{"id":76760,"date":"2026-03-18T13:46:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T13:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=76760"},"modified":"2026-03-18T13:46:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T13:46:40","slug":"crypto-isnt-a-cult-why-vanity-fairs-true-believers-piece-misses-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=76760","title":{"rendered":"Crypto Isn\u2019t A Cult: Why Vanity Fair\u2019s \u2018True Believers\u2019 Piece Misses The Point"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A recent Vanity Fair piece painted a cartoonish profile of what they called \u201ccrypto\u2019s true believers\u201d, framing long\u2011time participants as cultish die\u2011hards who won\u2019t admit the dream is over.<\/p>\n

\"Crypto\"<\/p>\n

Crypto: \u201cThe Most Expensive Religion In The World\u201d<\/h2>\n

Dim lights, deep contrast shadows, rich jewel tones, animal print, bright colored suits and a decadentism-old money aesthetic. That\u2019s the depiction of Vanity Fair\u2019s \u201cCrypto\u2019s True Believers\u201d: a group of overdue-old Hollywood ingenuos people that refuse to accept that they have fallen out of grace. A festival of banality and naivety led by capricious people throwing a \u201ctantrum\u201d after living a maximalist-multimillionaire lifestyle that would make Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan blush.<\/p>\n

Related Reading: Crypto Donations Branded \u2018Dangerous\u2019? UK Security Panel Urges Immediate Ban<\/a><\/p>\n

Even worse: the \u201czealots who are holding the line\u201d, as the hit piece calls them, are condescendingly framed as cult members in a way that would make Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum\u2019s co-founder, raise his arms in desperation: this portrayal, the entire piece, is everything that he has been tirelessly warning against<\/a> \u2014 a fact that the article itself, without any sense of self-awareness, is gracious enough to acknowledge.<\/p>\n

\"Crypto\"<\/p>\n

As if the pictures weren\u2019t enough, the captions take matters to the next level: from \u201cthe bitcoin playboy\u201d and \u201cthe couture evangelist\u201d to \u201cthe build-a-bear and the product mommy\u201d: the followers of the \u201csixth asset class\u201d are the successors of Satoshi Nakamoto\u2019s original \u201chyper online\u201d followers.<\/p>\n

Despite acknowledging that the implosion of Lehman Brothers took with it \u201cthe myth of institutional security\u201d for the entire world, Vanity Fair depicts the \u201cearly believers\u201d of Bitcoin\u2019s White Paper as \u201ccypherpunks on message boards, creating their own echo chamber and convinced that cryptography could do what regulators never would: redistribute power\u201d. A cyberpunk caricature of a rightfully disillusioned generation looking for a different way to rebuild a world that had just collapsed on top of them, crushing their dreams and ambitions with it.<\/p>\n

The article positions itself as the \u201cserious\u201d view of crypto from the traditional media bubble, implicitly antagonizing and directly mocking the plead of the subjects they depict to be taken seriously: what could be serious about them, the degen-extravaganza champions? Why anyone could still care about the crashes, frauds, and regulatory crackdowns of these out of touch group of crypto aristocracy?<\/p>\n

\n

Devin Finzer cited unfavorable market conditions as the reason for the delay of $SEA<\/a> yet flaunted this kind of lifestyle in the Vanity Fair article titled \u201cCrypto\u2019s True Believers Demand to Be Taken Seriously\u201d that released on the same day<\/p>\n

We are not a serious industry \"\ud83d\ude2d\" pic.twitter.com\/olXPf6itgb<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 JBond (@jbondwagon) March 18, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Community Takes A Rightful Stand<\/p>\n

For obvious reasons, the piece triggered immediate backlash on social media X from builders, founders and on\u2011chain governance people. One of them is Dennison Bertram, Tally\u2019s founder, who argues that the problem is way bigger than \u201cjust another hit piece in a long line of forgettable nonsense\u201d: it\u2019s the angle, the choice to depict all crypto people like \u201cdegen\u201d stereotypes.<\/p>\n

Legacy outlets keep interviewing the same people, some users on X claimed, instead of people who actually shipped protocols, standards, and tooling for billions in on\u2011chain value: media loves \u201cdegen\u201d archetypes because they\u2019re clickable, but that lens erases the serious, boring, resilient parts of the ecosystem that are actually making a real impact in the world.<\/p>\n

\n

I was a fashion photographer for over a decade before crypto. I worked for magazines like @ELLEmagazine<\/a> @marieclaire<\/a> @Cosmopolitan<\/a> and brands like @LouisVuitton<\/a> @gucci<\/a> and more.<\/p>\n

The Vanity Fair article was a setup to mock crypto and those it depicted. pic.twitter.com\/vGOiKhwrVj<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Dennison (@DennisonBertram) March 17, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On his X\u2019s thread, Bertram analyzes each picture through the lenses of someone who worked as a fashion photographer for over a decade before crypto. With this authority, Bertram argues that not only is the article mean spirited, but photographer Jeremy Liebman\u2019s work \u201cis a deliberate work of mockery\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

The article is a hit piece, the writing and photography a work of deep distain and mockery.<\/p>\n

You can be mad at both the subjects for their naivety to sit for such a caricature, and @VanityFair<\/a> for their mean spiritless.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it\u2019s just another hit piece in a long line\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Dennison (@DennisonBertram) March 17, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The takeaway of all of this seems to be that if you\u2019re going to write that crypto is dead, at least talk to the people still shipping code, running DAOs, maintaining testnets and governance forums every day.<\/p>\n

\"Bitcoin,<\/p>\n

Cover image from Perplexity, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent Vanity Fair piece painted a cartoonish profile of what they called \u201ccrypto\u2019s true believers\u201d, framing long\u2011time participants as cultish die\u2011hards who won\u2019t admit the dream is over. Crypto: \u201cThe Most Expensive Religion In The World\u201d Dim lights, deep contrast shadows, rich jewel tones, animal print, bright colored suits and a decadentism-old money aesthetic. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-76760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}