If your identity is communism, nazism, voluntarism - at least it's a position. If your identity is "Bitcoiner" or "Etherean," what are you actually standing for? The tool is neutral. Making it your identity means you have a tribe but no principles - just enemies.

I sometimes fall into this trap too and call myself an Ethereum person. It feels like it means something, but it doesn't. It's better to talk directly about your principles and beliefs.

Bitcoiners used to be weirdos wearing Guy Fawkes masks and hanging out in London anarchist squats Now they wear MAGA hats and shill electrolytes Are those the same people who "grow up" and become conservative? Or the original people left and new people "moved in" to the space?

Many of us stayed on the original mission

Point is, there was never an "original mission" - that's just narratives spinning around neutral tools. Being "a Bitcoiner" means nothing. if you actually care about something, speak in concrete principles or properties.

Original mission is what was in the cypherpunks mailing lists, the white paper, the early forums, and in Satoshi’s own words. Separating the money from the state.

By this logic, "original mission" should include everything we do in Ethereum or Monero also... smart contracts, prediction markets, gambling, darknet markets, privacy tech, decentralized stablecoins, naming systems, asset issuance, decentralized exchanges.. Everything of this was discussed and endorsed by Satoshi or in mailing lists. First versions of Bitcoin's code included poker game. The "original mission" narrative is just post-hoc justification - people cherry-pick from Satoshi's words and early discussions to validate whatever they already believe. It's the same institutional pattern as invoking "founding fathers" or "original intent" - creating mythological anchors to avoid engaging with actual principles. If you want separation of money and state, say that. If you want censorship-resistant exchange, say that. But don't hide behind curated historical narratives. The tool is neutral - what matters is whether it actually enables the properties you claim to care about.

Other projects like Ethereum and Monero do in principle work towards these goals, but arguably in more indirect and potentially compromised ways... I was really on board with the original vision of ethereum, in complement to bitcoin. The latter would be the base value layer, with a "dumb" scripting language that minimized attack surface. ETH would then be the way to create real "smart contracts", DAO, and everything else to fulfill the radical cypherpunk vision. The reversal of the DAO hack, to me, signaled that the developers were no longer committed to the principle of "code is law." And it ensconced Buterin as a sort of figurehead for the project, which complicates its ability to really stand up to State actors in a meaningful way.

Except here's the thing: teams are fun.

Absolutely, it's great if you know what you want and find like-minded people who feel the same way. You just have to be careful not to fall into an echo chamber, because then it starts to become unproductive.