Engineers and technical people are cynical generally, but I agree. It comes out especially for crypto. Some of it could be jealousy. Watching “normies” make millions doing nothing more than buying early.
> Engineers and technical people are cynical generally, but I agree. It comes out especially for crypto. Some of it could be jealousy. Watching “normies” make millions doing nothing more than buying early.
Except we aren't normies, a lot of us may have non CS backgrounds, but we have the World's best cryptographers, and some of us with some relevant tech backgrounds, particularly found in the Anarcho-Capitalist/Crypto-Anarchy/Cypherpunk crowds from the early days, also grew up n the internet. I learned how to solder from hacking and modding playstation, gamecube, and Dreamcast consoles and sold ripped copies of those games to fund my first startup in HS in fact. My friends online hacked DirecTV for fun on their time off and introduced me to what zero days were when I was in the 8th grade!
I was browsing newsgroups and IRC since the early 2000s and spoke to software engineers at many mega corps, and even met a few who worked in the auto industry in my early teens at meetups or drifting events.
I honestly think it's because we ushered in a paradigm shift that makes them question if they wasted their time/life entirely and we are incredibly vocal about that, not because we want to brag (most times) but because we want you to apply your Human capital and skill set to this movement as we need so much more infrastructure to make it become what we all think it can become as its still possible to be incredibly rewarded for doing so.
But many, especially here, have these delusions think they were meant to be Musk, Chamath, or Dorsey if they kept pluging away as a lowly foot soldier on a H1 visa at a FAANG: it was just a matter of time until their unicorn idea let them get to that table. It's really just sad to me, but I saw it with my own eyes so many times I cannot deny it. Hell, Chamath has even said in his recent podcast what he did is entirely unobtainable anymore, which is why he works in the spaces he does.
It's really sad, Bitcoiners as a whole are generally collaborative, and super generous people with their time and crypto (we gave so much away!) but all we ever get from the FAANG types is jealousy, scorn and resentfulness; we may be brash in our demeanor and are often very anti-Silicon Valley (even for those of us with roots there) but that is just our culture. A lot of us were channers, too. I heard it several times before I joined and posted on BTF in fact.
It's easy to imagine having early awareness of cryptoassets but dismissing them as tulips when the total market value was $1m.
It's also easy to imagine not admitting the mistake after the next 10x to $10m. In fact, that explosive growth helped confirm the skeptics' thesis that it's a Ponzi about to implode.
So now that we've 10x'd five more times since then, it would be a tremendous psychological blow to capitulate now.
Those who preferred the comfort of confirmation bias to the discomfort of admitting they've been wrong all these years have paid an enormous price for that comfort.
> So those who preferred the comfort of confirmation bias to the discomfort of admitting they've been wrong all these years have paid an enormous price for that comfort.
Suppose I bought $10,000 of BTC 8 years ago. The only reason I would have done so would have been for speculation, because I don't need to buy drugs on the internet, I don't need to send remittances to, (to use a shorthand) some 'other' country[1], and just like how I don't want to churn my own butter, I don't want to be my own bank.
Had I done so, I can safely predict, knowing everything I know about my psychology and temperament, I would not be a Bitcoin millionaire today. I would have closed my position at any one of a million points in between then and now.
It's a pretty easy temper on FOMO.
[1] To use a long-hand, that country would have to be legal for me to send money to, have a functioning and nearly-always-on internet system, and have a robust network of local bitcoin-for-cash money lenders, while also being almost entirely disconnected from traditional international banking.
If you had bought 8 years ago and sold after the first double or triple, you'd have the same confirmation bias problem as if you'd never bought at all.
Most people would find reasons why they were right to sell and forgo all the 10x's after they sold. They'd be on HN talking about speculation, tulips, buying drugs on the internet, terrorist financing, and wasteful energy usage.
I'm not immune from this. I bought Tesla and Netflix early, and sold after the first triple. Then I spent a lot of time finding fault with Tesla and Netflix as they continued to rise without limit while I watched from the sidelines.
I was wrong about Tesla and Netflix. I made tremendous errors in judgment by selling far too soon.
At least for me, it's much easier to pretend I've been right all along and the entire market is wrong, than to admit my own judgment and decisions were faulty.
You've got a good point but can you please make your substantive points without being snarky? This is in the site guidelines and is an important condition for curious conversation.
