"Influencers" my foot!
I attended a crypto meet up last week organized by the now famous Davinci Jeremie, the developer who begged everyone to buy bitcoin in 2013 when 1 BTC was roughly $26! Those who watched the video now would regret not listening to him. This, among other things has catapulted him as a whale in the crypto industry garnering him tons of followers like myself and making his opinions valuable and respected.
But with all the due respect given to his correct call on BTC in 2013, that does not make him right on all things or make him immune to criticism. I want to point out here that I do not intend on criticizing him as a person, I am merely using him as an example of the blind sidedness, complicity and “moonboy, pump my bags” we have in the larger crypto space that is rife with the so called “crypto influencers”.
Many (not all) of these crypto influencers are usually focused on self promotion above many other things with themselves as the main object rather than focusing on the subject of crypto above all. First, for a person to nickname themselves, crypto..(whatever their name is) says a lot.
From the beginning of my foray into the crypto community, I found it strange why folks wanted to be called crypto something or crypto this or crypto that. I maybe wrong, but looking at it from a philosophical point of view, crypto is not about one person and IMHO tagging the word crypto to an individual only fosters a cult of personality, inflates the ego of said person and drives this continuous unhealthy glorification of materialism on social media all for the likes, followers and social capital (clout) that does not benefit the world at large. For instance, I found it both comical and strange that on many of these influencers Instagram pages, they refer to themselves as “public figures”. To me it sounds like they are craving and drooling for any sort of attention. Another one below is another popular influencer that was at the said meetup;
My main disappointment with this lot is not with the persons as such but the ideals they seem to espouse. Having met them and watched their mannerisms in those settings leaves me with the notion (but not a conclusion), that many of them are only in this for their personal enrichment sometimes at the cost of their followers or admirers.
At the meetup mentioned previously, I posed a question to the “influencers” in the hall including the two above and their answers was a marathon of evasion trying to dodge the question. Reminded me of politicians trying not to answer questions which only proves they are not straight forward hence, not trustworthy. For laughs, the clip below is how people sound like if we all speak like politicians..
The question I posed revolved around the control of Ethereum by traditional bankers/centralized institutions like JP Morgan. Stating the fact obvious to all that Ethereum is a bankers/surveillance coin or likely a trap to get plebes sucked into CBDC type, privacy eliminating, control freak world of oligarchs and globalists where we are surveilled, own nothing and dancing in the metaverse.
According to the article cited above;
Both crypto wallet MetaMask and node network Infura persist as arguably the Ethereum ecosystem’s most critical infrastructure.
Turns out, Wall Street fat cats JPMorgan directly profits from — and even controls — that infrastructure.
I guess I was naïve to think that these folks cared about the ideology and distributed ethos behind crypto.
Ethereum, being the home of the biggest NFT projects that involve blockchain-based digital art or collectibles is juiced with various narratives to generate adoption. As I found the hard way, a lot of crypto hype is manufactured. This is evident if you follow the space, Bitcoin’s price is heavily manipulated.
Turns out Bitcoin maximalists like Jack Dorsey has been saying this for a while. To be fair, the XRP/Ripple community had also been calling BS on ETH long before Jack’s tweet.
One thing is clear, ConsenSys and many “influencers” in this space have sold out for Lambos, Gucci sweaters and clout.
Here I was thinking that blockchain was all about transparency and consensus in making decisions. Not knowing many of it is smoke and mirrors like the notion of decentralization being thrown around and the non fungibility of things is greatly misrepresented (another article on this soon).
So much myths going around. Shock and awe, but no surprises.
Normal when you have a bunch of nerds who have longed to be the popular kids in school.
See you tomorrow!
- Ope