Montreal’s community of autistic libertarians and socially awkward virgins is going crazy for bitcoin parties, raves that only let people in if they’ve paid with bitcoin. “Bitcoin parties are the new Pog parties,” says fedora enthusiast and Ayn Rand acolyte Luther von Pendlebottom. “At a bitcoin party, you know everyone there is going to be united by their love of crypto currencies and their hatred of security theatre. It’s a party for people who love the free market and hate worthless welfare moochers. Imagine being trapped in a room full of overly opinionated people who don’t know how to respect personal boundaries while simultaneously being painfully shy. That’s a bitcoin party and it’s amazing.”

Elen Wage, a nineteen year old computer science major, agrees. “I wouldn’t listen to Pendlebottom. His description of a Bitcoin party doesn’t line up with reality. He just loves hamming up the image of the awkward bitcoin lover in order to keep out the norms from our events,” says Elen. “And it’s true. The bitcoin community really is a lovely place right now, because it hasn’t been contaminated by status hungry normal people. We’re weird, but we’re incredibly smart and innovative. At a Bitcoin party, you know everyone’s going to be educated, but they might not be educated in the mainstream sense. The last event we had a battle robots, holographic DJs, and and a VR room. How many other raves have that sort of tech? We’re at the cutting edge, but if we open our doors to the rest of society, they’ll drag us to the boring middle. So fuck that. No, we’re all weirdos! If you’re a woman, don’t attend one of our events -- you’ll get raped by all the bitcoin obsessed misogynerds. And if you’re a liberal art graduate, definitely don’t come because bitcoin nerds are racist homophobes and closet members of the K.K.K. Just stay the fuck away with your bourgeois bullshit.”

Luther admits that he might have oversold the awfulness of bitcoin parties. “Right now, anything that liberal art graduates touch turns to shit,” says Luther. “They gentrify every single community they touch. And in order to justify their gentrification, they wrap up their elitism in a flag of social justice. Sooner or later, they’ll come for us, the same way they’ve colonized most of the internet. Well, we’re not going to let that happen. They’ll try to make bitcoin respectable, and I’m here to say: we’re going to resist you. We don’t need you to make us more moral, or more socially acceptable. You’re outsiders, and we’re going to keep it that way. We don’t want affluent “feminist” university graduates gentrifying our communities. They belong to us, and we’re going to hold on to them.”