NOTE: (Ple₿’s are the one and only Bitcoin PR Department) There is an update to this story
There is no marketing or PR department for Bitcoin. That is with good reason! In today's article, I explain why plebs are the real PR department and what we can do to improve!
NOTE TO READERS: I have updated my views on this topic. I explain everything in this article:
Bitcoin has no CEO! This is a statement you often hear or read. Whether that be on Twitter or IRL at a Bitcoin event. If you haven’t yet been to one, I urge you to go! These events are the biggest opportunity to learn more about this wonderful technology.
This was set up by design! Bitcoin could not be a peer-to-peer network if there was an intermediary with a lot of control. Compare that to other projects and you’ll see how invested they are in departments. Take that from someone who had the opportunity to work in some of them!
Whether that be legal, marketing, communications, or PR. All of these altcoins - or to use the modern word - web3 projects have a big focus on how the outside world perceives them. Take HEX as an example. So much money has flown into their marketing campaigns. People were tricked into believing the coin might spike another 11’000%. Spoiler, it didn’t!
Even though there is a tone of backlash, HEX has managed to control the narrative. This is PR, short for Public Relations. Let’s look at the definition to understand this better:
PR or Public Relations is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization to the public to influence their perception.
Public relations and publicity differ in that PR is controlled internally, whereas publicity is not controlled and is contributed by external parties.
The last sentence is essential. PR differs from publicity, as it’s being controlled internally. This is exactly what you see with these altcoin/ web3 companies. They are the ones controlling the narrative and they make sure to not be deceived in any bad way.
This is different from Bitcoin. As I mentioned at the top of the article, it has no CEO. There is no marketing department and most certainly no PR team. The very existence of Bitcoin is forged in its genesis block:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
A peer-to-peer solution was the answer to the rotting and still failing legacy financial system. For centuries, a system controlled the narrative, in cooperation with large and very expensive PR agencies to deceive people into believing the bank is safe.
It’s that old system, which has an issue with Bitcoin. Nowadays it’s not eco-friendly, in the beginning, it used to be for cyber criminals and I’m sure soon it will be something else. Most TV stations, can’t just contact the PR department and get an answer as to why the USD price to Bitcoin crashed a few percent. They have to deal with people.
If that is by design, we’ll never know if Satoshi envisioned this. But this is the reality a lot of journalists have to deal with. Sometimes it feels like they’re not used to talking to plebs. Granted, most of us are cyberpunks. We don’t intend to talk to journalists at all.
Many plebs would even go as far as saying that Bitcoin doesn’t need a PR department. The first contact of anyone getting orange pilled is mostly a friend or someone close to them. This closeness is what has stuck with Bitcoin through every bear market.
The Bitcoin culture is driven by memes, funny statements, and provocative tweets. This is great to convince friends and family, they’re mostly the ones understanding our sense of humor, but not for traditional media or business people.
Provocative memes are fun to engage with if you’re part of the millennial society, but not if you’re a yuppie. There are many reasons why that is the case, but those would be too many to mention here. Citadel21 has written a great article about this.
Many of us believe, that this separation between pleb and yuppie is the reason why we read so much FUD about Bitcoin in the mainstream media. I can tell you at least 20 different stories, with workmates and friends of mine, who refuse to learn what the upside to mining is. It’s not that they’re lacking interest, however, most don’t want to leave the FIAT bubble they grew up in.
This is the point of this article. Bitcoin has no central institution. There is no PR team! Most yuppies or millennials are not listening, because they refuse to learn something new.
I don’t blame them, this is how they grew up. Obtaining information was hard. Speaking to people on the other side of the world was only accessible to richer folks. Long-distance phone calls were expensive.
The younger generations, which cover about 75% of plebs these days, had it easier. We were used to trying different things. Trust in legacy systems are not there, as we grew up in decentralized institutions. Think of the earlier days of the internet. Some chat rooms were only accessible via peer-to-peer. Jokes, memes, and provocative statements were a big part of that community. Ignoring the noise and focusing on signaling was the common work ethic.
If you look at this from a purely socioeconomic aspect, these plebs were probably also the earliest investors in the dot com hype. A lot of it was similar to today’s crypto hype. The earlier days of the internet, some would say simple times, are mainly responsible for why many institutions don’t get Bitcoin. To understand it, you would have needed to be involved in the early days of that specific community.
This community doesn’t suddenly change and accept the status quo. They’re here to change the system, they so desperately distrust!
How do we do this and attract the remaining part of the world to opt-out of the FIAT fraud? Bingo! By being loud and so over the top, Bitcoin’s enemies have to report about us and tell the regular Joe what’s going on. It’s those enemies who are quietly doing the PR work for us…
With that in mind, to all my fellow Bitcoin maximalists out there: Be bold, be more active, and keep on creating those memes! Together, we’ll eventually get there and orange-pill those yuppies.