This is not an article about Bitcoin.
This is not an article about the people who buy and sell Bitcoin. It’s not about hodlers. It’s not about traders. It’s not about crypto bros.
This is an article about the people who have NEVER bought or sold Bitcoin.
This is an article about “no-coiners” – people who, for whatever reason, never bought or sold Bitcoin, but just watched it from afar. I am a no-coiner, btw.
| Gary Coleman: | Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy |
| Nicky: | I’ll say. |
| Gary Coleman: | And when I see how sad you are It sort of makes me… Happy! |
| Nicky: | Happy?! |
| Gary Coleman: | Sorry, Nicky, human nature- Nothing I can do! It’s… Schadenfreude! Making me feel glad that I’m not you. |
| ― Avenue Q (2003) |
Leave it to a Broadway play with puppets to write the best song ever about schadenfreude, the second most powerful other-regarding emotion.
Since January of 2018, schadenfreude – the taking of pleasure in other people’s pain – has been the overwhelmingly dominant behavioral driver of “no-coiners”.
But we all know that it wasn’t always this way.
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it’s just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
Cause I’m Mr. Brightside
― Killers, “Mr. Brightside”
Leave it to a Vegas band to write the best song ever about jealousy, THE most powerful other-regarding emotion.
Up until January of 2018, jealousy – the taking of pain in other people’s pleasure – was the overwhelmingly dominant behavioral driver of “no-coiners”.
You know it’s true.
A year ago I wrote a note called Sheep Logic, about the other-regarding behaviors that dominate our markets and our politics today. Here’s the money quote:
We think we are wolves, living by the logic of the pack.
In truth we are sheep, living by the logic of the flock.
A flock is a social structure designed to promote other-awareness. It has no goals, no coordinating purpose other than communication. A flock simply IS. A pack, on the other hand, is a social structure designed to harness self-aware animals in service to some goal requiring joint action — the raising of cubs, the hunting of meat, etc. Both the flock and the pack are extremely effective social structures, but they operate by entirely different logics.
The logic of the flock has two main drivers – jealousy and schadenfreude – and it struck me today how much of the mainstream presentation and representation of Bitcoin! as a meme over the past two years or so has been intentionally framed within these two other-regarding behaviors. I mean … I think of myself as being pretty self-aware when it comes to the means and modalities through which I am nudged into flock behavior, but it struck me today how little I’ve thought about this when it comes to Bitcoin.
I think it’s because Bitcoin is so PERFECT an instrument for those who benefit by encouraging other-regarding flock behavior. As Gertrude Stein famously said about Oakland, there is no there there with Bitcoin. It is entirely (and intentionally) a constructed artifact with absolutely no real world connection or point of attachment. Bitcoin is an idea. Bitcoin IS a meme. Sure, it’s also a tradable thing for those few people who buy and sell it. But that’s a minor aspect of what Bitcoin means for markets writ large. Its primary impact on markets is as a powerful meme that reinforces our other-regarding flock emotions of jealousy and schadenfreude. Not among the small minority of people who are Bitcoin hodlers and traders, but for the vast majority of people who never have and never will own Bitcoin or any crypto. The deep meaning of Bitcoin, in its presentation and representation, is spectacle. Something for us to laugh at or be jealous of.
It’s a subtle point, but I think it’s incredibly important.
If Bitcoin did not exist, the Nudging State and Nudging Oligarchy would have to invent it.
Not to create a security for us to buy or sell. That’s nothing! But to create a meme that trains us even further in the ways of the flock.
As usual, we are being played.
But we can change all that. How? Clear Eyes and Full Hearts. Even with Bitcoin.
Especially with Bitcoin.
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I’m not a no-coiner. I admit to taking a little schade thinking you meant ‘something to laugh at and be jealous of’. I look at BTC like trophy art; I just can’t afford the latter.