypto culture. Part I – Bitcoin v/s Ethereum (and Other Crypto) Culture To understand the overall culture, let’s list some of the shared principles among Bitcoin/Ethereum/crypto/public blockchain/Web3 proponents to begin with: · trustlessness, decentralization, disintermediation · self-sovereignty, ownership rights, be-your-own-bank · individual privacy, data protection, strong cryptography · censorship-resistance, freedom to transact, immutability · triple entry accounting, public accountability of systems, FOSS Many of these values can be attributed to libertarian thought and anti-establishment sentiment born out of socio-political developments. The earliest supporters of some of these values were cypherpunks – a privacy-focused subculture. Naturally, crypto found acceptance from whistleblowers. Like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Frances Haugen. Thereby starting its life as a niche internet counterculture. Over time, some chains/projects/platforms in crypto have made concessions for one value in exchange for other benefits/value systems hoping to gain more mass appeal. Trade-offs such as compromising on decentralization for achieving speed. Or shelving open source to avoid exploits. Or even ditching immutability to curry favors with governments. Nevertheless, some crypto entities have held on to their zealously. cypherpunk roots Bitcoin’s Origins and Culture Bitcoin was born out of the 2008 housing bubble collapse. Its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s goal was to make a system that no longer needs a trusted intermediary to transact. A truly peer-to-peer financial paradigm. Publicly auditable. Run on computers by independent parties distributed around the world. Cannot be corrupted by colluding actors. In the words of Satoshi: ( ) Image Source This is why Bitcoin culture focuses so much on the separation of money from state. The ethos of resonates strongly. The memetic themes often revolve around sound money, borderless finance, and economic theory. Fix The Money, Fix The World Throwing shade at censorship, central banking, fiat money, and government-issued diktat is usual. This mission-driven doggedness is one of the reasons for Bitcoin’s resilience through “crypto winters”. In spite of its being written over and over again. obituaries ( ) Image Source Many years later, the vibes are still cypherpunk AF. There’s vigorous advocacy for free speech, privacy, anti-surveillance, and cybersecurity. Self-custody of assets is sacrosanct. Keeping crypto coins on centralized/custodial platforms is a no-no. Many prominent Bitcoiners are generally skeptical of the overall (non-Bitcoin) crypto space. But staying true to their roots, they the EU’s plan to ban privacy coins. And come to the of Tornado Cash when it is sanctioned by the US Treasury and one of its developers is arrested. protest defense OPSEC (operations security) is second nature. And it comes from years of experience. Sometimes learning the hard way like a Solana dev did last year . As security expert Jameson Lopp can also . in Bogotá confirm While glitzy events like the Miami Bitcoin Conference or Bitcoin Amsterdam attract people from across the cryptocurrency spectrum and beyond, the true essence of Bitcoin culture shows in smaller developer-focused events: ( ) Image Source Products, research, activism, and other developmental work on Bitcoin center around , , , , , , , , , , , etc. custody scalability anti-censorship uptime privacy accessibility circular economies nation-state adoption power grids renewable energy human rights , offline payments Popular crypto developments like (Decentralised Finance), (Non-Fungible Tokens), , (Initial Coin Offerings), (Decentralised Applications), (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), etc. are nearly non-existent on Bitcoin. DeFi NFTs Yield Farms ICOs DApps DAOs , tokens Even things like (Decentralised Exchanges) are few and far between. People who invest in these “altcoin” projects or associate with them may face criticism from Bitcoin purists. Dex’es The idea that public blockchains can be viable means to build anything beyond money rails is not well received in these circles (see Oracle Problem in Part V). So there is disinterest in “ ” and “ ”. Web3 metaverse There are at ideations and implementations of tokens, DApps, NFTs, and more on or around Bitcoin too (see , , / , , , , Mastercoin/ , , , / , etc.), but they have never really taken off. attempts Colored Coins Counterparty Inscriptions Ordinals Bitcoin Stamps OpenOrdex Rollkit Omni EthSide Raretoshi BitDNS Namecoin , VeriBlock This indifference, and occasional disdain ( , , , , , , , , , )*, makes Bitcoin culture feel puritanical and over-serious. Yet, at the same time, it has paved the way for what is considered as crypto culture today. In times of crisis, the of Bitcoin gains greater appreciation ( , , , , ) from altcoiners/multicoiners too. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 single-minded pursuit 1 2 3 4 5 *Despite the disdain, Bitcoiners have overwhelmingly rejected calls for censorship and the throttling of (see Bitcoin-not-crypto in Part VII). undesirables ( ) Image Source PS. Eric Wall is a vocal critic of “maximalism” in Bitcoin spaces. In the dorky v/s dogmatic image composite above, the left one is from Ethereum’s developer conference . The right one is from Bitcoin’s community-focused conference . To be fair, the Bitcoin event had other non-ominous-looking settings too (see and ). in Bogotá in Amsterdam here here The Story of Ethereum One of the original proposers of Colored Coins was Vitalik Buterin. A co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. He wanted to build apps and blockchain-based assets on top of Bitcoin. A decentralized world computer using Bitcoin. That did not generate enough interest from other Bitcoin devs. So he ventured out to create a separate blockchain called Ethereum. A permissionless platform to deploy software applications and digital assets. Apart from the proceeds of a Thiel Fellowship, an initial sale of pre-mined coins was arranged to fund early development. This led to differences with the Bitcoin community since Satoshi’s approach was more bootstrapped. Another point of contention was Bitcoin had no premine, and mining was egalitarian. No added advantage was afforded to Satoshi or other early miners. To play devil’s advocate though, it could be argued that Satoshi’s was a high privilege that few had access to. Bitcoin mailing list Notwithstanding, the first cracks began to appear between the two communities. From to to to , Ethereum developers and researchers have their hands full. Ethereum is more “degen” (degenerate) though in the sense that it houses all those endeavors mentioned before that don’t catch on in Bitcoin. cryptography research scaling data protection improving decentralization Apart from , it is fertile grounds for experimenting with non-money implementations in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , etc. finance art governance grants arbitration community management fundraising revenue sharing treasury administration co-working fan clubs insurance VR/metaverse publishing gaming royalties identities , ticketing Even are not exempt. As a result, Ethereum’s culture, memes, and lexicon capture these various pursuits and their hits and misses. The themes go beyond money and state. cloud nations ( ) Image Source The ballooning thesaurus of crypto-speak reflects the pace of development on Ethereum. As of Jan’23, ~1M different tokens have been issued on its blockchain. Of these, are fungible tokens (ERC20 tokens), are NFT collections (ERC721 tokens), and are other kinds of tokens (ERC1155 tokens). ~760k ~205k ~35k And we have not even included the 1:1 NFTs such as single pieces of work created by artists. On top of this, more than smart contracts have been deployed (as of Aug’22). 44M This high level of enterprise is a driver of the “Web3” movement. A loosely held term for an internet running on public blockchain and crypto token rails to maintain data provenance. On the flip side, where there’s money to be made, there is sketchy activity too. Apart from projects that fail, there are also scams perpetrated by bad actors. From vaporware to snake oil to rug pulls to hacks to malicious contracts. Many of these get flagged quickly (see Bane of Scams in Crypto in Part VIII). Their claims get called out ( , , , , , , , , , , , ). Or clowned on ( , , , , , , ). But many slip through. For every Uniswap, Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO’s of the world, there are many grifts that happen. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 A large part of criticism directed towards crypto arises from these misadventures. One of the reasons why Bitcoin purists insist on distancing from “crypto”. Notwithstanding “degen” behavior on Ethereum, cypherpunk tendencies are alive and well. There are tools to . NFTs to Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. And DAOs seeking the release of WikiLeaks founder . subvert authority free Julian Assange So Bitcoin now has a partner in Ethereum when it comes to driving crypto culture. Other public blockchains like Solana, Dogecoin, Polygon, Avalanche, Cosmos, Binance, Monero, Zcash, Litecoin, Polkadot, Stacks, Tron, Near, Cardano, etc. have a comparatively smaller footprint on cultural phenomena for now. Because of its dominant influence, many Ethereum developments (NFTs, Dex’es, DAOs, etc.) become part of the crypto zeitgeist before other chains adopt them. This is why a lot of the lexicon and memetic themes carry over from Ethereum as well. , stablecoins Up Next – Part II: Key People/Opinion Makers/Cultural Influencers NOTE: Also published . here Disclaimer: None of the information mentioned above should be construed as financial advice.

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The Simple Guide to Crypto Culture for Nocoiners

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Abhijoy Sarkar

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The Simple Guide to Crypto Culture for Nocoiners

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Abhijoy Sarkar

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