I like the bitcoin/Macintosh parallel. Think about what people said about Mac users in the 80s and 90s: you're cultists (fair), a lunatic fringe uninterested in compatibility with mainstream systems (true), who pay more and get less (ouch). And yet... and yet..

Apple managed to sell the Mac as a cultural and political artifact, not just a piece of useful tech: Think Different.

Bitcoin, too, has political and cultural vibes – anti-authoritarian ones – and these drive adoption alongside Number Go Up or straightforward monetary utility.

Bitcoin is free and open-source software, I hasten to add, which is pretty much the antithesis of the Apple way (beautiful walled gardens). So I don't claim a perfect parallel here!

So why isn't bitcoin "the Linux of money"? Why draw a Mac comparison at all?

I'm not quite sure, actually. Maybe someone can help me think through this better. But something about the cult of Mac feels much closer to bitcoin fandom than does the high priesthood of Linux.