I&#x27;ll offer a controversial explanation: bitcoin enthusiasts have exhausted most of the oxygen in the room with regard to rational bitcoin discussion.<p>The never-ending adulation of bitcoin as the greatest invention since the internet, the hyperbolic claims that bitcoin will do things like revolutionize payments, end global war, eliminate the need for banks, liberate the people from bondage, the litany of bitcoin and blockchain companies making extraordinary claims while consistently under-delivering or outright scamming customers, the warped world-view where communities of impoverished people who can barely meet their daily needs and have markedly poor computer literacy and limited access to computers and internet will be lifted out of poverty by banking with bitcoin, the constant dismissal of bitcoin skeptics as &quot;not understanding&quot; bitcoin, the self-aggrandizing elevation of satoshi and bitcoin programmers as programming prodigies, the condescendingly absurd notion that detractors, the banks and the governments are <i>afraid</i> of bitcoin or afraid of the bitcoin money revolution, the tone-deaf advocacy of bitcoin as a safer method of payment than credit cards, the general refusal to acknowledge bitcoin&#x27;s practical challenges as real problems (non-technical people being scammed or permanently losing their money due to data-loss, theft, misconfiguration of software, sending bitcoin to the wrong address, downloading a scam wallet), the oversaturation of the underwhelming &quot;x but with bitcoin&quot; formula that pops up every couple weeks... and much more.<p>As heated, vitriolic and personal as linux discussions can get, its taken for granted that everyone is at least operating in the same objective reality (systemd vs upstart, gnome vs unity, mir vs wayland, even windows vs linux), but a large swath of bitcoin enthusiasts look at bitcoin as something that eclipses every other technical topic in importance to the point where it comes off as quasi-religious.