Laser Eyes Meme 2021: Euphoria Settles. One good way to measure the retail interest in Bitcoin (and, by extension – the crypto market) is to check out data on Google Trends. The search volume for “bitcoin” doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the peak of 2017. Bitcoin Search Volume. Source: Google Trends. Dogecoin’s association with the meme-world has sparked a craze of sorts. The coin gets its namesake from the Shibu Inu meme, “Doge.”. Other popular memes such as “Bad Luck Brian” and “Overly Attached Girlfriend” have all been making bank. “Brian” whose real name is Kyle Craven sold the ownership to his meme for $36,000. The frenzied trading in meme stocks and the speculation in cryptocurrencies appear to have landed in the crosshairs of the new chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gary Gensler, the.

Bitcoin is groundbreaking because it solved the issue of coordinating consensus across a decentralized network full of adversaries. However, as a protocol, Bitcoin only solved the problem of automated machine consensus. There is still the issue of human consensus in meatspace, as the network only represents the rules to which its human operators agree to enforce.

People have been trying to understand how Bitcoin 'governance' works for years; exploration of this subject really took off during the height of scaling debates in 2016 / 2017. My view is that the system evolves via bottom-up building of consensus amongst its human participants. The metaphor of Mycelium fits well:

Why is this the case? There's a theory that money is a sophisticated subjectivist ontology:

Money is anything (physical or non-physical) that humans are collectively willing to represent and intend to function as a medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account.

Obviously there are some things that will work better for these purposes than others, as Nick Szabo explains in Shelling Out. Scarce collectible items such as precious metals have done a pretty good job acting as money for thousands of years. Eventually fiat money came along and the characteristics of money were dictated to us by kings, congresses, and central banks.

But now Bitcoin has changed the game. No longer are we limited to choosing physical collectibles based on unchangeable physical characteristics. No longer are we restricted to accepting the characteristics of what the authorities make available. Now we have a system that is an open collaborative project; a system of rules without rulers.

Ultimately the point of meatspace consensus / governance is to continue to answer the question of 'what is Bitcoin?' As long as this system continues to evolve, its human participants will need to discuss what changes are 'good' and fit the ethos of the project while also determining what proposed changes are 'bad' and are not a good fit because they require trade-offs that harm desired attributes for the system to maintain.

As Nic Carter shows, the most propagated visions of 'what Bitcoin is' have constantly been in flux since its inception. They change as we learn more about how the system operates, how it can be changed, and as new narratives are formed that are a better fit.

Bitcoin narratives help reinforce its important attributes. Bitcoin is a living organism that must fight off invaders who seek to weaken it from within via mind viruses. Narratives are the white blood cells that fight against changes that would result in degradation of valued properties. Narratives are propagated via memes.

This is essentially our observation of Meme Theory at work. While the rest of this post will cover many catchy memes, the point is not the memes themselves but rather how they affect cultural information transfer and thus the 'governance' of Bitcoin. Detractors have called this 'proof of social media' because they prefer to have a simpler, more quantifiable form of governance such as hashrate voting. Somewhat ironically, these detractors have forked off to their own networks not via hashrate voting, but via formation of their own memes to convince users to run software that enforces different protocol rules.

The following are three dozen of the most commonly uses memes in Bitcoin.

Fundamental Principles

'Don't trust, verify.'

This saying can be traced back to the whitepaper itself; it is the primary principle underpinning the creation of the entire system. Anyone who wishes to introduce trust as a requirement to the system is putting the entire system in danger of collapse.

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. […] What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust” - Satoshi Nakamoto

'Not your keys, not your coins.'

An extension of 'don't trust, verify' - don't trust third parties with your private keys. Most of the catastrophes that have occurred in the cryptocurrency space have been a result of trusted third parties accumulating vast sums of value and then mismanaging them.

Bitcoin Sign Guy

Another fundamental principle of Bitcoin is auditability. As the Chairman of the Federal Reserve was explaining why The Fed should not be audited, a member of the audience flashed a hastily written sign recommending how viewers could fight back.

Run the Numbers

In 2020 Pierre Rochard embarked upon a campaign to try to audit the supply of ETH in order to show how hard it is to audit in comparison to Bitcoin. It didn't go very well, as different auditors who wrote scripts ended up with different results.

In Math we Trust

Bitcoin is a protocol that is fundamentally secured by cryptography, which is just math. Rather than trusting in some authority to keep the system stable, we rely upon science.

Price Volatility

The Bitcoin Rollercoaster

Once you start holding BTC, you're in for a hell of a ride. You might as well strap in and enjoy it; if owning bitcoin causes you anxiety then you're not ready for it or have invested too much money.

'1 BTC = 1 BTC'

Watching fiat exchange rates can be stressful; it's easier to manage when you remember that your ownership stake in Bitcoin as a whole is not changing.

Hype Cycles

Your first ride through a full hype cycle will be thrilling on the way up and scary on the way down; once you've experienced several cycles the effects are dampened.

HODL

I AM HODLING was a drunken rant posted on the bitcointalk forum in December 2013. It's essentially a rant against trading; the poster knows he is a bad trader and will likely end up with fewer bitcoins if he tries to time the market. He sums it up well:

Bitcoin Real Money Meme

In a zero-sum game such as this, traders can only take your money if you sell.

Note: HODL does NOT stand for 'Hold on for Dear Life' - that's just a backronym. While HODL is often meant as 'don't panic sell' it also refers to the idea that if you're investing in bitcoin it should be for a long timeframe rather than for day trading.

Timing the Market

Bitcoin Meme Reddit

The market never does what you want it to do; if you're investing for the long term then it ultimately won't matter much if you manage to buy for a few percent less than the current exchange rate.

Understanding Bitcoin

Digital Gold

Likely one of the most succinct ways to describe the myriad of properties exhibited by the system; most people understand gold and they understand that the internet lets you send information quickly.

Internet of Money

The first step of understanding bitcoin is as a new type of money. The second step is learning how it can do far more than just store and transfer value.

Be your own Bank

By getting rid of the need for trusted third parties you can now store and send your money without the need of a bank. By being your own bank you can access your money 24/7/365 without having to ask permission from anyone.

Money grows on Merkle trees

This is a twist on the common phrase of 'money doesn't grow on trees.' When it comes to bitcoin, all transactions get aggregated into a cryptographic structure called a Merkle tree; the root hash of the Merkle tree with all of the transactions confirmed in a block gets stored in the block's header. As such, every bitcoin (UTXO) in existence was added to a Merkle tree when it was created