Seems like ego to me but I'm no expert on his work or his personality. That's just my gut reaction to reading his anti-bitcoin stuff and realizing he had a falling out with Saifedean. When I first read "The Bitcoin Standard" I couldn't believe that he wrote the foreward. First because I had no idea he even was a bitcoiner (Now I don't think he ever got it) and secondly because he was so wrong about it in the forward. Later I learned what happened with that.