Inspired by another stacker post about Coldcard vs Seedsigner, if you are not aware of the incentives at stake behind a narrative, then you are likely to fall for the propaganda.
Here is a great entertaining talk by @giacomozucco at the Unconfiscatable Conference in 2022. It goes into detail about the various subcultures that have emerged within the Bitcoin community and how they have influenced the development (I have linked the podcast1 and article2 mentioned in the video introduction). Even Giacomo is likely to have bias with any investment he is part of.
It also makes me think of certain narratives that you come across when you first enter the Bitcoin space. What is not obvious at the time, are the biases behind these marketed narratives.
Privacy bias
Samourai vs Wasabi is one that is easy to fall for. Both are competing companies with shared incentives. I think their main tactic, similar to the political system, is to attack each other to create a kind of paradigm that is presented to you, in that these two options are the only way you can achieve privacy on Bitcoin. You're being handed a narrative and the bounds within which you can argue about it. Then you are accepting the narrative and picking a side which is complete with in-group preferences and jokes and a feeling of moral superiority over those dirty 'others' that picked option number two.
This exists everywhere.
I know these privacy products serve a purpose, but for these companies, their whole business model relies on Bitcoin Layer 1 transactions and they collect the whirlpool fees. You wouldn't wanna lose that, so a bias emerges. Layer 2 solutions like Lightning are attacked, as this would take away market share, even though a good level of privacy can be achieved there.
Lightning bias
Lightning also falls prey to false marketing because of speculative invested interests. It seems we are heading toward the LSP model for Lightning, where wallets will collect fees for channel management, routing etc. - What happened to instant, free payments?
A lot of VC backed Lightning businesses get a pass because it's 'for the greater good' but if another venture for another Layer 2 protocol comes along they're called a scammer. The whole space seems to have a sort of controlled narrative floating around it and it does seem to be steering us away from those Cypherpunk ethos -
From the user point of view, trusting third-party custodians like MtGox, instead of bothering to learn private key management, is convenient, but fragile. Trusting tax-lawyers and security guards to protect us from legal confiscation and casual kidnappings, instead of bothering to learn privacy best practices (Tor, CoinJoin, UTXO management, KYC-avoiding, etc), is convenient, but fragile.
From the developer or provider perspective, trust and centralization are obviously easier to monetize (how do you charge for open source, decentralized, trust-minimizes protocol?). But again, they are fragile. 2
Do you see any other biases in Bitcoin?
Nothing will be perfect, and it's important to recognize there are no panacea solutions - only solutions with inescapable trade-offs. I think it can be dangerous to label yourself and be placed in a certain culture camp when it comes to Bitcoin. You need to be adaptable and expose yourself to challenges. The more options you have, the more freedom you have to respond to unforseen circumstances, and the less fragile you are to sudden events...
Become ungovernable with unconfiscatable property.