site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In its hayday, the crypto currency industry was a total wild west. Straightforward scams, pyramid schemes, whatever FTX was, the NFT craze. The end uses are to hide assets from the government and to conduct transactions which the government does not want you to conduct.

But this was when Biden was in office. And there was hardly any crackdown. FTX only failed under its own negligence. Of course, there was an increase of KYC/AML, but this is standard banking practice. It's no surprise crypto is no exception.

So in short, the threat that most crypto businesses in the US would be regulated out of existence seemed very real to me.

I disagree. Coinbase and other exchanges boomed in 2021 again when Biden was in office. The bust was due to the price collapsing in 2022 as part of the broader stagnation and rate hikes by a hawkish fed.

I agree there is more regulatory clarity, and more favorable regulation given the counterfactual under Kamala, hence why Bitcoin went up after trump won.

But the past 6 months has seen a worsening picture as Bitcoin falls and lag the QQQ , like today, last week, week before, etc . Trump has at best signaled indifference or apathy to the Bitcoin reserve...doesn't even talk about it. And his very own Treasury Secretary ruled out purchases, basically a huge disservice to those donors.

If I were a donor I would be mad that Trump has dropped the ball . Maybe some donors got their money worth with only the regulatory aspect and the initial Bitcoin price surge, but there are still three more years, and things do not look good. I still stand by my argument it's premature saying the donors "won". Yes, in Jan 2025 it seemed that way, but not anymore.