The forking of the Israeli Bitcoin community group, and why should you care.
By Eylon Aviv on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
I’ve had the chance to visit Bitcoin and cryptocurrency meetups in over 15 cities all over the world, and thus far I Believe Israel has the highest interest in Crypto per capita.
Israeli companies have raised over $1.3b in ICOs so far. There are endless ‘crypto’ communities in Israel, countless VC firms focused on blockchain and lots of events and meetups every week.
This is noteworthy because most of the action is centered in Tel Aviv, a city of about 420,000 people.
After living in Beijing for three years and being a central part of the crypto community there, I find the number of people involved here unprecedented.
The Israeli Bitcoin community
The main Israeli community for Bitcoin/crypto is the Facebook page “Israeli Bitcoin”. The group consists of some 30,000 people, from all walks and ‘ranges’ of the field, speculators, scammers, developers, maximalists and anarchists. It was created in 2012 after a series of organized meetups by some of the early pioneers a year prior. In 2013 the Bitcoin Embassy and the Israeli Bitcoin association were established, which are the leading bodies which communicate with the Israeli government on matters of taxation and regulation, and host weekly meetups every Sunday evening (a workday in Israel) at the Israeli Bitcoin Embassy in Satoshi Square — right in front of the Israeli Stock Exchange.
I have personally heard Meni Rosenfeld, one of those early pioneers and chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin association, explain the basic fundamentals of bitcoin over and over again during the gold rush of 2017, urging people not to buy more than they are willing to lose as huge queues of people lined up to buy at the embassy’s ATM.
By nature of it being a crypto group, clashes and disagreements are common. From ICOs, Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash, all the way to shady promotions and referrals. One post about lightning network devolved into a show of ego and eventually the expulsion of Udi Wertheimer by the admin of the group who was on the other side of the discussion. This was followed by an almost unanimous uprising of the community against the decision, as Udi was one of the top contributors to the group and the expulsion was unjustified. A few admins protested and were either removed or left of their own volition, another few argued that the community does not have the right to criticize the admin as this is not a democracy, but a dictatorship. Facebook groups are designed this way — The user who opens a group cannot be expelled from it, although other admins can expel and be expelled by each other.
Over the course of the next few months things have gotten worse. There has been continuous muting and banning of users without real justification. Those who expressed their thoughts about the management of the group, requesting changes, soon discovered that meta posts were outlawed, and were to be discussed in a separate group.
One member exclaimed in response to the admin “Every time there’s a management decision to make, you somehow choose the worse possible one”.
Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely — Lord Acton, 1870
30,000 is a lot of members, and a large Bitcoin community such as this holds a lot of power and potential for personal gain, not only monetary but also status and recognition. The absurdity here is that we’re a community gathered to discuss Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, from a realization that centralized power and decision making leads to corruption, and yet this community fell to the exact flaws of human nature.
I would like to stop for a second here to give respect and appreciation to the admin of the group, who might be portrayed in a bad light here but has given a lot of hard work and effort in building the community for the past 5 years.
When the community and the leader differ it’s almost impossible to reconcile. After researching 100s of online communities, my conclusion is that this is the point when communities break. If the community’s needs are not the top value in decision making, is it really a community? I will delve deeper into this in another post.
The split
A long negotiation process took place between a leading group of contributors in the community and the admin to pass the baton to the community, but that turned fruitless.
About two weeks ago the Israeli Bitcoin group decided to fork. About 100 of the top community contributors including myself signed a petition supporting and moving to the new group, due to the continuous dissatisfaction with the way the current group is being run. The petition includes a constitution, rules and guidelines, elected moderators and admins, and consensus mechanisms for decision making in cases of dispute.
Is this a case where the community triumphed over the benevolent dictator? Too early to tell. As of today almost 2000 users moved to the new Israeli Bitcoin Community group, with frequent discussion and high-quality content. But who knows whether we will be able to migrate many more people to a new group. It’s unfortunate that online communities follow the 1% rule, as tested by reddit, ie that the vast majority of visitors only read the posts, without commenting. I believe that lurkers and single-posters are also part of the community, and most of those members have been left behind, at least until the next bull run.
Why you should care
The worldwide and local crypto communities are flourishing, especially now that all the hype and scams have dissipated, and the market is more mature and ready to build things that require decentralization. If communities are the foundations that enable collaboration, we need to make sure they are managed for the benefit of their members, and that not single person or group at the top can take it over.
“Community,” after all, the OED notes, is rooted in the Middle French communité. The word may have come to suggest a “body of people who live in the same place,” but, initially, it meant something much simpler and much more powerful: “joint ownership.” — Bill Bishop
How can we build communities, jointly owned by the users, decentralized communities if you may, without raising money through an ICO (it’s a terrible idea in my opinion).
How do you create a platform that ensures communal ownership, how do you reach consensus?
For the past year and a half I’ve been designing a system whereby the more you contribute to the community , the more power and influence you have within it. The goal is to design a system (ensured by protocol) that ultimately delivers control to the users, from us, the creators of the platform. Even if this takes over the world I won’t have the power to decide what is right and what is wrong. The people who continuously and consistently contribute will be the ones in charge, as long as they serve their community.
My name is Eylon, I think Bitcoin and Crypto are a social phenomenon backed by mathematics. The stronger the social connections and the community, the stronger Bitcoin and crypto will be.
I lived in China for 3 years, and there I established one of the largest cryptocurrency communities — Crypto China which is run in a decentralized fashion with many different admins and decision makers. That is how I fell in love with communities and their power and potential to drive change and benefit their members.
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The purpose of ALTCOIN MAGAZINE is to educate the world on crypto and to bring it to the hands and the minds of the masses. This article was written and composed by Eylon Aviv on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE.
