Note: This is an op-ed thinkboi piece. I’m hoping you’ll be generous enough to understand that this reflects my personal views, and not that of Boys Club.

WTF Just Happened

I’m one of those insufferable people that’s obsessed with their Oura ring score. This morning’s score? Awful. The presidential debate, the spectacle around it, and the chat on social media is disorienting, and points to a bigger issue around declining trust in institutions that I want to look at squarely.

Something we think about a lot at Boys Club is this idea that people’s interest in cryptocurrency is inversely proportional to their trust in the government and established institutions, so that the chart looks like this.

This totally checks out when you think about the grizzled Bitcoiners and their Libertarian ideals. With them it feels fringe and contained. It is more unnerving to apply this thinking to a broader swathe of a population, say gen-z, with their deep-fried memes and financial nihilism.

I’m a classic coastal millennial liberal (cringe lol), who believes it’s the government’s role to protect civil liberties and ensure that no one is in need. I’ve found it hard to reconcile this political lens with that of the industry I work in and love, yes, but have been mostly getting along okay. Until last night.

Let me be clear that I don’t think Trump won the debate (we all lost), he’s a pathological liar and racist. But when it comes to the Democratic party, it’s jarring that after watching Biden’s performance, I believe with my whole heart that both of these scenarios are possible.

First, that the second candidate thing is true.

If this is the case, the DNC is cruel for subjecting Biden to what would ultimately be a public shaming, and duplicitous for not being transparent in their intentions to replace him as a candidate. This also undermines the progress that Biden’s administration has made over the last 4 years.

Or, that the DNC is so stuck in this wrought, backwards way of being that they have been rendered simply ineffective. Neutered in their ability to take action even when the stakes are this high, staring down the barrel at another 4 years with Trump as president.

If some meaningful percentage of last night’s 100 million viewers have woken up with similar feelings, the implications are serious. What are the consequences of a growing population of disillusioned people finding such compelling evidence for incompetence on national TV? What are the consequences of such a Big Shared Feeling of being let down by the systems that were meant to be caring for us? Idk, it feels like the fabric of trust coming apart at the seams.

I saw this take last night, and I couldn’t disagree with it more. We’re trying to cope with seeing so many cracks in the foundation. We’re doing our best, in the only language we know to be effective, to show that we’re not okay with the status quo. And frankly, we’re scared.

Up until last night I thought of crypto as an opportunity. It was an optimistic thing. Additive. Progressive. A toolset and instruction manual for improving money, improving the internet. Iterating on systems that no longer serve us. It was about reaching for a utopia. Not escaping a dystopia.

I never wanted to be an underground bunker crypto person, but this morning I feel myself being pulled in that direction. Idk how to reconcile this, and this is truly a cry for help lol.

In the meantime I’ll be here.