So it’s Burning Man time again, and this year one of the ‘art’ installations featured some prominent bitcoin logos. Well, you weren’t expecting physical bitcoins, were you? They’re just to impress no-coiners!
Burning Question
For anyone who doesn’t know, Burning Man is a yearly event in the desert and a global cultural movement.
At least, that’s the multiple choice answer you have to give before they let you buy tickets. The wrong answers: a music festival, a weeklong rave, and a curated commercial experience, are all just there to test how ‘Burning Man’ you really are.
Not everyone buys into this description, however:
They called it Burning Man because gluten intolerant rich white hipsters pretending to be hippies while doing drugs in the desert was too long.
— Sam Kalidi (@samkalidi) August 31, 2018
Burning Your Bra
To be fair, the ‘event’ is based on some noble principles. Ten of them. Kind of like a ten commandments for the flower-power generation, but imposed on a bunch of entitled Gen-X’ers.
The first of these is radical inclusion, and you’d have to be pretty socially and culturally inept to consider this a bad thing. Or a Trump/Brexit/’insert far-right European nationalist party here’ voter. However it has been suggested that Burning Man may talk the talk, but no longer walks the walk.
Burning a Hole in your Pocket
You can leave your currency (both fiat and crypto) at home because there’s none of that commercialist oppression at Burning Man. In fact, the only things that you can buy are ice and coffee… and one would imagine: iced coffee.
Instead, the event promotes a ‘gifting’ culture, distinct from a bartering culture, as you must expect no reciprocation of your gifting. Perhaps you could take along some bitcoin and ‘gift’ it to others to spread the good word. Although I’d imagine most of the attendees would already be well aware of the existence of cryptocurrency, consisting of a great many silicon valleys billionaires.
I guess it’s easy to be anti-capitalist when people have paid up to $1,200 each for a ticket.
Burning Sensation When You Pee
So what exactly was bitcoin doing at Burning Man? In some ways, it would seem to be a perfect match: power to the people; overthrowing big finance, etc.
Indeed, back in 2014 Burning Man organizers were happy to accept donations in bitcoin. Sadly today, though they still ask for donations, the option to donate bitcoin is no longer available.
So it seems that the bitcoin of today is also rejected by these faux-hippies as a tool of capitalism.
I mean, let’s face it, these are hardly very inspiring pieces of ‘art’, and as parasols, they are all but useless. Some have suggested that this is satirical, but I think that gives it too much credit.
Final Verdict: Trolling!
What do you think about bitcoin at Burning Man? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, reddit.com
The Rundown
