On Dumpers, Dying Ideals, and the Cost of Being Wrong

It’s pretty hard for me to address these ideas in my head without sounding a bit tactless.

I don’t mean to offend anyone, and I’m certainly not trying to play judge and jury. But I do wonder if my biases have been getting the best of me—and whether I’ve been wrong this whole time.

We tend to think—or at least, I tend to think—that it doesn’t really matter where users come from, or what their socio-economic background is. The idealist in me white-knuckles this idea. But if I’m being honest, I hold onto it because it feels right, not because I have any concrete evidence that it is.

We had a good conversation with @azircon the other day. A sobering one.

Unlike most Hive Thrive shows, the atmosphere wasn’t full of cheers or praise. And while I understand there’s no such thing as a perfect system—and I’m definitely not claiming I know how to fix Hive—it doesn’t mean I can ignore the points that were raised.

I described the situation as a pure catch-22.

Hive—and cryptocurrencies more broadly—are trying to solve the problem of money. That alone is a massive topic. But if you’re building an escape ramp out of a broken monetary system, then naturally, you attract people who need that escape the most.

And that creates a contradiction.

For any crypto project to grow in value, people need to buy and hold. But the very users we attract are often the ones who need to sell just to get by.

This isn’t a judgment. Everyone has their reasons.

It’s just an observation.

I bring this story up often because it cemented something in me years ago.

Back in the legacy days, I watched the value of my wallet collapse—from around ninety thousand dollars at its peak to less than five grand. It didn’t happen overnight, but it felt like it did.

And with that came the emotions.

The doubt. The regret. The quiet panic of realizing I might have made yet another bad financial decision for my family.

So, naturally, I went looking for someone to blame.

I started watching exchange wallets. Tracking movements. Trying to identify patterns.

“So-and-so is a dumper. Nobody should vote for them.”

Obsessive stupidity. I own that now.

There was one user in particular I remember. A good writer. A good person. She earned solid payouts—but powered everything down and sold it consistently.

At the time, she had earned far more than I had, yet still held just enough to remain a minnow.

I judged her for it.

Harshly.

I don’t remember exactly how I got off that train of thought, but I’m glad I did.

At some point, I realized that screaming into the void about “dumpers” wasn’t changing anything. It was just poisoning my own experience.

So I stopped.

Or maybe I just ran out of breath. (same difference, really)

Another SteemFest came and went.

I remember looking at the pictures—people laughing, celebrating—and feeling bitter.

“Look at them,” I thought. “Acting like everything’s fine while the platform is dying.”

Again, my own stupidity feeding itself. Letting the worst parts of me take the wheel.

Not long after that, I learned that one of those so-called “dumpers” had passed away.

The same person I had judged for selling everything… had been doing so to help cover medical treatment.

And even that wasn’t enough.

That one stayed with me.

How disgusting can I be? I thought.

How quick to judge.

What do I really know about anyone’s situation?

Nothing.

So how does this connect to now?

Well, if it’s true that we can’t make this work with grassroots users—regular people who will inevitably sell because life demands it—then I don’t understand how we solve the problem of money at all.

I really don’t.

I understand the need for investors. Without new buyers and stakeholders, there’s no floor—just a slow bleed.

But this idea that we can fix everything through culture shifts or financial education alone… it sounds nice. It really does.

It just doesn’t match reality.

Because life happens.

And when it does, your long-term plan doesn’t mean much.

So what’s the answer?

How do we flip the switch?

How do we create a sustainable economy that doesn’t drift toward the same centralization of financial and political power we claim to be escaping?

That’s the real question.

In Web2, for all the criticism we throw at it, the financial flow is clear.

Platforms sell access to users through advertising. Users become attention magnets, and some of them tap into that flow.