A Bitcoiner’s Case for Progressives: Why We Were Right to Appraoch Trump

In last week’s BM Big Read — “When Bitcoin Picks a Political Side” — progressive Bitcoiner Jason Maier told an impassioned, in-depth story of political choice. Bitcoiners shouldn’t have sided with Trump in the run-up to the American election last year, he argued, since, a couple of years from now, it will set us back; anything Bitcoiners might gain by the political alliance with President Trump will be undone by ostracizing the other half of the political spectrum: progressives and wider, left-wing Democratic voters.

Because of Trump’s explicit connection to the Bitcoin industry, and David Bailey in particular, writes Maier, “It is already more difficult for me to talk with friends, family and coworkers about Bitcoin.”

He admits that it was never easy to talk about Bitcoin with progressives, but at least before 2024, the “conversation was about Bitcoin; now it’s about Trump.”

Maier claims that he has empathy for those who favor not voting against their self-interests, such as Bitcoiners during the ongoing assault against bitcoin and the surrounding industry was going in the first half of the 2020s. But then he unfairly chastises them for not adhering to low time preference foundational ideals.

I believe Maier and other progressives are oblivious to how much of a boot this industry had on its neck — in no small part because of their own blinding political bias.

Ultimately, this is where Jason departs from hyperbitcoinization:

it’s easy to empathize with the feeling that the Bitcoin community needed to form a political alliance with a charismatic celebrity-turned-politician running for president in order to stem the assault on Bitcoiners’ vision for America’s future. Unfortunately, the urgency that some in the community felt to create that political alliance betrayed the very antifragility and low time preference that are foundational elements of the Bitcoin movement.

This is an infantile and idealist take.

During operation choke point 2.0, we were debanked and had to scramble to pay our own staff with a new banking provider; Lightning service providers departed the country, which again we suffered from as IBEX left and suddenly we had to figure out new solutions for accepting bitcoin for purchases; and there was a constant hovering specter of audits and outward regulatory aggression toward advancing bitcoin adoption.

Bitcoiners, inside and outside the industry, should have tempered their frustrations with all of that, just so that — maybe — we can be more successful in grassroots adoption in a decade or so…?

In other words: We should take one for the Bitcoin industry team just because you need more time (and money?) to convince the people absolutely least likely to ever grasp Bitcoin…?

The root of Maier’s argument seems to be a self-interested focus on advancing bitcoin for his preferred political group. It’s self-serving. As the author of “A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin,” Maier has been on this crusade for a while — with very little to show for it. The progressives have failed massively in persuading their representatives to support bitcoin.

Is it really the case that we, actively fielding off political attacks and regulatory crackdowns as we were during the Biden administration, should suffer demise simply because allying with a polarizing political figure looks and feels bad to those on the left?

Why should predominantly politically agnostic Bitcoiners wait indefinitely under a “low time preference” pretense for the progressives of the world to accomplish what for all intents and purposes are empty dreams?

By any measurement, the liberal/progressive movement for Bitcoin advocacy has been an absolute joke:

https://twitter.com/di_btc/status/1951837898908815623

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

This post A Bitcoiner’s Case for Progressives: Why We Were Right to Appraoch Trump first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Di Lewis.