Why crypto should have listened to Dilbert

Scott Adams, author and creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, has passed away. However, the controversial illustrator’s work has lasting lessons for the crypto community.

Immediately following his death, fans of his work paid homage to his art and satire. But while many were aware of Adams’ life lessons about business, few knew enough about his crypto wisdom to heed his advice.

Not only did Adams address Bitcoin directly, he also frequently commented on the wider crypto space’s faults with pinpoint accuracy.

If the digital asset community had heeded the advice of Dilbert, they could have avoided many of the industry’s pitfalls.

Dilbert has been critiquing crypto since 2013

As early as April 20, 2018, Dilbert correctly forecasted disagreement about Bitcoin layer 2s, inscriptions, composability, and arbitrary data storage.

In the comic, Dilbert’s boss asked him to ponder, “I’m not an engineer, so this might be a dumb question… But why can’t we 3D print a blockchain and HMTL it into a Bitcoin?”

It was as profound a question to be asking in early April 2018 as it is today.

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In fact, Adams questioned the value of cryptocurrencies as far back as July 2013. That month, Dilbert addressed the ease with which people could create a new memecoin, forecasting, “Soon I will control all of the money in the entire world. Buwhahaha!”

His embedded critique of the endless supply of altcoins, and therefore the fundamental value of bitcoin itself, was a classic Dilbert lesson that preceded even Ethereum’s initial coin offering (ICO).

Consider another example. On July 9, 2022, Dilbert asked his colleague, “If you thought you were a genius for making a huge profit when your crypto assets went up… What do you think of yourself now that your crypto holdings are worth zero? Still genius?”

As Dilbert warned, the rags-to-riches-to-rags arc has become a quintessential crypto storyline.

Since Adams published that strip, members of the crypto community who personally rode this precise rollercoaster have been broadcasting their true stories of lost fortunes.

Although his formerly official website Dilbert.com doesn’t host all of his cartoons, Archive.org’s Wayback Machine has preserved several of his art pieces. X has also preserved dozens of Adams’ tweets about crypto.

For example, after FTX went bankrupt, Dilbert tried to highlight the lessons that the world should learn from the affable criminality of Sam Bankman-Fried.