I guess it depends on how you define "startup." If it specifically means VC backed tech firms, sure, almost tautologically so. If not, well, I've been aware of dodgy ads for precious metals and coins and suchlike in the backs of magazines for as long as I've known how to read.

Hardly. The finance bros came from traditional finance based on fiat. That's where the majority of bilking still goes on. All of us using it as a currency since the start are still here. Sure, it's nice that it's worth over 9000 now but what matters to me is being able to send and receive money myself. Besides physical cash there's nothing like it.

And unlike other currencies this one doesn't require the energy expenditures of a full standing army or the diplomatic trades to enter into protection with someone who has one. Seen through that lens bitcoin is absolutely green.

> Hardly. The finance bros came from traditional finance based on fiat. That's where the majority of bilking still goes on.

I don't think that's a substantiated claim, but even if it were true, the lack of regulation in the *coin sphere made a fertile breeding ground for scammers from wherever they originated.

> but what matters to me is being able to send and receive money myself.

Yourself and billions of computing hours that could be doing stuff like protein folding or climate modelling.

> And unlike other currencies this one doesn't require the energy expenditures of a full standing army or the diplomatic trades to enter into protection with someone who has one. Seen through that lens bitcoin is absolutely green.

Are you suggesting that if not for fiat money then there would be no need for standing armies? Like we'd all just join hands: Russia would hand back Crimea, Pakistan and India would grant Kashmir independence, Iran and Saudi Arabia would realise they practice essentially the same religion, and the former states of Yugoslavia would hold the world's largest pancake breakfast? If not, then you can not attribute the environmental impact of maintaining militaries to fiat.

Maybe less tech startups, but im pretty sure a bunch of people popped up to bilk other people out of their money during the beenie baby craze.

I'm not sure if you're defending bitcoin or comparing people buying it to crazed beanie baby collectors. At least, nobody was talking about a beanie baby based financial system at the time - however adorable it may have been.

I don't think bitcoin should be entirely dismissed as a scam (its more complex than that), but if we're going to compare it to a scam (and there are definitely plenty of scammers in the bitcoin ecosystem), i think its important to remember that neither scams nor speculative bubbles are new to human history.

The important innovation of Bitcoin (and the like) was that it democratised the ability to scam. A band of techno-utopians created a technology (ideology?) that made it much easier and cheaper to empty the pockets of the gullible.

That's a pretty good comparison, because, like the energy and custom hardware thrown at bitcoin, beanie babies are also intrinsically useless at the scale they were sold.

Oh, there is lots of shady business happening around coins, not only but also gold coins ...

Consider pokemon cards as an alternative example to beanie babies.