The r / bitcoin subreddit now has more than 2 million users. Something new just born from the combination of social networks and technologic entrepreneurship.
A massive wave of new subscribers is rocking the Bitcoin subreddit. In just one day, there was an increase of 100,000 subscribers, gathering a total of more than 2.2 million users. Reddit communities have been receiving more attention and interest since a group of astute Reddit users outpaced Wall Street short bettors last week in the situation that went viral worldwide.
The Bitcoin sub-forum on Reddit added more than 220,000 subscribers over the past week, becoming one of the fastest-growing subreddits, according to metrics from the FrontPageMetrics.com site. One hundred thousand of these new users joined the platform in one single day.
The community of r / WallStreetBets (WSB), responsible for starting the whole movement around GameStop, registered more than 5,000 subscribers in less than a week.
This interest in actions or the GameStop effect seriously impacted the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which is visible when their communities grew and consolidated their Reddit spots. In addition to r / bitcoin, among the fastest growing in the last seven days are r / dogecoin (383,889 new users), r / ethtrader (375,148) and r / SatoshiStreetBets (176,730).
The massive response of users on Reddit appears to be a digital manifestation that the world is at odds with the traditional financial system and the measures that the public administration of nations takes. Many of them allow the issuance of dollars to flow directly to large corporations and not to citizens.
The Gamestop case is an example of the union between social media, a pessimistic situation like this pandemic confinement, and technologic entrepreneurship. There are still dark specters of this situation; some say that it is a more transparent way of investing or a new way of setting prices, all with less government intervention.
The Decentralization of Finance and its Relationship with Reddit and Bitcoin
While the Bitcoin sub-forum has seen recent growth thanks to the GameStop phenomenon, it is also important to mention that the pioneer cryptocurrency is not allowed on the WallStreetBets forum. “Your anti-crypto bot is annoying. You can’t even post GBTC… which is a Wall Street investment. Imagine,” mentioned a user on r / bitcoin.
There is not much acceptance in the bitcoin community about what happens in the WallStreetBets forum. At least, that is what several users are currently commenting about the incident.
Many users don’t think it’s a good idea to think of bitcoin as a short investment; they even believe that putting such cryptocurrency in that position is insulting. For this reason, in a recent post, a user posted a warning aiming at new members: “Leave your WSB autism at the door.” The statement received massive support, with more than 1,000 reactions and 118 comments.
By: Jenson Nuñez
