It Is no doubt a movement similar to the two you mentioned in some ways. But counter culture movements are always appropriated into he mainstream in order to minimize the damage and sometimes to actively encourage the opposite of what those movements stand for. The tech/financial nature of the crypto movement has allowed that appropriation to begin at a much earlier stage and will probably be appropriated in much larger ways.
This obviously has it’s negative aspects, it can be pretty awful actually, but at least when the system eats the resistance, it takes a little bit of its ideology on, albeit in ways that allow for its own survival. These movement never failed, their influence was just diluted in a sea of “blah”, but that sea has slowly been changing color thanks to those movements. Crypto will likely follow a similar pattern.
It’s funny, as I read the description for punk I realize it still describes me perfectly, even if my musical tastes have changed.
Nice article
Thanks. This is a really interesting comment. I'm kind of a pragmatist so I expect that some of the Crypto culture will be absorbed by the mainstream and we can see the effects of that to some extent with Ripple and the bankers moving into Bitcoin as well as the business partners of Ethereum. That's our top 3 right there.
Maybe it's the job of counter-cultures to drive cultural change of the mainstream, so we shouldn't complain but I do still hope that some of the ideals of Crypto culture can remain intact. I don't want to get eaten :)
I think we can complain :-) just not in a hopeless kind of way, knowing that we have a much bigger impact than it looks like sometimes.
If enough of us insist on integrity and form a more cohesive idea of integrity, I think we have a chance :-) The one thing we always have going for us is that our ability to cooperate far exceeds that of the greedy and powerful.