The Power and Peril of the 'Bitcoin Fixes This' Meme

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 806 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cities around the country have been engulfed in protest in the wake of the murder of 46-year-old black man George Floyd. There is an intense battle for the narrative around the protests. Are they legitimate outcries against institutional racism and police brutality? Is the looting covertly being driven by white supremacists on the one hand or ANTIFA on the other? In the Bitcoin community, some have plumbed the “Bitcoin Fixes This” meme to argue that the core underlying issue has to do with a monetary system that structurally creates inequality. Others have clapped back against pushing that meme in this moment. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW looks at: What bitcoiners are trying to say when they apply the “Bitcoin Fixes This” meme to this moment. Why the current system structurally exacerbates inequality. Why the meme fails to capture additional economic, political and power dimensions of what’s going on. Why the meme in this moment might feel so out of place as to inspire the opposite of its intended effect: turning people away from bitcoin rather than making them want to learn more. Why Satoshi’s “If you don’t get it, I don’t have time to explain it to you” quote is the most misused and abused of his sayings. Why complexity and nuance, not memes, are needed now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond.
0:12.0	This episode is sponsored by BitStamp and Cipher Trace.
0:17.0	The Breakdown is produced and distributed by Coin Desk. And now here's your host, NLW.
0:24.6	Welcome back to The Breakdown.
0:29.6	It is Monday, June 1st, and we are living through one of the most significant and sustained periods of protest and civil disobedience and political
0:39.5	uprising that this country has seen in more than a generation. For the last six nights,
0:44.7	cities around America have been engulfed in at times violent protest, at times peaceful
0:50.7	protest, and in this chaos, the fog of war is thick. Right now, there is an
0:56.9	unbelievable battle to control the narrative of these protests. This has huge significance. Is this the work
1:03.8	of Antifa terrorists who are trying to undermine the state and who should be considered a terrorist
1:10.3	organization, as our president
1:11.7	has tweeted. Is it the work of external white racists who are using the chaos to try to sow discord
1:18.2	to delegitimate protests by having and inspiring and enacting, looting and criminal violence?
1:25.2	Is it some combination of all of the above with peaceful protests
1:29.0	turning into violent protests that are responding to the violence of police trying to contain
1:34.4	the protests that are also seeing infiltration from other people? The fog of war is thick.
1:40.4	This podcast is not an attempt to untangle those complicated strands in that fog of war.
1:46.9	What it is is a look at one specific part of the conversation, frankly a very, very tiny spot of the conversation,
1:54.7	but one that has relevance for this Bitcoin community.
1:58.9	Over the weekend, through some parts of the Bitcoin community, you saw tweets embodied by
2:03.6	this one from Max Kaiser.
2:05.4	He wrote, America is experiencing a multicolor rainbow slave result.
	...

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