[sgt101]

There are many differences (of course!) but one common strand is that both are elements of the adherent's identity. In the case of Crypto there is another defining commonality - which is life style and life chances. Religions provide a vehicle (the community) which provides adherents with different chances from those outside, Crypto does the same - via money... if you have invested you might be rich, or poor, but your life is changed.

[jenga22]

Right. I agree. I am also going one step further and arguing that crypto is more of a fan club then a cult. There are cults way stronger that illicit a far greater emotion reaction that crypto.

Even now, when the price is in the toilet, a lot of really smart people are having sane discussions across sub-reddits. And those very smart people are still checkin in code and making improvements.

This has happened before. During the BBS era and ARPA Net era, a lot of people said those things were "cute" and only used by underground cult figures. They said that people who believed in the "internet" were dillusional that a global network would ever happen. They also said that it would have limited impact on society. They said it would stay largely with universities. Newspapers laughed. Television networks laughed. Music companies shrugged it off. But the one thing I learned from both those eras is if there are a lot of smart people working in it then it is not to be discounted.

[JumpCrisscross]

> BBS era and ARPA Net era

These services were launched to solve a practical problem. Bitcoin was launched as the manifestation of an ideology.

[xorcist]

Right. Everyone disagreeing must surely be on ideological basis as there can be no rational basis for disagreements. As seen in everything from politics to musical taste.

Bitcoin solved some practical problem in someone's mind too, even if that problem was "how do we get private money into the 21st century?".

[api]

Ideology played a huge role in BBSes and Arpanet too. The same kind of cyber libertarianism popular in bitcoin was popular in the BBS world, and Arpanet was created to help America win the cold war.

[jenga22]

You sure about that? Arpanet was created to exchange short messages in case of a nuclear attack on the United States rendered all above ground communication and survivability useless. I hardly consider that a practical use case. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet_during_the_Cold_W...

[JumpCrisscross]

The U.S. government considered it a practical problem. That’s why they paid for it.

If it helps, replace “practical problem” with “a problem customers will pay you to solve.” ARPANET had that. Bitcoin, on the other, never had an original sale. It was mined as a curiosity and then jumped from narrative (“currency of the future!”) to narrative (“store of value!”) to narrative (“mostly goes up!”)

[jenga22]

What the U.S. considers a practical problem often isn't. That is a shitty statement. The U.S. also considered spending 2T on a jet that was worse than the F-22. Just because the U.S. spends on something doesn't mean it has a practical application.

Nevertheless, the internet turned out to be transforming from its original purpose. We can sit here and argue about cyrptocurreny but the game is young and we wont know what it will turn into in 30 years. Just like the people in the 70 and 80s didn't know how transforming the internet would become for our society.

[JumpCrisscross]

> What the U.S. considers a practical problem often isn't

Sure. But it’s still a customer making a purchase. That purchase grounds the project in someone’s need. A need they’re willing to trade for. The “trades for” part is important, since it references the status quo.

Financial assets, particularly speculative assets, don’t solve a need. They promise to solve a future need. (Sometimes they don’t.) Part of the discipline of speculating investing is knowing when to pull the plug.

[canjobear]

On a scale of “practical” to “ideological” I’d say building a system to exchange messages in the event of catastrophe leans heavily toward practical. You can see this because governments of a wide variety of ideological persuasions would be interested in this.

[dnomad]

But this is true of all groups. All groups offer identity and possibility of growth. What makes cults special is the element of faith. This is the difference between an investor and a speculator, an engineer and a magician, and real currencies that can be used to pay taxes and exchange tokens like gold/bitcoin/beanie babies. Cryptocurrencies are inviting their members to take a leap of faith on a mechanism that is not subject to rational analysis and be rewarded with riches beyond their wildest dreams. The beauty here is that there's social proof -- in the form of actual crypto millionaires and lots of fancy whitepapers from smart people and open-source code that anybody can download and review. This attracts irrational players into the game (which in turns attracts more predators since irrational players are easy money). There's a vicious cycle at work and eventually the whole game is dominated by irrationality and delusion.