tylerkosh on Nostr: The BTC Treasury Bro is a new breed of bitcoiner and is officially here to stay. Went ...

The BTC Treasury Bro is a new breed of bitcoiner and is officially here to stay.

Went to my local meetup last night and this new guy came in. It was his first meetup he’d ever been to. Keep in mind, this is a friendly environment and this group is always welcoming to newcomers.

He was super nice and clearly had a decent understanding of bitcoin. The group was having a discussion about nodes and he was sitting back and just listening for the most part. At some point in the conversation, BTC treasury companies came up and this guy just lit up. His whole demeanor and body language changed. He clearly got excited and proceeded to go on about how much time he spends researching BTC treasury companies and is pretty much a self proclaimed expert on MSTR and Metaplanet. As he was explaining how great these companies are and how genius the leaders are, some hardcore bitcoiners started to push back a little bit on some of his ideas (custody, proof of reserves, and more cypherpunk philosophy).

This is where things started to get interesting. When his beliefs that he had unwavering conviction started to be challenged, his body language, tone, and demeanor shifted again and he became defensive. You could see his ego struggling in real time. I think he felt attacked (which he wasn't) and confused. My guess is until last night he lived in an online echo chamber of people only talking about how good these treasury companies are and just assumed that all bitcoiners thought this way. Then when he goes to a meetup and his expectations don't align with reality, he can't comprehend it. I could see the frustration in his face. As people were debating him back and forth with valid points, it seemed as if he wanted to just yell at everyone “you just don’t get it. I know I'm right and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise".

I'm not sharing this to disparage this guy, he definitely has good intentions but he has come into this space from a different perspective. A fiat perspective. There is one major philosophical difference between the treasury bro and the cypherpunk bitcoiner. The treasury bro is just a tradfi guy who understands the NGU aspect of bitcoin and sees that as valuable. They want to integrate that into the traditional financial system and use bitcoin to acquire more fiat. They don't see acquiring bitcoin as the end goal. They don't care about destroying the state and a broken, evil financial system that has caused so much harm around the world.

To be clear I'm not here to gatekeep or have any problem with people like this getting into bitcoin. It's not my place to tell people how they should think or what they should do with their money. This is just my observations that I find interesting and slightly concerning. Treasury bros at large seem arrogant because they were able to see something their tradfi peers can't see. Thats fuel for the ego. It tells them that they're smarter than everyone else. Bitcoin usually has a way of humbling people...

Anyways I hope he comes back and continues his journey. We’ll be there to support him