Bitcoin vs Ethereum, Left vs Right Philosophy?

LongHash Blockchain Information (ID: Kyle Torpey)

LongHash Blockchain Information (ID: Kyle Torpey)

, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Hacktivist and Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki recently blasted Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Twitter for basically dismissing the father of smart contracts, Nick Szabo, as a right-wing weirdo.

It can be said that almost everyone's initial thought was the same: "Why can't I join these people?"

But Taaki's comments also highlighted the political divide between ethereum and bitcoin. Bitcoin is pro-right, Ethereum is pro-left, is it really that simple?

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savior to be felt

To be fair, that's not exactly the case with Ethereum, but there are certainly factors that might lead you to that conclusion.

Buterin is a big fan of Weyl and sits on the board of RadicalxChange. The two had had lengthy email exchanges about his social engineering ideas, which included taxing people who “speak standard white English” or taxing “machismo as a subsidy for feminism.” A proponent of universal basic income and second-order voting models, Weyl gave a talk at ethereum's DevCon that he described as a "rallying call" against "extreme individualism and capitalism." At its conclusion, he explicitly asked that women and minorities be asked first. Of course, the ethereum conference, like the rest of crypto, is full of dumb white people, but at least the first person to ask the question will graciously apologize for that fact.

The seemingly innocuous request angered his fan base (which may have some intersection with Gamergate's anti-bad media crowd) and caused a firestorm on Twitter, with users complaining that "bitcoin has nothing to do with identity politics," And pooh-poohed the absurdity of him rejecting meritocracy by trying to chat with some different people. Even Bitcoin icon Hodlonaut questioned his focus on "race and gender."

Antonopolous has no regrets about it. "I make no apologies for being a 'SJW' (Social Justice Warrior, someone who fights for social justice)," he wrote, describing the men's reactions as, "for not letting this invisible bias take hold of me. 90% of my podcast interviews, and only 75-80%, get that much complaint. It's horrific."

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Bitcoin players and Ethereum players are clearly at odds, which is why Crypto Twitter is plagued by pointless debates about things like "supplygate" and "premined coin scams." When Peter McCormack, the host of What Bitcoin Did, asked his audience "What the hell is going on with the BTC vs. ETH debate?" American Hodl, a well-known blogger, summed it up like this: "Liberals choose Ethereum, conservatives choose Bitcoin. "

Of course, politics can take second place when there is money to be made. As the well-known DeFi blogger Degen Spartan said when explaining that he is not a Bitcoin supremacist or an Ethereum supremacist: "I am a profit supremacist."

However, the general consensus remains that those who lean toward conservative or right-wing thinking prefer Bitcoin, while those who are more progressive are more likely to support the Ethereum team. A 2018 CoinDesk survey of 1,200 crypto users backs up this notion, finding that 55% of Ethereans lean to the left, while 55% of Bitcoiners lean to the right. Another 3% of Bitcoiners claim to be nihilists, which might explain the behavior of crypto edgeords trading Pepe Frogs on 4chan.

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The Bitcoin Network as Right-Wing Software

There is no doubt that key figures in the early days of Bitcoin such as Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May, and John Gilmore were staunch libertarians. They oppose big government and taxes, and worry about privacy, the rise of the surveillance state, and free speech.

“It was born out of anarcho-capitalism,” Golumbia said of Bitcoin. "Rothbard had this idea that there was a thing called a 'state' whose sole purpose in existence was to enslave people. The only free individuals were those who were not bound by government. And these people believed—and they still believe—that they could exploit Encryption hides itself from the eyes of the state."

In Golumbia’s view, Bitcoin was designed to be the currency of this new realm, that is, money that is not controlled by the state.

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Everyone Was Anarcho-Capitalist

Roger Ver, founder of Bitcoin.com, said that when he entered the industry in 2011, early Bitcoin users were libertarians with a firm belief in the free market. He doesn't think that view is right-wing. “Just read what early bitcoiners like myself, Ross Ulbricht, Gavin Andresen thought,” he said. "We're all liberals, but not conservatives or right-wingers."

Voluntaryism — an offshoot of anarcho-capitalism — “was what motivated me and others to get involved and promote bitcoin early on.”

"Bitcoin was originally formed and promoted by a group of anarcho-capitalists. Later, its development community was taken over by a group of blue-haired leftists in San Francisco. Most of the anarcho-capitalists (AnCaps) moved to BCH, or ETH Wait for the currency."

“They can’t be conservative in the sense of trying to maintain the status quo of the traditional financial system. In order for bitcoin to make sense, you have to see some problems that need to be solved,” he said.

When Bitcoin Magazine co-founder Buterin argued in 2013 that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development, he also encountered a reluctance from the community to experiment. He launched Ethereum in January 2014 after unsuccessfully seeking community support.

From this point of view, the dispute between Bitcoin and Ethereum is not so much a "battle between the left and the right", but rather a "battle between seeking progress and seeking stability".

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How you treat the world, the world will treat you

In the end, it goes without saying that what unites people in the blockchain world is more important than what divides them. Almost everyone interviewed for this piece agrees on one thing, and that is that there is still a broad libertarianism that runs through the crypto culture.