Experts: Bitcoiners are narcissistic psychopaths who totally fail to avoid sanctions because Bitcoin is useless (they also have an ego problem, experts say)

We have truly entered the "then they fight you" stage. And it's hilarous.

This is getting fun.

A group of “experts” (not my words) has done a “study” (not my words) to find if Bitcoiners are a bunch of “calculating psychopaths with an inflated egos”. And it turns out: yes! yes they are!

Worse, actually.

They identified that many investors exhibit signs of the "dark tetrad", a group of four unsavoury traits made up of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism. (The Irish Sun)

That’s how the media works. Once you establish a trope like this, it can be repeated ad nauseam. Over and over again. Expect this to pop up everywhere.

Of course, just to be sure, the “experts” (not my words) didn’t actually survey Bitcoiners. They asked for “crypto”. (Source)

I’m not going to get into the nuances of Bitcoin vs. Crypto today. I’ve done that in my last posting.

But let’s just say: The Bitcoiners I know are more grounded, helpful and nice than the median human. So the “crypto” route the “experts” chose could have somewhat muddled the scientific waters they were swimming in. After all, “aping” into a liquidity pool to earn 10.000% APY until you get rugpulled isn’t exactly sane behaviour.

But what are you gonna do?

It’s not like “crypto” is good for anythig else, right?

Except evading sanctions. For weeks we’ve been hearing how “the Russians” are going to use Bitcoin and crypto to move money. Lagarde herself said so.

But now, the script is flipped:

Wait, what?

So first Bitcoin is bad because you can use it to evade sanctions.

Then it isn’t used to evade sanctions.

Which makes Bitcoin bad. Again.

Ok.

This suggests that crypto may have helped some people circumvent capital controls and shield their savings against a depreciating ruble, but that they were few and financially unsophisticated. Households would ideally use it to send the money to a foreign bank account, but most don’t have that ability. Crucially, the crypto market isn’t deep enough to absorb inflows of macroeconomic significance and, if it were, Moscow could ape China and force domestic banks to crack down on exchanges of rubles for crypto.

Whatever financial backdoor crypto offers, it doesn’t even seem to be big enough for expert sanction evaders. (Wall Street Journal)

So Bitcoin is bad because it can do the one thing that would actually help normal human beings and families in this fucked up situation we’re in.

Yes, the attachs on Bitcoin are getting more and more hilarious. But this is also sad. The same argument could be used in a positive or neutral article about Bitcoin.

Don’t hold your breath. I suspect we’ll see more hot takes like this first. We’ve truly entered the “then they fight you” stage.