The Doomsday Cult of Bitcoin ⇥ nymag.com

Kevin Roose, in a fantastic article for New York Magazine comparing the community around Bitcoin to the Seekers cult:

The uncomfortable fact for Bitcoin believers is that every major prediction they’ve made has yet to come true. And as time passes and the inevitable fizzle-out of Bitcoin becomes visible, those believers will splinter. More will drop out of the cult. And the ones who remain will only grow more convinced, more zealous, more eager to share the good news.

After all, the difference between the Seekers’ apocalyptic prediction and the Bitcoin dream is that the latter can self-fulfill. The nature of a speculative commodity like Bitcoin is that it essentially runs on hope – the more people who buy the hype, the higher the value goes, and the more firms like Andreessen Horowitz are willing to pump money into strengthening the Bitcoin ecosystem.