Prejudice, Echo Chambers, Arrogance, and Abundance

In 2013, Vitalik Buterin wrote a whitepaper proposing to build a DApps protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain. But because of the cryptotribalistic mindset of the core Bitcoin developer teams at that time, they refused to entertain that idea. He then went on to create Ethereum. You can read a brief mention of it on Wikipedia but Roger Ver is explicit about it in this interview.

Can you imagine what Bitcoin’s Market Cap would’ve been had the core Bitcoin dev’s kept an open mind?

$71 billion Market Cap for Bitcoin + $31 billion Market Cap for Ethereum= $100+ billion Market Cap.

*Statistics as of 8/25/17 2:10 PST on www.coinmarketcap.com All subsequent data in the article will be taken from this time stamp.

It’s this very mentality that divides and hinders cryptocurrency from advancing further than it already has. It off-puts new consumers and I can’t help but think we are shooting ourselves in the foot with every unwarranted use of the word “scamcoin.” This is unfortunate because barriers to adoption are high enough already. But let’s take a moment and define what Cryptotribalism is and how it exactly affects those within its system.

Cryptotribalism can be defined as a strong sense of loyalty to one’s own tribe; or in this case, one’s own coin.

Strength

Loyalty

Tribe

Separately, these words convey great qualities. Yet when they are put together, they create a toxic worldview.

Cryptotribalism Breeds Unwarranted Prejudice

In 1970, Henri Tajfel published an article through American Scientific called “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination.” He divided 64 kids into two groups and observed how they would interact with each other. This is what he discovered:

“Can discrimination be traced to some such origin as social conflict or a history of hostility? Not necessarily. Apparently the mere fact of division into groups is enough to trigger discriminatory behavior” -Henri Tajfel

These two randomly assigned groups acted on prejudice with zero history of conflict. Why? Because one of the easiest ways to bond a group together is to share a common enemy.

I started spending time in various cryptosubreddits for just over a year now. As a newcomer, I was confused. I saw Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt(FUD) directed towards other coins that I had researched and found reasonably respectable. I sat in FUD for days over which coins to invest in because of the contradictory information I was getting. Then it finally dawned on me. I was witnessing completely irrational and unwarranted prejudice.

Now there are two semi-understandable reasons why cryptocurrencies might harbor hostility towards one another:

If they they went through a contentious hard fork like ETH/ETC and BTC/BCH. If they are competing in the same space such as file storage.

However, many coins that exhibited cryptotribalistic behavior did not fit these categories. I found this to be completely irrational because it goes against one of the most fundamental tenets of investing: DIVERSIFYING YOUR PORTFOLIO!

I then began to feel as if there was something more going on behind the curtain. And when I pulled the drapes back, I discovered a hollow echo chamber of misinformation.

Cryptotribalism Breeds Naiveté

“An environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.” -Taken from Oxford Dictionaries.

An echo chamber is a place of self-indulgence. It begins as willful ignorance and then turns into blind belief.

To be clear, it is more than just hearing only one side of the story. It includes a rejection, even censorship, of alternatives ideas.

Want to hear potential weaknesses of your cryptocurrency? Forget it. Have questions about a coin in the same space as yours? Labeled a troll. Voicing legitimate concerns about your coin? Banned.

As a tribe member, you only get access to biased and limited information. You lose objectivity and therefore are disempowered from being an educated individual. In light of this, you are only capable of contributing to the downward spiraling cycle of the echo chamber of misinformation. In the end, all this does is create a circle-jerk culture of ignorant arrogance. This leads me to my final point.

Cryptotribalism Breeds Arrogance

“Pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall.” -Proverbs 16:18 HCSB

Having confidence in your cryptocurrency is one thing. Having blind arrogance in it is another.

Arrogance chooses to ignore other people’s voices. It chooses to reject criticisms. It demands, shouts, and condescends others claiming that their coin is superior. It’s sickeningly elitist and exclusionary. Ultimately, it inhibits partnerships and creativity which leads to missed opportunities as is evidenced by the creation of Ethereum.

We as a cryptocommunity need to move away from an “us vs. them” mentality and rather adopt the “we” perspective. What is good for one coin is inevitably good for us all.

A Mindset of Abundance Over Scarcity

Probably one the biggest contributing factors to cryptotribalism is a mindset of scarcity. It’s the idea that there isn’t enough pie for everyone to have. Hostility towards other coins, in fact, reveal a deeper fear that there is only so much room to grow. However, I want to challenge this perspective by suggesting a mindset of abundance. Here’s why:

Since June, the Market Cap of crypto has increased nearly 50% to about $154 billion. Yet despite the billions of dollars of growth, it’s still only a quarter of the net worth of Amazon. Now let’s say crypto were to only take 1/2 of the total amount of USD in circulation. The Market Cap would grow approximately 400%.

Stop for a minute. Take a snapshot of your portfolio and increase your holdings by 400%. This is what abundance mentality looks like. It’s understanding that crypto is still in its infant stages, that there is space for many coins to co-exist, and that there will be multiple winners.

Sure. There will there be some coins that fail, some coins that are scams, or some coins that get abandoned. This is why it is imperative to shift away from cryptotribalism so that you won’t be blinded to the warning signs.

Cryptocurrency is set up to be a global economy and we’ve only just touched the tip of the iceberg. But in order to access the depth of its potential, we need inclusion and not exclusion. Civil discourse, not heated rhetoric. We need an attitude of mutual beneficence, not twitter wars between cryptofigureheads: looking at you Luke Dashjr and Vitalik Buterin.

Now I’m not saying don’t have a favorite coin. You should definitely play favorites. But I challenge you, my empowered readers, to take the opposite stance of cryptotribalism. Think abundance and be informed.

After all, we’re in this together.