The Western subcultures of the 20th century, the Punks, the Hippies etc, co-existed in stark contrast to mainstream homogeneous society. These subcultures, typically characterised by defiant forms of self expression, often challenged the status quo aesthetically, philosophically and politically.  Many important factors contributed to this but notably, their origins were almost entirely location based and the forms of expression that subsequently sprung out of them, were nurtured in isolated networks.  A feedback loop, air-gapped from normal society in which participation required effort to overcome a scarcity of access. In contrast, cultural niches in the internet age so far seem predominantly nostalgic.  More original niches hide in the sheer volume of content uploaded daily to the digital commons, but the barrier to entry has fallen precipitously. They form along non geographic lines. They often hide in plain sight, communicating through esoteric increasingly self referential memes. To participate you may have to decipher a seemingly nonsensical language, but you can, to a certain degree, and for better or for worse, literally participate in your underwear

CryptoCulture may actually be the first subculture in the digital age that still straddles both cultural paradigms. While yes, information about it is widely accessible, the technical barrier to entry is its own metaphorical moat keeping the passively curious out.  It is further camouflaged under a canopy of unappealing qualities.  Spontaneous shitcoin casinos undermining the true disruptive nature of DeFi. Continuous financial scandal. Large volume cleverly marketed NFT projects that make the average person laugh at how much one spent on a “JPEG that is right-click saveable”.  The same motivation that in part fuels the space, the well from which profits seemingly spring out of nowhere for the lucky or unscrupulous few, is so off putting from the outside looking in, that the space is easily dismissed. Yet CryptoCulture developing around the blockchain ecosystems, partially shared on web2 and increasingly commoditised on web3 itself, thrives under the noses of everyone who unknowingly is destined to use the technology.

A decade and a half since the first Bitcoin block was mined, from its Cypherpunk origins to the current wide spectrum of ideas and motivations, the full span and evolution of CryptoCulture already requires a book or two to document. The programmable blockchain, championed by Ethereum, has early cultural symbolisms that are purposely based in the anti-cool.  Conjured up by a bunch of highly technical shape rotators & wordcels they adorn themselves in unicorns and pixelated rainbow surfing cats. A vocabulary filled with terms such as “money printer go brrrrrr”,  “few understand”, “ngmi”, “wagmi”, “wen lambo”, “rugged”, “rekt”, “hodl” mostly serve as inside jokes. A memetic gallows humor, about the emotional rollercoaster associated with wild economic volatility, the trappings of greed and the danger of bad actors. In parallel to the superficially Kitsch is a technological / political / economic ideology centered around decentralization and permissionlessness.  A truly original mix of the self deprecatingly cheesy and technologically subversive.

But as of early 2020 the onchain cultural space exploded with the popularity of the NFT. The originals that formed community as late as mid 2019 have become superstars in their own right.  Some have become iconic.  Ironically for all the talk of subverting the old, a creative class system has already formed, but definitely not ossified as more and more people, interests and appetites enter the space. With a much wider cultural and racial diversity we have already established multiple “eras” of CryptoCulture. So much so that the early cultural signals already seem buried. This is not only healthy but inevitable.

Looked through the prism of culture, programmable blockchains could be described as an uncensorable media delivery mechanism, with built in commerce and provenance tools. Wide adoption demands that the subculture becomes more and more diffuse. The technology is ultimately culture agnostic.  The real far reaching cultural explosions haven’t happened yet.  It is only a matter of time until a previously unknown musician is embraced by the world stage, whose humble beginnings was built entirely on selling NFTs like mixtapes. It is only a matter of time until some DAO with novel mechanics and a disruptive ideology is begrudgingly allowed at the table with the likes of Capitol, Interscope or Columbia. We have already encountered “Code Is Speech” political outcries as software deemed so subversive has been sanctioned at national levels. CryptoArt is already celebrated in the most prestigious of institutions but still not present in some form, in your average household. An NFT collection is as much a set of digital collectibles as it is a map of what path you have taken in the ecosystem, something which eventually will in itself have some intrinsic cultural value as an indicator of public identity. Some of the original cultural characteristics will, in a form of memetic survival of the fittest, remain relevant.  I would not be surprised if Crypto’s earliest anti-cool symbology and vernacular become widely popular expressions of anti establishment as the permissionless nature of the technology starts to disrupt more and more industries.  Forget the pop art Che Gevara poster in a college dorm room, the future aspiring dissident has a TornadoCash tattoo, possibly without even knowing what it means.

Experiencing all this in real time is, I believe, comparable to being aware of Hip Hop in the late 80ies or noticing the compounding energy on US college campuses in the early 60ies as the Hippie counterculture was forming.  The driving motivations and aesthetics are entirely different but share enough attributes to make discussing and following its development worthwhile.