Reasons: It’s come to my attention that many of you are driven to Bitcoin for the wrong reasons.  When I came into bitcoin, I too was driven in by the wrong reasons.  I see that now many of us are driven by these reasons and I feel they’re warranted, but selfishly warranted.

1. You’re in it for the  ($ 💵 💵 💵 💵 $) 

Ah the hallmark reason – you’re looking to invest!  Want enough money to buy that Lambo! I learned about bitcoin specifically because I was in it for the money.  Mining seemed like an awesome way to earn a living – kick back and make sure my hardware is running, who wouldn’t love that?

Being into it for the money is always, I mean always the wrong answer because it drives your motivations to that (profit first) end.  All this talk about scaling bitcoin right away and having crippled innovation due to the blocksize is the backdraft of anguish from lack of spike in price action.  The hope is that new technology will be developed with the advent of a larger block size and that this proliferation in technology would drive the demand for bitcoin usage and hence the price.  That isn’t based on reality, it is an opinion of speculation.  There are no guarantees that Bitcoin would be selected over, say, Ethereum (with their Microsoft diggs), there are other altcoins such as Litecoin that offer faster transaction confirmation times, and anti-spam countermeasures in addition to a robust network of GPUS and Asics to resist 51% attacks built into the protocol – don’t you think that big business would have used an alt-coin by now or even a layer on top style alt like what t0.com is trying to be? (their platform uses counterparty by the way)  I don’t want us as a community to make an irreversible decision that may destroy Bitcoin based on the impulsive desire for the price to go up.

2. You’re in it for a job

While flattering to us that you want paid employment in the space, compared to the rest of the high tech sector, Bitcoin is relatively small… like satoshi small.  Getting a job in the cryptocurrency industry is brutally tough unless you have pre existing knowledge and experience of said industry.  Now if you are an active reader of the site then you’re likely well acquainted with Bitcoin and have a running start.  But at the same time, I urge you, if seeking employment look at the complementing matured technology stacks first.  Become well acquainted with them and from there get started with bitcoin applications use case applications that use that technology you have trained up with through import libraries and use those to plugin cryptocurrency into your apps.  Don’t bother supporting alt-coins unless you truly believe in them – you may be making an easy temporary buck (maybe), but you’re throwing your reputation and potentially other opportunities for growth in the form of other projects. Also, I’ve found that several US bitcoin based companies are situated in either NY or San Francisco:  having the experience when you live in an ideal location elsewhere isn’t going to cut it!  Relocating to those areas would be quite expensive. It’s like a punch to the privates: it hurts is that Bitcoin is a Global currency without borders, I’d like to live comfortably, but not at the expense that I’m forced to emigrate to another country, just so that I’m competitive and have job opportunity – I’m not playing this Race to the Bottom crap.  Telecommuting options for Bitcoin are slim in the US but definitely more accessible abroad.  Though the ultimate reason I placed this here was because in comparison to web and programming development at large, bitcoin is but a fraction of a fraction. You want to earn bitcoin?  Better off learning python or javascript first and working your way on into cryptography from there then cryptocurrencies – then you can do anything 😉

3. You’re in it for respect

So you know what Bitcoin is all about and you’ve probably already got some.  Maybe you’re in this deep, way too deep, way way way (you get the point). More likely than not, you contribute to Bitcoin Development whether it be through hashing out applications or earning a killing from trading, or perhaps you contribute to the message boards of our communities such as letstalkbitcoin.com, bitcointalk.org, forum.bitcoin.com reddit.com/r/bitcoin, zapchain, etc. and so on.  Sadly, despite any respect earned, it is in a perpetual state of fleeting here in BitcoinLand.  Do you respect Mike Hearn?  You should…he built BitcoinJ – which was used in the original Bitcoin mobile wallet, released by Andreas Schildbach (now the current maintainer of bitcoinj).  How about Adam Bach? Did you know without his work, there is no bitcoin? Yet on any given day, you can’t go 10 minutes without someone complaining about how blockstream is the death of bitcoin through centralization and inducing barriers to entry (I’m paraphrasing the sentiments I’ve read).  You would think this was a religious canon the way people switch on each other and are quick to jump down the next person’s neck.  For instance, Replace By Fee was just merged into the latest patch of Bitcoin Core, so from there, Gmaxwell is discussing answers in depth with someone in Github and in four days another random user from Reddit attacks him on it.  However, it’s a two way street with users attacking Gavin and Mike (proponents behind BitcoinXT and BIP101).  Pretty certain that the reaction of users to Theymos speaks volumes, the guy gives rational responses. every. time.  So what does everyone do, they attack him, then attack some more, then attack us all, the bottom line is that there is no love in this game (that’s not true, the love is there, the lurkers just don’t vocalize – whereas the naysayers amplify themselves to no end, including bots, ban evasions, and brigading, which brings me to my next reason; if

4. You’re in it for the ‘comedy gold’

I’m going to break the cardinal rule, let’s feed some muthafuckin trolls.  There are two parts to the issue:  first, the person speaking on the other end is fucking with you (like for laughs, for thrills, for lack of a love interest).  They are having an awesome good ol time.  They aren’t feeling any sort of stress or anger in trolling at you (at least not directly from the act of trolling you – they may be highly upset with their lives in general, but we’ll get back to that in a minute) Let me put you in on a little secret:  Over 3/4ths of these clowns will forever remain subscribed to /r/bitcoin.  If we ban, they come back as an alt account.  They hold Bitcoin but talk shit about it because they thrive from watching others get frustrated. They pick apart your exact words and distort them to fit an ‘all or none’ perspective and will attack your character.  They do this because they know it hurts you emotionally and induces stress.  They take pleasure in ‘ruining your day’.  They’ll downplay it like that’s not even true and then exaggerate claims of “how mentally and emotionally weak you must be to succumb to such pettiness”.  Another gem: They’re thriving from draining you, they are emotional vampires, void of connection.  This act of verbally assaulting you is a surrogate for the social connection they’re missing.  There is actually an easy trick to fuck with them back: Be nice to them, incredibly nice.  For without them, there would be no introspection of verifiability, we wouldn’t question whether or not their quips had validity buried within.

5. You’re in it to beat the system

Using Bitcoin to be your own bank and retain ultimate control of your money is one of if not the most important incentive that bitcoin as a currency provides.  But that doesn’t just give you a license to break the law.  Don’t use Bitcoin to break the law, pay your taxes!  For that matter I want to say the opposite advice here too – Don’t use Bitcoin in illegal transactions or activities, at all. ever. The transaction is forever saved on a permanent blockchain, and the world at large (beyond us) views bitcoin as a tool to facilitate illegal activities, particularly in main stream media such at TV shows like Blacklist and the Blindspot (I’m glad we get our name out there, I’m not cool with always being associated to a drug or a hitman plot on TV).

So there you have it.  What do you think?  Would you agree or disagree that these are bad reasons to get into Bitcoin?  Why?