The Subculture of Cryptocurrency
Despite being in a winter and all the fraudsters, the crypto community has evolved its own culture. Let’s explore.
Would you pay $300 Million for a pizza? In 2010, Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz used 10,000 Bitcoins to buy a pizza. In today’s Bitcoin value, that equates to almost $300 Million. But he says he has no regrets. Another man accidentally threw away is hard drive, now worth nearly $400 Million. He’s been petitioning the local council to search the landfill or years.
While we hear much about cryptocurrency scammers and fraudsters, and there are these criminals, the majority of those in the crypto community aren’t criminally minded. Over the years they’ve come to evolve a defining subculture, with norms, a style of language, traditions and customs. All the elements that define a subculture. Let’s explore this very intriguing and interesting world.
Let’s start with how we see subcultures from a cultural anthropology lens. They will hold a shared identity that distinguishes them from a larger society. They evolve their own set of distinctive norms and values, often have a specialised language and may develop forms of resistance to dominant cultural norms. There’s other elements to defining them, but you see all these in the crypto culture.
While one could write an entire book on the topic, I’m striving for brevity and to provide a glimpse inside this fascinating and evolving subculture, for it is constantly developing new ideas, norms and values, just as all cultures evolve and change over time.
There is a very strong libertarian streak that runs through the crypto community. This is the resistance to a dominant social system, in this case the global finance industry. Many adherents to crypto culture distrust the financial system and belief there is an alternative way that can lead to greater wealth equality for the everyday person.
Part of this is driven by a utopian view of the world, as a means to Universal Basic Income and putting power back in the hands of common people, rather than elites. They also believe that with blockchain and crypto there would be greater transparency and less corruption.
Another key element of a subculture is the rise of it’s own language and inside social indicators such as humour that signals one is deeply knowledgeable of that culture. We see terms like “HODL”, which, the story goes, was a misspelling of “HOLD” by a drunken trader. This is now defined as “Hold On for Dear Life”, or in other words, hold, don’t trade.
Memes also play a prominent role in crypto subculture, such as the creation of the Dogecoin, which started from the meme around the Shiba Inu dog. It took off when promoted by Elon Musk. Memes communicate complex ideas distilled into a more simplified expression through imagery and text.
Present in many subcultures are influencers and strong personalities and the crypto world certainly has its share. Perhaps two of the best known are Musk and the late John McAfee, a fascinating personality. Thee are others, some good and some not so much, like Sam Bankman Fried (SBF.)
Within the crypto subculture there are also tribes that usually form around a type of cryptocurrency, where they’ll argue incessantly online over who’s is better, most often humorously, but sometimes getting emotionally darker.
The norms, customs and behaviours of this subculture create a sense of belonging to a social group. Shared jokes, ideals and ways of behaving bring together disparate people from around the world who find a sense of belonging.
It is this string community bonding through shared cultural elements that makes the crypto subculture quite interesting. It is, in internet years terms, a fascinating and interesting look at how a digital subculture can evolve across global borders and cultures. As a subculture, it may be the first truly long-term, sustainable one we’ve known so far.
There are many interesting and culturally valuable aspects to this subculture. And while it is important to acknowledge the hucksters and fraudsters, it is unfair to paint this subculture with a single brush.
Understanding the deep nuances and social explorations and ideas of this subcultiure can give us clues to the future of human sociocultural systems and how they might develop. Much of crypto is an argument about the current state of capitalism and global financial and economic models, of which are coming under increasing societal pressure to reform.
Some say we are entering a post-capitalist stage, others call it neocapitalism and economist Yanis Varoufakis puts forward the idea of Technofeudalism, and system that crypto subculture, with it’s strongly held views on wealth equality and decentralization strongly opposes and could be considered a viable means of stopping such a future.
There are some noble and valuable ideals within the crypto community subculture and it is not going away anytime soon and is likely to come through it’s winter into a spring where various ideals become more shaped and defined. It has to deal with the issues of frauds and scams to be more broadly accepted by society. That remains to be seen.
Dive a little deeper into this subculture and one finds some bright minds, a deep sense of humour and a surprisingly broad interest in the betterment of humanity at a global scale.