Fiat Intellectuals
The result is a phenomenon that I like to call fiat intellectuals. These are people that say enough buzzwords to sound like they know what they’re talking about, but don’t actually know very much. These gullible dupes know that most people won’t verify what they say and they are confident enough in their obscuring abilities to cast doubt on the few people that do.
In our space, the most obvious of these are the business school types that talk about blockchain as if it’s some magical device. This also goes for people that want to bring up quantum computing or proof-of-stake. They know enough to sound smart, but haven’t verified anything. They trust some authority which usually means that they have been manipulated into believing they know something.
You can always tell these people have been manipulated by some of the ridiculous platitudes they spout.
“The truth is probably somewhere in between.”
“So many people working on this thing probably means there’s something useful there.”
Fiat intellectuals are lazy and can’t be bothered to actually learn the topic and instead rely on other people to tell them what’s true. Sadly, most of the people in power, whether it be C‑level executives, VCs or politicians are very much fiat intellectuals and are ripe for manipulation.
This is why so many altcoins have such high valuations. Almost every investor, even very big ones, do not verify, they trust. Think about what happened with LUNA and how many large players were involved in that complete disaster. Galaxy, 3AC and Celsius are just three names that were in the news recently due to this. They didn’t verify and instead picked and chose what they wanted to believe. They wanted to believe their investments weren’t scams and they all suffered as a result.
The pattern we’re seeing in the “crypto” markets is the same as that of central banks. It seems there is a purposeful obscuring of everything that’s going on. The Ethereum 2.0 platform is egregiously complex for that reason. White papers are difficult to read and are hundreds of pages for that reason. They imitate the complexity of central banks because they are exactly that — private central banks. They obscure what’s going on for the same reason, because they want to get away with immoral behavior.
Leveling Up
Bitcoin has a radically different ethic of verify, don’t trust. It’s in that spirit that so many plebs have learned to run their own nodes, custodied their own keys and even learned to code. Verification at a deep level is what keeps everyone honest. We encourage verification in the community for that reason. We don’t rely on central authorities and that means we don’t get screwed by their immoral behavior.
This is in stark contrast to fiat monetary regimes and altcoins. They are all about relying on the trust of their designated experts and not about verifying anything yourself. They discourage “running your own node” because they don’t want you to verify. The complexity of those systems is specifically geared toward making verification unrealistic and difficult.
This is why altcoiners become more like fiat intellectuals over time. They know lots of buzzwords but do little to really verify the truth of their respective systems. Hence, many of them are held down to the bottom because they really don’t know anything about the systems they purport to understand. They believe what they want to believe and lose connection with reality. Such is the end for fiat intellectuals.
The truth is that fiat intellectuals are intellectual slaves of those in power. They are anything but self-sovereign and have convinced themselves that it’s too much responsibility, too much work, too much effort. The only real path of self-sovereignty is to do the hard work of verification in all aspects. We cannot be free until we’re free from the shackles of our intellectual chains. And that freedom is earned through verification. We must be relentless and seek truth.
Freedom isn’t free.
Ten Signs That You’re Becoming A Bitcoin Maximalist
You’ve made peace with the fact that you can’t get certain friends or family members to buy Bitcoin.
You only check the price once a day.
You have a bookmark for bitcoinerjobs.com
You call your Bitcoin stash “savings” and not an “investment.”
When you hear proof-of-stake, you think about cattle rancher protocols.
Your pronouns are stay humble/stack sats.
When you have free time, you spend it on improving yourself.
You get happy during bear markets because you can stack cheaply.
You stop regretting not buying when you first heard about Bitcoin and realize you got in at the price that you deserve.
You feel shame when thinking about your altcoin days.
This is a guest post by Jimmy Song. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.