One of the primary reasons I got involved with markets is my interest in psychology. Humans are a fickle bunch, and it's fascinating to observe the human condition in such a clear, mathematical way.
Over the years, I've noticed (and fell into myself) a few common psychological biases that many Bitcoiners can develop.
Maybe this short list can help uncover some biases in our own thinking, or help prevent newcomers from falling victim to them as well.
Confirmation bias
The big obvious one here.
Given our wide range of backgrounds, we all tend to preconceive our own vision for Bitcoin, and thus tend to argue with one another over what Bitcoin is.
Take Jason Lowery, for example. Whether you agree with his marketing tactics or not, he sure knows how to get a discussion going. He can rile up a crowd and let them do all the talking for him. His "vision" for Bitcoin is a controversial one for some, but he's dead set on his "vision" in the same way everyone else is.
Confirmation bias leads to block size debates, splits in the "community," tribalism among bitcoiners, etc. etc..
It's also why trading and technical analysis is basically just astrology. You can find whatever data you need to support your own thesis on where the market is going next.
Hindsight bias
Decisions from the past become a lot more clear as time passes on. You think you could've foreseen a certain outcome after the fact.
You feel like an idiot buying at the lows, only to feel like a genius months later when the price springs back upwards. You feel like a genius buying at all time highs with euphoria in the air, only to feel like an idiot months later when the price collapses.
Then as a real bitcoiner, you learn to feel like a genius simply buying anywhere at all.
Hindsight bias is a dangerous one and a tricky one to kick. You experience it because you try to predict rather than react. The less you dilute the future with your own ideas, the more obvious the future becomes.
I think reaction is an impulse bitcoiners have trained very well, and is why bitcoiners tend to be more accurate about calling out crypto scams and the macroenvironment. Prediction is why crypto bros are always so vague imo. They have their own idea of the future, but it's not all that fleshed out in reality. Alex Mashinsky once saw a "vision" for 7% risk-free interest for whole globe.
Train yourself to react rather than predict so you won't be shocked when your lending platform goes bankrupt, or when your beloved staking platform fails to scale sustainably.
Recency bias
Speaking of the future, bitcoiners sure do love to predict it. No denying that. As a bitcoiner, the future really does excite me, and Bitcoin has framed an entirely different perspective on how I see things developing moving forward.
But of course, we're all extrapolating the future with a limited data set.
We assume things are they are today will be the same in the future. It's hard to see beyond the current paradigm we live within, and it's even harder to ideate what new systems look like within a different paradigm.
I like this Michael Saylor interview because it really crystallizes this idea for me.
You can't understand money until you understand Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the first definition of what proper money should be. It just took thousands of years for humans to figure it out.
How that changes the future, given our brains' bias to fiatville, is probably quite more murky than most bitcoiners would like to admit.
This definitely isn't a comprehensive list, so please share any other common biases or weird psychological phenomena you've noticed among bitcoiners too!