> But I’ll never understand the westerners that seem to be almost rooting for their own society to collapse just to have another reason to use Bitcoin. I don’t have any real need to be independent from banks, and I am lucky that I live in a pretty stable society where that’s true.
I can write a book on why this is, but since 2008 we have seen economic collapse after economic collapse starting in the very cradle of Western Civilization (Greece) and has gone from their.
I despise the doom porn side of Bitcoin, especially because I actually focused and even lived in some of these collapsed societies, and have seen the misery, violence and overall worst of Humanity first hand. Whereas those guys are often people with small holdings that have a very detached view of the World. It's like asking a trophy wife of a celebrity to understand the plight of a factory worker at Amazon during the Pandemic when her trinket is late... it's impossible understand what goes in tier mind, but I'd argue a lot of it is borne of some type of mental illness and is only possible due to such wealth disparity. BUt the haves and have nots is nothing new so I won't delve into that.
With that said, I'd say you also have a version of that (detachment from reality given your statement) and if you live in the Valley and in tech and cannot see the reason why a World run of fiat has led to the homelessness problem, and over all misery, and what it is, then you are in for a very real awakening as this is happening with or without you understanding. The Chinese central bank just started woring with several countries testing its digital currency transfers, JP morgan tried doing payments via satelites using 'blockchain' tech, and has the most patents utilizing 'Bitcoin-like' technology.
In short: Satoshi created this technology with the intended purpose of giving people an option to opt-out of the predictable and inevitable central bank destruction, it's coded into the very genesis block; those of us from the early days were from all walks of life and various networth, but one thing we all noticed was a stark dissatisfaction for the status quo and what the limited options we had to really do about it from within, so it was worth dedicating our time, labour skill set if we even had the slightest chance at reforming the World for the better.
It's hard to explain, but in 2010 (when I saw the community go against satoshi in order to support Wikileaks) I dor the first time wanted all those guys in that thread who donated to Julian Assange and made Satoshi say regarding the NSA 'we kicked the hornet's nest' to have the resources necessary to disrupt our Industries and our countries for the betterment of Humanity, getting rich wasn't the goal it was the means of making a better World we wanted to live in... A guy like Elon makes perfect sense to me, and he has never been the eccentric billionaire in my eyes, he should be the standard: instead we get the worst like Bezos, Gates, Zuck etc...
Now those tables have turned and Musk is the darling of the masses and anything he does makes people take notice--for good or for bad. I hope we usher in a new era of people like this and Bitcoin will have played a significant role in making that happen.
Look up /u/Pineapplefund if you want to see more, try Sean's Outpost and Satoshi Forest. Our History and our culture is rich, and best of all it's not race/gender based which was so damn refreshing given how absurd things have gotten this last decade alone.
Silicon Valley being the parody of all the worst things in tech which lung on to this maxim--making the world a better place--because it sounded good to say during a pitch for the most pointless, non-sensical app/project, but I still recall a tech article from like 2013 I had saved on my old laptop that died in some event and the reporter concluded with 'unlike most people in technology, when Bitcoiners say they 'want to make the World a better place' they actually mean it and go out and do it,'
I consider myself from that generation of Bitcoiners, which was common pre-2013's bubble. My entire career reflects that, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had it, even if I have trauma and bad memories that induce anxiety at times.
I left a career as a (miserable cog) university trained lab scientist after working 60+ hour weeks to pay down crippling student debt wasting away my best years but I sought to try and make my suffering mean something and try tackle the 1-2 killers in the West at the time which are both diet based illness: diabetes and heart disease. And when I left that phase of my life I got to make environmentalism profitable in the process, and have many adventures that made me love Life itself, the good and the bad, and while this wasn't monetarily lucartive (the exact opposite actually) and quite honestly had I just held on to the coins I had I'd probably have a net-worth in the xx of millions in USD had I continued to passively buy, but that wasn't the goal: our vision and our impact mattered more than promise of wealth.
And that's why I don't think you will ever understand the best of us, and why the latter 'moonboi' 'when lambo?' meme guys are what you could at best be able to relate to and cling on to. We lived completely different lives, and no amount of money you have would make me even exchange my darkest year for your entire Life.
I don't expect you to understand, I really can't see how you could, but that is one reason and I probably shouldn't have shared as much as I did.