“Don’t read everything you believe.”
I have my Alacritty fish shell configured to display a random fortune quote every time I open a new terminal window. Three days ago I saw the following:
Don’t read everything you believe.
I paused for a second after reading this. Something that has been on my mind lately is how tribalism and polarization are becoming more and more prevalent in our society. Crypto enthusaists, while explicityly rebelling against the status quo have created one giant echo chamber.
Crypto Twitter (crypto X?) has become the central hub for discussion and communication in crypto. It’s also become crypto’s primary connection to web 2. The problem is that it’s an echo chamber. We don’t have mainstream adoption. And we won’t ever have “the next billion users” onchain if we don’t do something real.
Rampant tribalism on Twitter is a symptom of this echo chamber. Solana? Cosmos? Ethereum? Bitcoin? No. We need to stop thinking in terms of “us” and “them”. We are crypto. We don’t need scalability, we need users. We don’t need interoperability, we need media attention. We know that crypto is the future, but the rest of the world doesn’t.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
And this revolution begins with us. We are early. This is the wild west of the future. But before we can get there we need to cleanse ourselves of tribalism and polarization.
Next time you open Twitter, read posts about another ecosystem. Reply to someone who disagrees with you and try to see their point of view. Next time you explain crypto to someone, I challenge you to explain it while not mentioning your favorite chain or ecosystem. If you are an ETH maxi, talk about Solana’s payment developments with Visa.
We are crypto. Don’t screw it up.
Footnotes
Ethereum really needs some positive press. I recently had a conversation with someone who’s only response to my pro-crypto arguments was “What about SBF?” The majority of the next generation considers crypto to be a scam and a joke. We need to change that. We aren’t going to get anywhere by shouting into the echo chamber. Try writing a letter to your congressperson. Try explaining crypto to your parents. This is a revolution. We need to act like it.
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