Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cage describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave for their entire lives. All they can see is a blank wall and the shadows cast upon it from a fire burning behind them. They give the shadows names, believing them to be actual representations of the real world. One of the prisoners escapes from the cave and, having experienced the actual world, realizes that the shadows are not true representations of it. He returns to the cave to try and convince the other prisoners, but they don’t believe him because the shadows are all they have ever known. Bitcoiners are the escaped man.