Thread by Mario Gibney

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One phenomenon of twitter becoming the town square for discussions about #bitcoin is that the most prominent voices have gradually selected more and more for those skilled at self-promotion, and less and less for those who are...you know...good at understanding bitcoin. 1/13
Of the two dozen or so individuals who understand bitcoin best, half aren't even on this platform. Most of the other half are here but barely tweet. 2/13
Of the two dozen or so individuals who command the most status in the bitcoin (social) media scene, their average comprehension of bitcoin is mediocre at best. But many style themselves as experts, even if they don't outright claim it. 3/13
I'll caveat that there are exceptions in both directions. Some influencers have very strong technical chops and macro-level understanding. And some extremely cogent thinkers are great at spreading their ideas on Twitter. But they're the exception. 4/13
It's one of the reasons why I like Peter McCormack. He is very open and honest about his level of technical understanding, and that his skills and contributions are in media. He seems to work pretty hard to grant space for those with deeper knowledge to share deeper ideas. 5/13
I can hear a voice in my head telling me "Mario, focus on ideas, not people". Which is a good heuristic. But a result of above is that the real ideas behind bitcoin development mainly happen elsewhere. 6/13
They're not in secret. Anyone can read the mailing list, or join IRC. But they don't happen on twitter (mostly). Most of what reaches twitter ends up being oversimplified and dumbed down, and the discussion largely framed by participants aiming to maximize their own status. 7/13
I'm not sure how much of a problem this phenomenon is or what can be done about it. It seems somewhat inevitable - a basic result of incentives.

And I'm actually not too worried about bitcoin's development. 8/13
Despite bitcoin's twitter scene often absolutely butchering its representation of the technical underpinnings of bitcoin and its progress, I think it has less influence than it seems. 9/13
In 2015/6, reddit was the town square and it was overrun by big-blockers. General sentiment ended up converging on technical sanity, so I'm optimistic it would do so again if there was ever a serious fissure between these two forces. 10/13
I do see this as a (non-existential) problem for bitcoin's brand, though.

When I see people like @ColeSouth make claims like this, I'm like "yeah, I kinda get how it looks that way". 11/13
To be clear, I think those points are wrong. They miss the real reasons why bitcoin's protocol has developed the way it has. They conflate social media antics with standards of innovation. The last sentence indicates to me a lack of awareness of who is developing what. 12/13
Not really sure how to end this. I don't have a solution or call to action.

What do you guys think? Am I way off the mark? Hit the nail on the head? Making a mountain out of a molehill?

end/13
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