Why does Bitcoin get more enduring criticism than other disruptive technologies such as the Internet? Simple: Bitcoin is not only a technology, it is an asset. There was no financial penalty for being late to the Internet. You just used clunkier, slower tech for longer. But if you're late to Bitcoin, you don't only have mild inconvenience you have to reconcile financial cost too. We saw the same pattern with investors who missed the tech boom and in particular early Amazon doubters The tweet below is a textbook real-time illustration of this at play, showing three psychological principles at play at once 1. Cognitive Dissonance 2. Sour Grapes Effect (a dissonance-reduction tactic) 3. Omission Regret 1. Cognitive Dissonance When two cognitions conflict such as “I am a smart” and “I passed on an opportunity that turned out to be enormously successful”, psychological discomfort arises. To reduce it, people don’t change their original decision or admit error. Instead, they seek/emphasize information that justifies the original choice. (Leon Festinger, 1957) 2. Sour grapes effect (Sjåstad et al, 2020) Principle: People disparage goals they failed to attain (“the grapes are sour anyway”) to eliminate the pain of missing out In this context: “I didn’t buy Bitcoin, therefore it must be worthless/wasteful/destined to fail 3. Omission Regret Regret from not acting (omission) is often felt more intensely than regret from a bad action. People cope by rewriting the narrative: the missed asset “was never that good.” (Ritov & Baron, 1995) Gizmodo’s “How Much Should I Regret Not Buying Bitcoin?” (2018) even frames it exactly this way for non-investors Keen's admission of the missed £10 BTC price is immediately followed by a list of long-standing objections that conveniently justify the non-decision. Bitcoiners will call it “saltiness,” but the underlying psychology at play is standard, peer-reviewed behavioral science. However, these are human frailties that can be overcome with higher self-awareness and lower ego. If the need to "be right" is reduced, then a person can become intellectually curious and re-appraise an asset. Indeed the ability to change one's mind is a defining aspect of feal intelligence. Keen may defend himself by trying to argue "the tech really is genuinely bad". But in stating that "Bitcoin uses a lot of energy per transaction" (a piece of misinformation that anyone who has spent 1 hour researching Bitcoin mining will know is untrue: Bitcoin energy use does not come from its transactions) he has lost the right to claim objectively that his criticisms come out of understanding. Rather, he has illustrated a huge asymmetry in that he has spent countless hours making videos against Bitcoin, but almost no time understanding the technology. In his tweet thread, you can also see a classic red-flag that rather than engage on an issue, he will level one (widely debunked) after another. Brandolini's law in action: it takes longer to debunk BS than to create it. Michael Saylor illustrated the possibility of this path.(Daniel Batten)