I have been thinking about Nic Carter's recent twitter outburst, which I found curious. I know he has been outspoken recently regarding what he perceives as toxic bitcoin maximalism, but the tweet seemed a bit unhinged.
Nic Carter is a smart guy, and he has honestly taught me a lot. His "Chokepoint 2.0" stuff was insightful. I have frequently listened to his podcast.
That's why this tweet surprised me. He was clearly rattled by a few twitter trolls. Within the incredibly long tweet he said, among other things, that those agreeing with the SEC that altcoins were securities were mainly new hodlers who were losing money in bitcoin. This assertion was odd, inaccurate, and condescending. Jack Mallers is not a guy who just jumped into bitcoin recently. I don’t think you can put Jack in that category, nor Michael Saylor, Max Keiser, Jimmy Song, Samson Mow, Marty Bent, Saifedean Ammous, and many other fairly well off folks who have been around a while.
He also claimed that maxis were just in it for the parties. Are there new people who enjoy socializing with their fellow hodlers? Sure. Is that the only reason they buy bitcoin? I doubt it. In general, Nic seems to characterize just about everyone who buys bitcoin as being in it solely to get rich. Is Anita Posch attending any fancy gallery openings in Zimbabwe or Zambia? Not likely. I doubt anyone there can afford the expensive rum Nic is selling. I singled her out as an example, but there are people working all over the world bringing bitcoin to the unbanked. Does Nic Carter think of them as religious zealots? I don't know.

Is Bitcoin A Cult?

One of Nic’s recurring themes is that bitcoin is like a religious cult to some people. He used the phrase millenarian eschatology. I had to look it up. He doesn’t need to use these big words to let us know he’s smart. He is smart, and he makes a valid point. For many, bitcoin is more than just a means of payment. Some do get carried away with strict adherence to dogma. Bitcoiners do tend to imagine a new world where things are more fair for everyone. They want to see the world change for the better. But their motives are not purely selfish. Bitcoiners often put their sats where their mouths are. During the Canadian Freedom Convoy, the generosity of bitcoiners was incredible. They gave to a cause they believed in. There was absolutely no expectation of financial gain.
I think the reason the bitcoin community can at times seem like a religion is that bitcoin causes you to consider things beyond your own material gain. Contrary to Nic’s notion that hodlers are sitting around waiting for their big payday so they can lord it over everyone, I think bitcoin awakens a sense of morality and a concern for the unfair financial system most humans live under. People like Alex Gladstein and Anita Posch instilled in me a desire to help those less fortunate than I am. They opened my eyes to the human pain caused to the developing world by organizations like the World Bank and the I.M.F. If that's religious, so be it.
I looked into Nic Carter's personal investments and those made through Castle Island Ventures. There's not a word about any charitable projects or initiatives. He doesn’t have grandiose notions about bitcoin changing the world. He sees bitcoin as one of many tools. Nic worked for Fidelity. He’s a venture capitalist. That is his world. Maybe his perception is shaped by the way he makes a living. I’m not judging here. There’s no right or wrong answer. Only time will tell what the future holds. He’s been involved longer than me, despite the fact that I’m much older than he is. He embraces bitcoin and “crypto” and “blockchain”, whatever he wishes to call it, but he makes his living with fiat finance. That’s his training. He enjoys the cantillon benefits. He thinks that fractional reserve banking is good, and to see it as fraud is “stupid”. His investments are funded by the U.S. financial system. He is one of the elite. His dad works at the World Bank. To bring this up is not an attack on his father. I’m happy to hear the senior Mr. Carter likes bitcoin. It just shows perspective. Nic Carter is not a pleb, hoping to break even soon on his .014 btc holding. But the Securities and Exchange Commission, the referee that governs his playing field, has got him upset.

MoonPay

I did find a possible reason why Nic might be a little on edge. One of the companies in Castle Island Venture's portfolios is Moonpay, an exchange that offers the average investor the opportunity to buy over 80 cryptocurrencies, including those now declared securities by the S.E.C. If this company rings a bell, it's because it was responsible for the IOTA hack.
MoonPay's partners include Binance and Trust Wallet.
MoonPay is known for being easy to use for new investors. One of the downsides, though, is that it lacks basic trading tools that would help investors make more informed trades, like stop limits or market orders. MoonPay's transactions are opaque to the user. It is also known for having some of the highest transaction fees in the industry.
Nic Carter is an educated guy. He holds an MSc in finance and investment from the University of Edinburgh. He knows all about the Howey test. He knows all about trading unregistered securities. He knows the S.E.C. will be taking a look at MoonPay.
Castle Island also has many other investments that may raise a few eyebrows. According to its website, it is a “venture capital firm focused exclusively on public blockchains.” Evaluate is a site for trading nfts across blockchains and marketplaces. Many of these blockchains either are or will soon be deemed unregistered securities. Within Castle Island is a company called flipside, which provides blockchain data for “all leading protocols’. Soon there may no longer be a need for this data.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of Gary Gensler. I still have my own questions about him and his cozy relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried. If there's any truth to the allegations that he was involved in a recent short sale related to the cases brought against Binance and Coinbase, I would be happy to see him investigated. But, Nic Carter asserts that the S.E.C. is over reaching. The Howey Test was established by the U.S. Supreme Court for a good reason. Through the registration process disclosures are made. Funding sources are revealed. Details of pre mines would see the light of day. The ICO scams that Nic Carter surprisingly brings up himself in the tweet involve many coins he is indirectly shilling. Solana comes to mind. There are many more.
I don't know where all this leads. I don't imagine the S.E.C. is finished investigating U.S. exchanges. When the dust settles, the blockchains that Castle Island Ventures invests in may no longer exist, or may be greatly diminished in usage and value.
Perhaps Nic Carter can be forgiven if he's a little anxious.
Great post.
Lot's of people were myopic, and never asked: *why would the current President, who chooses the SEC chair, magically replace Gensler with a person using a monkey avatar? I never understood the calls for Gensler's head. We've lost nothing in the current crypto regulation landscape except a shitload of bad actors, from Mashinky and Fried, to CZ and Bitzlato. Hangman Gensler has quite a few victories to hang his hat on. Most products showed they had no value, and even less decentralization; cease and desist and a phone call proved to be viable enforcement strategies by the S.E.C. And If they had no decentralization, they were companies, that should be regulated like every other company.
Nic bet the fast-looking horses, belly-flopped amongst his VC circle, and burned his reputation amongst a nasty twitterX base he helped build, who he knew loved tar and feathers. Now he's lashing out with big words, long denials, and misplaced blame. The denial phase still. How many original bitcoiners have I seen go down like this? Richard Heart was one of the best (most don't know this) before his satanic fall into HEX shitcoinery.
I think Nic has a lot of valuable things to say still, he just needs to grow up. Would love to read some thoughtful stuff by him. And that nasty X crowd... he might need to do what Andreas Antonopolous (prolly spelled that wrong) did. Leave. Help build an Umbrel. Write an O'reilly.
jmho
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Thanks. That was an incredible reply.
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He was right and got convinced by scammers that he was wrong. Now he's butt hurt and wont admit it
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Indeed this seems to be the correct reading here. The Nic from 3 years ago was talking on a podcast episode titled "Altcoins, A History of Failure".
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There might be a small itch in this brain that says "maybe the maxis were right all along", and he can't stand it. It's probably not easy to admit you were wrong, when you're as smart as Nic. I mean, by now, everyone knows most of crypto is a scam and blockchain just a buzzword.
Very nice write-up.
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Thanks, that's a great article.
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Thank you for this fantastic link. I have never seen this article. I read it quickly once, but I'm going to read it again. I've been thinking about a lot of this stuff lately.
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Good job Siggy. Perverse incentives are the story of the rise and fall or fall and rise, if you go by his account, of the Nic Carter star.
Once the remainder of "crypto" implodes guys like Nic and Brian Armstrong will return to Bitcoin and let us all know they are here to save it.
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Very well written. Before all this Nic was shy his first podcast was with Marty Bent in the early days of TFTC. Has an incredible mind but maybe a little too emotional with everything going on. If BTC was still in a bull market approach 300k would he still feel this way? It is hard to say. I think Nic is still a good guy just caught up in this social media hellscape we find ourselves in
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I suspect what you say is correct.
I have some empathy for him as I imagine he has been threatened online, probably many times, and understandably blames one or two very influential Bitcoiners for that.
But he appears to want to imply that maxis, or those that promote bitcoin and nothing else, are a generally toxic bunch of overly pious moralizing hypocrites. That, I can’t get on board with.
Bitcoiners are obviously one of the most ethical, principled groups out there.
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His twitter thread was full of lies like you outlined about "maxis beeing new comers" or "Binance and Coinbase being the best unboarding companies for Bitcoin" and many other lies of this kind which may sounds like kind of true in the ears of some triggered shitcoiners, but are dumb takes in reality.
This guy is so arrogant, easily triggered and dishonest these last few years, that I'm wondering if he is not totally loosing his shit and being depressed or something.
If Bitcoin is a cult, this guy Nick didn't studied closely enough the fiat system in which each of us is so deeply indoctrinated that many don't want to even think about maybe being in the wrong. The Nation States systems (basically socialism), amplified with fiat money by orders of magnitude is the most dangerous and insidious cult that we are facing right now and this "not so smart" Nick (IMO) doesn't want to even think about it.
He gets angry when one shows him the evidences. This is what I call being in a cult. When the evidences are put under your nose and then you react violently, attacking the person who try to help you see the truth.
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Lately he is crying harder than my new born daughter at 3 am.. I'm exhausted.
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Congratulations! You will miss those days. My daughter turned 22 a week ago. It goes fast.
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Nice breakdown I appreciate the effort you put into this 👏🏻
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nobody needs to forgive anyone here. Just stacks sats, ignore the noise.
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even free banking can be fractional reserve. lets be clear: bitcoin is not an expression of full reserve banking.
and this is what i think bitcoiners increasingly fall victim to: an all-encompassing world view that does not allow for deviation and excludes everyone disagreeing with topics that have absolutely nothing to do with bitcoin as technology.
by arguing points like these: he doesnt do charitable work, he works in VC etc. well, its a self defeating argument, because it argues strictly from arbitrary moral standard. no different from people saying bitcoin is morally repulsive. same thing.
meanwhile, everyone seems to not be irritated by the fact that a religious person argues for secular movements to be stomped out, which is the actual controversial opinion he has. shrug.
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It's times like these when people who are by default named an "authority" in the Bitcoin-sphere should learn when to just... shut... the... fuck... up.
It's obviously a lesson that the "smart" guy still hasn't learned.
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Interesting, his latest episode on What Bitcoin Did was #666.
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He knows he fucked up and is coping.
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Whats really fascinating and troubling to me is Nick used to be staunchly bitcoin only, and he was one of the most well spoken normal seeming bitcoin people that we had. He was very relatable, very articulate, and was just a good proponent. So good, and so consistent, for such a prolonged period, that he kind of became the guy id tell people to look up if they asked me to recommend them bitcoin content.
Thens suddenly about 2 months after I started doing that, Nick Carter went from being staunchly bitcoin only, to suddenly being profoundly alt coin focused and resentful of bitcoin. It was a stark change, sort of inexplicable. He went from being very bitcoin focused, to saying bitcoin focus was childish and dumb basically or something to that effect. It was really quite remarkable.
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I wasn't aware of this until I saw @energycurrency 's reply here. I took at face value his claims that he was never a bitcoin only advocate. Kind of crazy
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Lol, what a waste to have empathy for a parasite like Nic
Only without a Bitcoin or Nostr world do such useless+harmful people come up at all
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I was thinking he is smart until I realized that he completely missed LN and invested in ideas which already existed around LN for a while.
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he didn’t “completely miss LN”, Castle Island led the latest round for Mash and Nic is on the board.
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Mash is not the first in LN space. And you could remember from your podcast with Kollider that NC also participated there. This is better example to me.
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one more reason why he didn’t “completely miss LN”
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To be precise I unsubscribed from Castle Island podcast around 2021 when realized that they do not talk about interesting things happening in Bitcoin, including LN.
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To be precise I unsubscribed from Castle Island podcast around 2021 when realized that they do not talk about interesting things happening in Bitcoin, including LN.
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Indeed, a very nice write-up. A lot of detail I had no idea about before this. Thanks.
I listened to a podcast with Nic as a guest just a few days before his rant. At the time, I had known about him for some time - and even what he looked like - but not much more. I don't recall the podcast mentioning maxi's at all, but somehow I still perceived him as somewhat maxi himself. Of course, his rant a few days later solidly debunked that perception.
Feels a bit Streisand-like that I know know so much more about his journey.
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I think he actually was bitcoin focused for a long time but one day he definitely changed.
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Hi,
I read your piece and I really liked it
you mind if we publish it on BitcoinNews.com, mentioning your credentials and name ?
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Bingo. These guys are basically building their profile. Nic Carter is a Bloomberg guest, these Twitter crypto 'celebs' aren't alternative outsiders, they're very much insiders.
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