About a year ago, I left the following response to the Medium article : Altcoin Celebrity With Substance: DASH’s Amanda B. Johnson
If you become active in a crypto community to a large extent you have joined a cult, especially if many members spend time bashing other currencies passionately. I feel like I need a bath after being in some of these groups of people
At that time the author of the article was relatively new to the Dash community and my comment a bit of warning to be aware of what you are getting involved with. I had been involved in the Dash community for several months, so I did have experience of what could be expected behavior of some of it’s community members.
However, this is not to bash Dash in particular. In fact, I believe most Crypto communities are very very similar. Dash, perhaps, stood out at that time since it had a very strong rivalry with Monero.
I would like to point out some of the things you can expect of crypto communities — and by and large — I mean Discord or Slack groups dedicated to a coin. You can then compare to your own community if you are already involved and see how much overlap there is in pattern and beliefs. All of the below bold titles are taken from statements elsewhere on the internet regarding identifying a cult such as here or here
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished
It’s preferred that new people just accept everything as is, and that all of the right decisions have been made by the team. Plus there should be no need for any information that is not readily available, as the community leaders have everyone’s best interest at heart. The team is smarter than you and you shouldn’t have any doubts in them.
People who question because they are trying to learn will be seen as trolls trying to point out weaknesses. The response to questions of why is often “Well if you believe that, then why are you here?”
The group is elitist
Rules that apply to new comers will not apply to those who are higher up the food chain. For example, new comers who talk about selling the coin, will either have their comments deleted or be told to post that in a #trading or other subsidiary channel. However, if one of the elite says something like, “now is a great time to buy” or “this may be your last chance to get cheap coins”, it’s likely that nothing will be said to them. So an obvious double standard.
The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society
In the crypto world, it’s less of a conflict with wider society and more of a conflict with other cryptos. Usually mentioning any other coins is heavily frowned upon. However, since crypto is not mainstream, and many in crypto are either conspiracy theorists or hateful towards the banks, they see people who currently support the status quo as the enemy or stupid.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
The only way to keep the coin price going up is to recruit new people to buy the coin. This is also necessary so long time holders can sell without crashing the price. One way marketing hopes to recruit new people is through their twitter/reddit posts will be worded deceptively rather than honestly.
The group is preoccupied with making money
While early crypto community members were interested in changing society for what they believe was for the best, most people in crypto now just want to make money. Thus most of the chat and talk will be related to ways to improve the development or marketing of the coin for that purpose.
The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader
Usually if the founder or CEO type comments on anything, he isn’t challenged and people will pile in to agree with his ‘wisdom’. If he decides to add some new feature or change direction of the coin, people usually go along without questioning the decision, even if no rational is given at all. Again if you disagree you probably will be considered a troll, so better to just shut up and go along.
Increased submission to the leadership is rewarded with additional responsibilities and/or roles, and/or praises, increasing the importance of the person within the group.
People will often ‘kiss up’ to the leadership in the hope of getting hired or more responsibility within the team, in order to possibly get more coins. This creates an environment where there are fewer and fewer people willing to challenge ideas and the whole group falls into a group think larger driven by a leader.
One repeating pattern I’ve noticed here is that when a newcomer asks a question, there is always at least one person who will jump in and attempt to answer the question regardless of his capability. I think this is both to score brownie points with developers by potentially saving them time and also because it doesn’t look good to have lingering questions that no one is willing to answer. Better to just obfuscate the question with a nonsensical answer so that the questioner will give up due to frustration. Why is there always this type of person?
The leader is not accountable to any authorities
Unlike traditional investing which has protections for consumers with insider trading, etc, there is no such mechanism in crypto. The leadership will often make deals with exchanges or other entities and is under no obligation to disclose that information ahead of time. Likewise, if they become aware of a serious exploit, they can easily unload before the information becomes public. Due to the pseudo-anonymity of many coins, it’s almost impossible for the investors to tell if insiders are buying or selling coins.
Conclusion
Given that many coin groups have the characteristics mentioned above, you are probably better off veering away from such groups. While, it is nice to be able to socially connect with peers that share the same interest, the group think becomes very oppressive and it’s inevitable that you will have conflicts unless you just want to be one of the sheeple.
Most of the needed information on a coin, will be available on twitter, reddit, etc, and there is little that will be usefully learned on a slack/discord. On the other hand if you want to be part of the team in some way, then it’s best that you join and show your dedication consistently over time.
For the absolute new comer, it may be the best place to get technical questions answered but keep in mind that any questions regarding the coin will be heavily biased in its favor.
For anyone interested, follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/CryptoSpiralus
