The Toxic Culture of Bitcoin

Bitcoin has a culture problem, and I think we should probably admit that.

Somewhere between HODL, laser eyes, Lambos, number-go-up memes and “have fun staying poor,” we built a culture around Bitcoin that started rewarding some pretty bad incentives. What started as a fascinating experiment in peer-to-peer money slowly became wrapped in status, speculation, personalities and an almost religious belief that owning Bitcoin was itself the end goal.

HODL culture is probably the best example. The original idea wasn’t necessarily bad. Save your money. Think long term. Don’t panic because the price dropped 20%. There are some really good lessons buried in there.

But like a lot of good ideas, we took it too far.

HODL eventually became more than saving. It became identity. The goal was to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible, never spend it, wait for everyone else to eventually figure it out and, presumably, become wealthy because you figured it out first.

Then we added Lambos.

The Lambo stuff was mostly a joke, but jokes usually tell you something about the culture that created them. The trophy for being right about Bitcoin became getting rich enough to show everyone else how right you were. Number go up. Buy the Lambo. Post the picture. Repeat.

Social media poured gasoline on all of it. Talking about Bitcoin became its own economy. More followers led to more podcast appearances, conferences, sponsorships and influence. Strong opinions performed better than nuanced ones. Predictions were rewarded. Tribalism was rewarded. Being the loudest person in the room was often rewarded.

Eventually, we created celebrity Bitcoiners whose primary product was talking about Bitcoin.

And then things started getting weird.

We Built WWE Around Money Bitcoin culture sometimes feels like professional wrestling. There are heroes and villains, alliances and betrayals, good guys and bad guys. Bitcoin versus crypto. Bitcoiners versus fiat. Maximalists versus shitcoiners. HODLers versus paper hands. Pick your side and defend it.

The personalities become larger than the technology.

Then sitting above the entire thing is Satoshi Nakamoto, maybe the perfect character for this kind of culture because nobody actually knows who Satoshi is. An anonymous creator builds Bitcoin, releases it into the world and disappears. Now everyone gets to imagine their own version of Satoshi, one that conveniently agrees with whatever argument they’re making at the time.

It’s also hard to ignore the religious aspects of Bitcoin culture. There is an origin story, sacred texts, evangelists, purity tests, believers, nonbelievers, heretics and prophets predicting the future. Question certain ideas and you can quickly find yourself outside the tribe.

I understand how we got here. Communities naturally build stories around themselves, especially when they believe they’ve discovered something important before everyone else. But none of this is actually Bitcoin.

Bitcoin doesn’t need celebrities. It doesn’t need prophets. It doesn’t need Lambos, laser eyes or price predictions.

The technology works without any of them.

That’s the part I think we need to get back to.

We Lost the Plot Strip all of this away and Bitcoin is still an incredible piece of technology. At its core, the original idea was surprisingly simple: peer-to-peer electronic cash. Two people exchanging value electronically without needing a trusted financial institution sitting in the middle.

That’s still really interesting.

We built exchanges, hardware wallets, Lightning, new custody models, Nostr, ecash, payment infrastructure and countless other experiments. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some probably won’t exist ten years from now. That’s how technology develops.

The problem isn’t that we experimented. It’s that somewhere along the way, we started confusing the culture built around Bitcoin with the purpose of Bitcoin itself.

We became obsessed with owning Bitcoin and forgot to ask what we could actually do with it.

If everyone buys Bitcoin, locks it away and waits for someone else to eventually pay more for it, that’s not the most interesting version of this technology. Maybe it’s digital gold, and that’s a legitimate use case on its own. But I don’t think we should stop there.

Fix HODL Culture I think it’s time to fix HODL culture.

That doesn’t mean stop saving. It doesn’t mean sell all your Bitcoin. It doesn’t mean scarcity stops mattering.

It means restoring some balance between saving Bitcoin and actually using it.

Save some sats. Spend some sats. Earn some sats.

Buy eggs from a farmer and pay them in Bitcoin. Pay a developer for their work. Tip someone who created something useful. Buy dinner. Support a local business. Send value to someone on the other side of the world without worrying about what bank they use.

Then go earn some more.

That’s an economy.

There’s something strange about building a culture around peer-to-peer electronic money while celebrating the idea that you should never participate in peer-to-peer commerce.

I don’t think the ultimate measure of Bitcoin’s success should be how many people die with a hardware wallet full of unspent sats. I think it should be how useful the network becomes to normal people.

Not traders. Not influencers. Not people spending their entire day watching a Bitcoin chart.

Someone buying vegetables from a farmer. Someone paying a contractor. A creator getting paid directly by the people who value their work. A developer in another country getting paid instantly. Someone sending a few dollars to a friend without needing permission from a financial institution.

That’s where Bitcoin starts becoming much more interesting to me.

Make Bitcoin Boring Maybe the next phase of Bitcoin doesn’t need another financial product. Maybe it doesn’t need another conference full of people explaining why the price is going to $1 million. Maybe it doesn’t need another celebrity.

Bitcoin needs to become boring.

You walk into a farmers market. You buy eggs. You scan something. Sats move. Done.

Two people exchanged value.

That’s it.

I think we’ve spent enough time building layers of culture, mythology and financial incentives around Bitcoin. Some of it was useful. Some helped adoption. Some pushed the technology forward. Some was simply experimentation, and experimentation is healthy.

But eventually, you have to come back to first principles and ask what problem you were trying to solve in the first place.

Bitcoin gave us a way for people to exchange value directly. That remains an incredibly powerful idea.

So let’s keep the good parts of Bitcoin culture. Save. Think long term. Question systems. Understand your money. Build things. Experiment.

But spend your sats too.

Support the farmer. Pay the developer. Tip the creator. Buy something from the person building something you want to exist.

Build communities where value actually moves instead of communities where everyone is waiting for everyone else to buy their bags at a higher price.

Bitcoin isn’t valuable only because someone might pay more for it tomorrow. Bitcoin is valuable when you can use it to value something today: a meal, someone’s work, someone’s time, an idea, a product, a service.

That is real value exchange.

Save. Spend. Earn. Build something useful.

Then do it again.