A love letter to those who are angry at shirtcoins blowing up as their project crawls forward

I've seen a lot of people looking distraught and kicking rocks as flash-in-the-pan coins (really, tokens) do their thing and, having been in this space for a while, it seems to happen and get worse every cycle so I wanted to take a moment and share some positivity to those currently experiencing anger and bewilderment.

I'll state right off the hop that I'm not defending these practices merely highlighting that there's a very simple economic reason for the success of these shirtcoins:

Low investment but high risk/return.

AKA: this is entirely normal human behavior.

Let's say you get an opportunity to buy into a blue chip like Bitcoin when it's low, when it pumps (as it has) you maybe 4x your money but as the coin's price threshold grows, the chances of even doubling your money begins to diminish.

A single Bitcoin right now is $60,000+ USD so to double your money Bitcoin needs to go to $120,000 per coin. Yikes!

Now look at that price relative to the standard income of other countries in the world. If you make the equivalent of $100/month (or maybe have that left after bills, etc) would you honestly throw your money into something like Bitcoin? Especially if you had no ideological dog in the hunt?

Probably not.

Great as a store of value, not so great as an instrument to increase one's personal wealth.

Especially if you can throw your money into a bunch of fly-by-night "penny stock" cryptos. Let's say there's maybe a 1% chance (pulling that number out of my ass) that your $100 blows up into $10,000 or more.

You're basically playing the lottery but with far, far better odds.

That's why these coins that are clearly rug pulls continue to thrive in this space: the people doing these scams know that humans love easy money.

Why learn how/why an established coin actually works at all if you're just here to spin a wheel at the casino?

Again, to be clear, not defending this practice, I'm only saying that the financial incentives are pretty obvious.

To the people who are upset that their projects aren't blowing up in the way they like? Well, perhaps they should just accept that there are all kinds of people and that those who are "here for the tech" are incredibly valuable and should be attracted and cultivated with great care.

We don't have to like it but one of the side effects of creating a global marketplace with unlimited access to a digital playground is that exactly this is going to happen. Hell, forget lottery, this is the crown and anchor game at the county fair. The reeeeally seedy crown and anchor, at the far end of the fair where the lamplight doesn't quite reach.

And we've got to accept that there's a not-small segment of the population who choose go there and throw down stacks.

Speaking for myself, I used to get very upset as I watched people YOLO into projects that were clearly scams but now I see it just like this: People making big shaky bets at dirty, wobbly, carnival money games.

Now it doesn't mean that I stop warning people about it (I continue to do so) but - and this is important - if we truly believe what we say when we talk about "financial freedom" that also means we have to (if grudgingly) accept that people are free to make bad decisions with their own money and if you want people to be here "for the tech" then the onus is 100% on you to attract them and win them over.

Thank you for reading my novel, I hope you have a wonderful day!

Much love,

GS