I am not sure that 'alienation' is the biggest problem here. Exotic faiths, exotic currencies, exotic tastes in music and art -- this is always how the hoi oligoi have signalled their superiority over the hoi pollloi. (So is using terms such as 'hoi oligoi'. :) ) We now have a large surfeit of people who were raised to believe that they are, or ought to be, part of an elite administrative ruling class. Since they haven't clawed their way to the top on their own merit -- or even what they perceive as their own merit -- they need a way to distance themselves from the herd.
I think you are on to something here, Arnold, but at the same time one should ask whether one should have faith in e.g. government and the banks. Having faith in something is all well and good, but not all things one can have faith in are equally good, and some downright bad. It is proper to lose faith in government, banks, or existing religions for that matter, when they become corrupted or otherwise damaging. Best to move to something good, of course, but it is always worth remembering that just because there is a current faith doesn't mean it is worth having. Sometimes people want new faiths because the current ones are deeply broken.
The big crypto run up started in October 2020 and the 6x bubble deflated over 2022. This looks to me like the classic bubble pattern. It’s hard to get to excited about another bubble bust. There will be more in the future. It never ends.
I would argue that this was also the demographic and personality type of people who fell for multilevel marketing scams in the 1970s or the Internet stock bubble of 1998-1999.
And for the anti-immigrant, anti-trade, symbolic "patriotism" of the MAGA slogan.
> each offering a secret knowledge—a gnosis—through which an enlightened few can hope to escape and purify themselves
Really glad you highlighted this. I work in crypto and I find the use of the term "alpha" to be jarring. Its 'tradfi' definition is "the excess return of an investment relative to the return of a benchmark index", but the way crpyto folks use it is closer to "a piece of knowledge that is new or not common knowledge, very often that can give a trader an edge in the market".
That feeling, that we've got privileged, secret knowledge that gives us an edge on others, is addictive -- it offers a pathway to status that's independent of social connections or the work you put in -- and pernicious. Some folks who feel like they've found the secret truth end up QAnoners. Others end up losing their shirts because they think that the terra/luna value prop is both supremely elegant and complicated enough that normies probably just don't get it.
I only know one individual that owned crypto currency in real life. He wouldn't fit the description you've laid down here. He put about $10,000 into crypto, which he could well afford, and at one point it was worth $300k. He probably should have cashed out then but didn't. As he put it to me, $300k would make his life a lot easier, but wouldn't transform it. He couldn't quit his job for instance. He viewed gambling with $300k of winnings different then $300k of money he earned, which you can call irrational but it defiantly didn't have the same psychological effect when it went away as betting his house on it would have.
There is probably a lot to be said and many deep insights in the work of Harvey Whitehouse in regard to this flowering of new social faiths in contrast to the dominant normative social faith. His work on modes of religiosity seems to fit this constant flowering and evolution of social/religious organizations that seem quite niche and sometimes rather weird. There is also his subsequent work on Rituals and human beings as a ritual animal. I believe Martin Gurri was being interviewed in text or on a podcast at some point and made some analogy to ritualistic physical mutilation with regard to online faiths and their fitting into a ritualistic framework. I can't remember where I read it, but I believe it was Whitehouse or someone summarizing some of his work in the South Pacific where there is a dominant normative religion with a benign way of being. Analogize this to Christianity in the present with the symbolic rituals of communion and other chants and prayers that are said often as a social binding mechanism. Then underneath this umbrella of the dominant normal religion and social ways there are a constant flowering of millenarian type cults and new faiths that tell of the next coming and world ending and radical changing transformations to come to the world. I am not sure I am being completely accurate in my summation. Probably a better more academic summary, "In the 'imagistic mode,' rituals have a lasting impact on people's minds, haunting not only our memories but influencing the way we ruminate on religious topics. These psychological features are linked to the scale and structure of religious communities, fostering small, exclusive, and ideologically heterogeneous ritual groupings or factions. In the 'doctrinal mode,' on the other hand, religious knowledge is primarily spread through intensive and repetitive teaching; religious communities are contrastingly large, inclusive, and centrally regulated." - https://www.harveywhitehouse.com/books/modes-of-religiosity-a-cognitive-theory-of-religious-transmission
I am not sure that 'alienation' is the biggest problem here. Exotic faiths, exotic currencies, exotic tastes in music and art -- this is always how the hoi oligoi have signalled their superiority over the hoi pollloi. (So is using terms such as 'hoi oligoi'. :) ) We now have a large surfeit of people who were raised to believe that they are, or ought to be, part of an elite administrative ruling class. Since they haven't clawed their way to the top on their own merit -- or even what they perceive as their own merit -- they need a way to distance themselves from the herd.
I think you are on to something here, Arnold, but at the same time one should ask whether one should have faith in e.g. government and the banks. Having faith in something is all well and good, but not all things one can have faith in are equally good, and some downright bad. It is proper to lose faith in government, banks, or existing religions for that matter, when they become corrupted or otherwise damaging. Best to move to something good, of course, but it is always worth remembering that just because there is a current faith doesn't mean it is worth having. Sometimes people want new faiths because the current ones are deeply broken.
There is nothing new under the Sun- lots of people are always looking for successful get rich quick schemes.
The big crypto run up started in October 2020 and the 6x bubble deflated over 2022. This looks to me like the classic bubble pattern. It’s hard to get to excited about another bubble bust. There will be more in the future. It never ends.
Man, TPTB hate for Bitcoin (they furiously conflate BTC with "crypto") is reaching absurd levels.
Makes you think.
I would argue that this was also the demographic and personality type of people who fell for multilevel marketing scams in the 1970s or the Internet stock bubble of 1998-1999.
And for the anti-immigrant, anti-trade, symbolic "patriotism" of the MAGA slogan.
> each offering a secret knowledge—a gnosis—through which an enlightened few can hope to escape and purify themselves
Really glad you highlighted this. I work in crypto and I find the use of the term "alpha" to be jarring. Its 'tradfi' definition is "the excess return of an investment relative to the return of a benchmark index", but the way crpyto folks use it is closer to "a piece of knowledge that is new or not common knowledge, very often that can give a trader an edge in the market".
That feeling, that we've got privileged, secret knowledge that gives us an edge on others, is addictive -- it offers a pathway to status that's independent of social connections or the work you put in -- and pernicious. Some folks who feel like they've found the secret truth end up QAnoners. Others end up losing their shirts because they think that the terra/luna value prop is both supremely elegant and complicated enough that normies probably just don't get it.
Tyler Cowen outlines three basic ways to get rich (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/05/if-economists-are-so-smart-why-arent-they-rich.html), and only the third can be described as getting an edge on others. In a saner world, most folks would understand that the probability that you have secret knowledge that's both true and easily translated into big returns is vanishingly low.
I also note the third definition of alpha -- social dominance, as in "alpha dog" -- and wonder about its connection to the other two.
I only know one individual that owned crypto currency in real life. He wouldn't fit the description you've laid down here. He put about $10,000 into crypto, which he could well afford, and at one point it was worth $300k. He probably should have cashed out then but didn't. As he put it to me, $300k would make his life a lot easier, but wouldn't transform it. He couldn't quit his job for instance. He viewed gambling with $300k of winnings different then $300k of money he earned, which you can call irrational but it defiantly didn't have the same psychological effect when it went away as betting his house on it would have.
There is probably a lot to be said and many deep insights in the work of Harvey Whitehouse in regard to this flowering of new social faiths in contrast to the dominant normative social faith. His work on modes of religiosity seems to fit this constant flowering and evolution of social/religious organizations that seem quite niche and sometimes rather weird. There is also his subsequent work on Rituals and human beings as a ritual animal. I believe Martin Gurri was being interviewed in text or on a podcast at some point and made some analogy to ritualistic physical mutilation with regard to online faiths and their fitting into a ritualistic framework. I can't remember where I read it, but I believe it was Whitehouse or someone summarizing some of his work in the South Pacific where there is a dominant normative religion with a benign way of being. Analogize this to Christianity in the present with the symbolic rituals of communion and other chants and prayers that are said often as a social binding mechanism. Then underneath this umbrella of the dominant normal religion and social ways there are a constant flowering of millenarian type cults and new faiths that tell of the next coming and world ending and radical changing transformations to come to the world. I am not sure I am being completely accurate in my summation. Probably a better more academic summary, "In the 'imagistic mode,' rituals have a lasting impact on people's minds, haunting not only our memories but influencing the way we ruminate on religious topics. These psychological features are linked to the scale and structure of religious communities, fostering small, exclusive, and ideologically heterogeneous ritual groupings or factions. In the 'doctrinal mode,' on the other hand, religious knowledge is primarily spread through intensive and repetitive teaching; religious communities are contrastingly large, inclusive, and centrally regulated." - https://www.harveywhitehouse.com/books/modes-of-religiosity-a-cognitive-theory-of-religious-transmission