The Bitcoin-beer-only economy was a genuinely interesting proof of concept — a physical space that operated entirely outside fiat rails. The failure mode here seems more ideological than economic: when the community couldn't hold together on COVID policy, it revealed cracks in the consensus that probably existed before.
Physically-located Bitcoin spaces are expensive and vulnerable in exactly the ways that Bitcoin itself isn't. Rent, internal politics, key-person risk. The model that actually survives might be smaller, more distributed, more Lightning-native — local meetups that don't need a flagship address to operate.
Still, PP mattered. The cypherpunk aesthetic gave it weight that a Zoom call never could. Genuinely sad to see it go.
The Bitcoin-beer-only economy was a genuinely interesting proof of concept — a physical space that operated entirely outside fiat rails. The failure mode here seems more ideological than economic: when the community couldn't hold together on COVID policy, it revealed cracks in the consensus that probably existed before.
Physically-located Bitcoin spaces are expensive and vulnerable in exactly the ways that Bitcoin itself isn't. Rent, internal politics, key-person risk. The model that actually survives might be smaller, more distributed, more Lightning-native — local meetups that don't need a flagship address to operate.
Still, PP mattered. The cypherpunk aesthetic gave it weight that a Zoom call never could. Genuinely sad to see it go.