The hidden divergence

Reality is hard to escape, specially in a world where bipartisan opinions lead to the polarization of the actual truth. While some paint a nice picture and a happy path for a friendly ecosystem for developers that will automagically transfer and apply what they already know, the reality is very different from that. Success stories are a double-edge sword and not every reader adds their grain of salt to the spoon that attempts to feed their mind.

I am a believer that important decisions require attention and effort. For every valuable conversation we have in an online way, we should consider using the “Save as draft” or “Schedule delivery for later” options in order to really assess whether our words have properly been selected. This is hard to do during a conversation, but very easy to make when writing emails. For example, I would personally keep them as drafts and send them first thing in the morning the next day. If you end up not sending them, are they really that urgent or important?

Phones are extremely efficient, but how do you feel when you are asking a hard question that requires an intensive thought process from your computer after spending hours of research and then the other person replies in one line from their phone while they are waiting in the queue at the supermarket? To be honest, I would much rather they did not answer directly and replied 2 days after with a well redacted answer. Let’s be honest with ourselves, is it worth our time answering some messages when the “reply guys” don’t even spend 5 minutes thinking about us? Don’t we notice how much time it takes to come up with quality content and how little it takes to promote it? There is nothing wrong with regret, and the earlier you accumulate mistakes the better. Being wrong more times than you have been right is a good thing. Why wouldn’t it?

The same happens every time one buys the dip… and it keeps dipping, so you buy again and then… damn it!!! it dipped again!

For example, you believe that self-repaying loans are a cool thing in Defi and you believe in Alchemix as a project. You could have bought $ALCX when you first heard about it, but then you devoted your precious time to other things (like DYOR), which is perfectly fine. Today, you learnt more about the project over time and you are being rewarded by the market with a 95% discount. You could have aped in and lose money, or be patient and support the project when you are armed with knowledge and information to make your own unbiased (if that’s even possible) decision.

Now let’s stop for a second. How far has BTC moved away from the cypherpunk culture it once created? Has it now become a speculative asset of the “greatest fool theory?” Will the current events revive the good old principles behind its culture? Are its hodlers even aware of that culture?

Some of these questions were raised during the block wars. Since blockchain leverages value in the form of a cryptographic asset that moves freely in a distributed game theory model, it is getting even harder for its own maxis and old goats to sustain their initial thesis given how much the international and global monetary system has played out.

Specially in a world where we “test in production”, it is immediately clear for the experienced eye to detect that nobody is making slow subsequent iterations for a long-term sustainable future. Indeed, we keep observing the thesis that John M. Carrol reiterates in his seminal book, The Nurnberg Funnel - Designing Minimalist Instruction for Practical Computer Skill: “Learners are too busy learning to make much use of the instruction. This is the paradox of sense making”. In other words, the paradox of sense making is driving more and more buidlers into skipping the instruction manual details and jumping straight into the step-by-step guidelines.

I went to a Bitcoin maxis group and sent them the tweet above to see what their opinion was, so I could learn what they thought about that thesis. The initial comments were: “I stopped reading on the 6th tweet”, “sound like bcash maxi”… and they did not even consider that not everyone in that group might be aware of those wars, there might be people in there who got introduced to bitcoin some weeks ago, investors who might have another and who contemplate other chains like Ethereum, Solana, Fantom… Everyone is free to enter and leave whenever they want, just like anyone is welcome to come back and do whatever they want. It is called "freedom”, and investors don’t even need to put their money where their mouth is, aka “Decentralized Finance”.

From my perspective, open-mindness is one of the biggest virtues anyone can have. There is no need to be a “maxi” of anything. Sticking to a belief for too long might be the cause behind the toxicity that we see in every subculture. Just think about veganism, the Cardano holders, the Crossfitters, the geeks… Is there anything in those words that make them sound “derogatory”? If there is, I must be blind, because I don’t see it.

There is a need for balance between opposing extremes in anything we do, regardless of politics, economics… and be more biased towards our one and only individual condition and interests on a specific moment in time. For example, just like there are no 2 identical people (same appearance, believes, preferences…), it should be extremely hard to see 2 identical portfolios. Shouldn’t it?

For the most maxis of the maxis, I have many questions, but zero answers. Sorry, I must be not quite getting it.