[AstroDogCatcher]

I am mostly indifferent to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, but strongly opposed to people shilling for them. I see no evidence thus far for bitcoin being anything other than a vehicle for speculation; just one more form of gambling with the froth on top of our financial system, distracting people and diverting resources from actual useful activity.

[lowkey]

Curious, if we replace the word 'shilling' with advocating, and replace the word 'bitcoin' with another arbitrary technology, say Linux or Typescript, would you still be strongly opposed?

Tl;dr: are you strongly opposed to technology advocacy in general or are you simply anti-bitcoin?

[AstroDogCatcher]

I am mildly opposed to technology advocacy actually, but that is besides the point. Dev advocates are paid to market software and tools, and everyone knows their inherent bias and can factor it in when assessing their claims. When someone is pro-bitcoin, it is impossible to know whether they have a genuine interest in the technology (divorced from use-cases), a desire to see a new financial system come into being (regardless of the technical mechanism), some mixture of both, or if they have the literal definition of a vested interest like the dev advocate and just want to see their coin values increase for monetary gain. Most importantly, that final group get away with lying and other questionable behaviour because unlike with the paid advocate, there is no-one (ie an employer) to hold them accountable for their bullshitting.