When bitcoin bros* mourn the dead

Unconfirmed reports emerged over the weekend that Mircea Popescu, a notorious bitcoiner who founded the now-defunct and similarly notorious MPEx exchange, has drowned off the coast of Costa Rica. He was 41, according to the reports. FT Alphaville has not been able to confirm the news, but if correct, we offer our condolences to his friends and family.

Popescu was infamous for being “The Father of Bitcoin Toxicity”, and once wrote an exceptionally contentious essay (h/t David Gerard) on what “a woman’s job” should be (NSFW), in which — among other rogue ideas — he suggested one of the few worth female jobs (there are only four he deems women worthy of) should be to write a man’s eulogy. “The point of a eulogy is to use the surviving woman’s worthless body to pay homage to the very valuable, now extinct soul of the man,” he wrote. We wonder if there was a lovely lady in Popescu’s life who will right this minute be furiously typing away, fulfilling her life’s very purpose.

If you’d like to read more of this man’s insights, Bitcoin Magazine editor Pete Rizzo — formerly editor-in-chief of Coindesk — has kindly produced a Twitter thread containing his “favourite MP quotes”. They contain such gems as:

Bitcoin can kill all your friends, and all the people you respect… It can poop in your drink and rape your pets… If lightning strikes where you sit, whether you feel a warm cozy sort of love or the most burning hatred imaginable is strictly irrelevant – electricity stays.

Whatever you want to say about bitcoin, there’s no denying that the community propping it up is a very special one. And never at all macho or misogynistic or male-chauvinist.

But not everyone in the community took the reports of the death as an opportunity to remember the man.

For our old friend Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, this was just the latest in a string of never-ending bullish-for-bitcoin indicators. A bitcoiner’s death = number go up:

Pomp deleted the post shortly after posting it, after it was pointed out that maybe it was a touch insensitive. But he wasn’t the only one making the point:

It’s important to always remember that just because something might be bad or sad or awful or tragic in the real world, that doesn’t mean it’s bad or sad or awful or tragic in cryptoland. Everything is good for bitcoin. Death is a feature not a bug. RIP the people who still don’t get that (but don’t worry about the actual dead).

*Not everyone we deem a bitcoin bro identifies as such

Related links:
When bitcoin bros* talk money-printing – FT Alphaville
When bitcoin bros* talk renewable energy – FT Alphaville
When bitcoin bros talk cryptography – FT Alphaville 
When bitcoin bros talk finance – FT Alphaville
When bitcoin bros talk hard news – FT Alphaville 
When bitcoin bros talk digitisation – FT Alphaville