It’s not just that bitcoin was released in the aftermath of that calamity. But it will aid in understanding the devotee - for it points to a passion that all of us have known, perhaps even acted on, even if unknowingly.Īnd that drive is particularly present in young adults like me, who experience more restrictive, structured upbringings than prior generations, as scholars say, and then are maturing into economies wrecked by the 2008 financial crisis. It certainly will not turn a skeptic into a devotee. To view bitcoin through such a lens might not make immediate sense. It is the modern realization of an old idea, what the scholar Richard Slotkin describes as a luring invitation to “a wide-open land of unlimited opportunity.” Bitcoin evokes that longstanding phenomenon we know as the “frontier myth.” People compare this domain’s expansion to the 2000s dot-com boom, but it’s better framed in an idealized image of the past. While bitcoin is new, its siren song is old. It’s what lies at the heart of the West, at least as it exists in our imagination. That’s what fuels the fever running through it all. I think they’ve looked in the wrong place.Īll that talk of computer science, monetary policy and regulation is important, but there’s also something else about bitcoin and specific to it, something fundamental and visceral, deep in the human condition. Often older, they do not get the fervor of the traditionally young-adult devotees. They do not get the surge of the industry or the vivacity of the community. Even those who learn the technical details often remain unmoved and befuddled.
Over the years, I’ve met many who have a hard time grasping cryptocurrency and blockchain, and I don’t mean they can’t understand how everything works on an intellectual level. But where our conclusions differ is that I have never considered the comparison an insult. Many observers have, of course, said the same. When I invested in bitcoin in 2013, it was, perhaps, only natural, for that world felt like a new Wild West. The show, about a carefree cowboy who draws his gun faster than his own shadow, sparked in me an enduring fascination with the old frontier. Growing up in the 1990s, I watched a lot of this cartoon called Lucky Luke. Ethan Lou is the author of Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West, which will be published on Tuesday.
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