A few days ago, The Progressive Bitcoiner announces that they were shutting down:
If you don't recall, The Progressive Bitcoiner was an organization that intended to bring left-leaning conversations in to Bitcoin. Its members included Margot Paez and Trey Walsh and Jason Maier, among others.
Apparently, it is difficult to get traction (ie funding), they decided to close up shop.
But then, as often seems to happen, a number of people were reminded by the winding down announcement that the organization existed and convinced the Progressive Bitcoiner leadership to take another swing at the ball:
$2 million. Two years. A small, serious team focused on education, policy, research, media, and communications — built around one simple idea: Bitcoin is for everyone.
Now, if it was me, I probably would have written an announcement essay that was a little more sparky and aggressive...and less slop.
There are people on the political left who care about civil liberties, privacy, economic opportunity, financial inclusion, human rights, and open systems but have mostly encountered Bitcoin through partisan politics, speculation, environmental criticism, billionaires, or the broader crypto industry.
There are politically unaffiliated people who simply want to understand why Bitcoin matters beyond its price. There are journalists and policymakers with legitimate questions. And there are people around the world whose experience with money looks very different from that of someone with a stable bank account in the United States.
I did not find their fundraising announcement very clear: they're going to raise $2 million to fund a small team to do advocacy that many Bitcoiners around the world are doing on a daily basis?
I'll admit I'm viewing them with a jaundiced eye here. But it seems to me that their approach is unlikely to move the needle very much. It feels like the kind of thing that someone at a university writes a grant for and will likely just end the same as v1.
Overall, I like the idea of a group that tries to position Bitcoin for audiences that don't care about libertarian ideals for Austrian economics...but I don't see the value that this particular organization will bring. Maybe they should just raise money for Bitshala or Vinteum or MyFirstBitcoin.
grift
Totally
When everybody uses slop for their blog posts, wouldn’t it be easy to stand out by not slopping?
Is the reward for not slopping not high enough, or is the punishment for slopping, if there is any, not high enough?
This is how I try to convince myself that all this slop is actually good for me: I’ll stand out .. if I get a chance.
It is really off-putting.
Yes, I feel disrespected as a human being. I'm not some bot that you don't need to get excited about something!
Yes. I think this is a big part of the problem. Also that everyone thinks that current is more important than thoughtful. It seems to be the case that the people who are winning social media are the people who pump slop out fast and furious. Immediacy beats wisdom.
I'm not sure if we can escape this prison.
We may, if clankers start valuing human produced text more than slop.
Or maybe we end up in a human-centipede-esque sitation where clankers feed off other clankers' slop to produce more of it for the next one into perpetuity.
In that case, my hope is that humans will be able to retain enough capacity to recognize it as regurgitated slop. Or at least a meaningful subset of us.
Not if people don't sufficiently value non-slop (or indeed can identify it)
This is the hubris of every Bitcoin educator.
"We can explain it best. We can change the world. WE need the funding".
I gives me absolute rage that orgs are slop farming Claude babble to try and monetise through social media.
That is not how funding works, and they know that. They are simply posting a rotten mix of hopium, copium and virtue signalling.
I agree with you - the team should use their standing to raise funds with whales and trad-fi contacts to distribute in the most effective way. They should at least identify the gaps they seek to fill with their funding and advocacy.
Bitcoin has a gigantic problem with funding because professionals with valuable networks like these people want the money for their own projects and not for the good of Bitcoin.
Exactly the point. It's what social media enjoyers crave. It's got electrolytes.
Trying to persuade "Progressive" people that Bitcoin is usefully for all people has been an ongoing goal of mine, with me having little success. I wish them the best of luck with this noble goal. Donation link https://progressivebitcoiner.org/donate/
Also Jason Maier's book "A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin" is a good book and worth a read.
I think I will bring some books for a used book section for the TabConf table, if @BlokchainB approves.
#1541570
Sure! I have no objection to this.
No, it's not worth a read. It's good to give to progressives to make them change their (retarded, infantile) minds.
It is interesting that they feel a need for this. Like you say, many of us promote bitcoin for those reasons already.
There also isn't an activist organization pushing bitcoin for the reasons they don't like (or is there?), so it seems like they just don't like the reasons why bitcoin organically resonates with people.
"the wrong people like bitcoin, and the people we like don't want anything to do with Bitcoin."
But hey, don't introspect on your own retarded ideology
Don't introspect on your own retarded ideology...
Don't ever talk about Trumps support for the Zionists Greater Israel Project.
Or the failure of the neoliberalised west to maintain control of strategic supply chains.
Just pretend that free markets solve all problems and China didn't win the trade war.
Don't introspect on your own retarded ideology...
I see them somewhat as in opposition to Trump and the bitcoiners who embraced his campaign in 2024.
Trey is the only one of them who I interacted with much and that's not the vibe I got from him.
It seemed like he just wanted people to know that it's not just for right-wingers, which for some reason is a thing left-wingers need to be told.
The fact that the new funding round is denominated in dollars, instead of Sats, invalidates their entire position.
I say that as someone who normally cringes when I hear normies say similar things. "Bitcoin isn't accepting anywhere, therefore it's useless", is a misguided conclusion. These people are missing much of the bigger picture.
However, they aren't completely wrong. Until we can use Bitcoin to fund projects, without converting to dollars first, Bitcoin will not gain any real traction. It will forever remain a niche, gold-proxy asset.
So, let's stop putting so much energy into educating people about macro-economics, the evils of the IMF and the history of the Federal Reserve. Redirect that energy into making Bitcoin usable as a medium of exchange!!! Start showing the world that Bitcoin is actually a competitor to fiat, instead of being a hypothetical competitor as it has been recently.
The progressive case for Bitcoin does warrant a voice but not sure asking for $2 million is the way to do it.
My interest in Bitcoin stemmed from the Occupy movement which had valid grounds imo but failed to achieve much change - then Bitcoin provided a solid vehicle for change and freedom from the banks.
Fuck the banks!
I wish them well. Those are the reasons for bitcoin that I'd like to see pushed more, too. My experience with the American left is that they don't actually care about any of the things they say they care about (with a few notable exceptions), which is why these arguments almost always fall on deaf ears.
My experience of the left here in NZ and from observing overseas 'liberal democracies' is that it got hijacked by identity politics.
The culture of entitlement.
That in turn diluted our ability to address important economic issues.
Corporate lobbyists gained too much power while identity politics consumed the energy of the left.
That has eroded the economic and cultural balance and strength of the west and now we face a storm.
We are reliant upon immigrants for labour while citizens rot on welfare and drugs.
Manufacturing was exported to while our economies were financialised.
Banks printed fiat debt and poured it into real estate speculation, not productive enterprise.
China won the trade war while we debated all manner of 'rights' and entitlements and corporate power directed capital allocation toward non productive speculation rather than producing things of value.
The left became so divided it has failed to provide the balance needed to self serving corporate wealth and power.
I appreciate what they're trying to do, but unless it's actual policy advocacy, I'm not sure who would actually pay money to fund this. Probably makes more sense as a volunteer organization with maybe just a handful of part time compensated staff. Why do they need $2 million?
My sense was that they felt they were doing a lot of work to promote Bitcoin to progressives and that "people" ought to pay them for it.
This is in my mind the least effective way to promote Bitcoin. It's money after all. We should be able to promote it without quite so much nonprofit, donation, organization. It's supposed to solve people's problems. That ought to go pretty far to convincing them to use it.
...as one does.
https://twiiit.com/TPB_Inc/status/2101671691638243541
Communists are already well overrepresented because of NGO dev grants, which are then amplified by shill influencers... The vocal rank and file is full of hipsters and left-libertarians...
What more do they want? To argue with the dozen or so Trump supporters in Bitcoin on X? Pierre and BitPaine will eat them for breakfast.