Bitcoin’s 2010s Nostalgia Problem—Here’s How to Fix It

Remember when Bitcoin was cheap, mining was done on laptops, and everyone thought it was just a phase? Those days are gone—but the crypto community keeps looking back. Here’s how to move forward.

1. Embrace the institutional wave

Wall Street owns the game now. ETFs, futures, and corporate treasuries aren’t going away. Fight it, and you’ll end up like those goldbugs still waiting for the dollar to collapse.

2. Build beyond ‘digital gold’

Store-of-value narratives won’t cut it anymore. Lightning Network, DeFi integrations, and yes—even ordinals—prove Bitcoin’s utility is evolving. Nostalgia won’t pay the bills (unless you’re selling merch to crypto tourists).

Face it: the 2010s were Bitcoin’s rebellious teen years. Now it’s grown up—and it’s wearing a suit. Whether that’s progress or tragedy depends on how badly you miss the ‘laser eyes’ Twitter era.

Bitcoin’s magic affected all sorts of people. “Mr Bitcoin,” a drug dealer who did business via Silk Road out of an internet cafe in Los Angeles, told the filmmakers:

“I think of it as a global thing when I’m on the computer — I’m doing business with the world. When I first heard about it, I was laughing about it. It took me a week to just even think about this for real…I mean, I’m not gonna lie — I get booty off this. I kind of like talking about this stuff with girls, like girls be like, ‘That shit is hot,’ and like, ‘You’re not on your street, and you got a little nerd knowledge; this is great.’”

But if nostalgia is really about severe homesickness, as Krauss suggests, then what is “home” in the Bitcoin context?

Watching The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, the answer is clear: our homes, literally.

The film starts with Daniel showing off his home mining setup — a handful of GPUs sprawled across a basic table in his basement. 

Then, as the film progresses and the mining difficulty rises alongside bitcoin’s price, he upgrades to some of the first ever ASIC rigs, still in his basement.

By the end, though, Daniel is forced to give up mining altogether, having been actively priced out during filming. “When I started, Bitcoin mining was a hobby for geeks, now it’s a big business. In order to continue mining and continue playing the game and be competitive and profitable, I would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on gear.”

“The 18 miners I ordered from Avalon never arrived and the units from Butterfly Labs took over a year to ship. By the time I got them, Bitcoin mining was so competitive that I would never be able to mine back all the coins I used to buy them. As my new units are arriving, I’m selling them for bitcoins to try to recoup what I can.”

Obviously, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle when it comes to bitcoin mining. The odds are stacked even further against home miners these days, and it’s questionable whether bitcoin’s initial low-fee feature was ever going to be sustainable with widespread adoption.

But if you’re nostalgic about Bitcoin from the early-mid 2010s, I’d offer two potential cures: go and use bitcoin as money — not an investment — and start tinkering around with open-source mining rigs. 
Aside from bringing Bitcoin back home, literally and figuratively, I hear they can be incredibly lucky.

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