Tribalism is rampant in the crypto-community. Ten years ago, there was Bitcoin . Today there is Bitcoin and everything else, the latter popularly known as altcoins. The first among these altcoins is Ethereum . However, Ethereum has long been the target of ridicule and criticism, with its co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, often the subject of much trolling.

The level of speech in the ecosystem and crypto-tribalism was recently decried by Buterin after sharing screenshots of an article that examined the group / non-group dynamics of World War II. The article in question argued that for German Nazis during World War II, the Japanese were the unexpected group while the German Jews were the outside group, despite the fact that they had more cultural and linguistic similarities with the latter .

Citing the same thing, Buterin hinted that Ethereum was the German Jews of the German Nazis of Bitcoin and Japan of Tron .

For the moment, let us leave aside the questionable nature of these historical comparisons and examine them objectively and singularly.

As noted at the start, Ethereum has long been the target of a lot of trolling, which is not helped by the fact that its long-awaited plans for ETH 2.0 seem to be constantly bogged down in delays. The Bitcoin remains the most important cryptocurrency market, its supporters and developers often have an overwhelming influence on the general discussions on the Crypto market.

Tron , however, is a curious case. A blockchain-based platform that aims to build the infrastructure for a truly decentralized Internet, Tron has long been touted as the " Ethereum killer ", even by CEO Justin Sun, who has also claimed in the past that it was “100% faster than # ETH .”

Ethereum killer - This is a crucial advertisement since Tron has more in common with Ethereum than   Bitcoin  . Tron , therefore, is openly antagonistic to Ethereum , a blockchain that he may view as a rival and competitor, when he is happy to join the Bitcoin folks to drag Ethereum and members of his community. This satisfies the “ strategic alliance ” part of the article cited by Buterin.

Here, the keyword is " ego strat " because many Bitcoins ridicule Ethereum are often those who subscribe to the maximalist school of thought under which Bitcoin is the only, true cryptocurrency to rule them all. Sh * tcoins - the term that many of these guys use to refer to the market.

Aside from references to Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings, the fact that these people allied with Tron for the sole purpose of pursuing Buterin and Ethereum confirms what the co-founder of Ethereum was trying to say with his analogies questionable.

It is the state of crypto-tribalism in the community in a microcosm. For many, the blockchain and cryptocurrency they believe in and support are the Bible. The community is no longer a breeding ground for flourishing ideas and discourse. Long gone are the days when some people thought that cryptocurrencies and blockchains with different use cases could coexist. Instead, this is largely due to overbidding and social popularity, where every blockchain project must have had the last word to "win".

Watch how these projects use emojis. For now, Bitcoin, Binance Coin, Crypto.com Coin and Tron are the only ones getting a Twitter emoji. Ethereum doesn't have one and suddenly being the biggest altcoin in the world isn't enough. For many, including those who tend to "Tron> Ethereum ", having an emoji is the gold standard. At the other end of the spectrum, the fact that Tron and the others had to pay Twitter for emojis supports those who argue that projects like   Tron   only work on marketing and hype.

You see, crypto-tribalism was already bad, long before Buterin made matters worse with the analogy he presented. Not only has he proven Godwin's law which says that as an online discussion grows longer, the likelihood of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1, but that has not done much -something to dispel the idea that the co-founder of Ethereum is triggered too easily.

Although he later clarified that there was “certainly no intention of making a comparison with the genocide”, the damage was done.