Also, I used to read their logs on IRC, and there was a guy called 'pankkake' (also in btctalk) who seems to have vanished.
I think its because they disagreed regarding the fork thing, so if anyone could share the light on his views, that'd be interesting too since I used to value his thoughts.

#bitcoin-assets is not a cult, but it is full of cults (that might qualify as “cargo cults”).

Cults that are poorly informed. The systemd debate (by people who never wrote an init script in their lives), or the bitcoin version debate (as it turns out, even though it was abundantly repeated, those old versions aren’t used, and don’t even sync without exploding) are just examples. I am largely unaffected by both debates, I easily can chose between all of those (and am currently running the luke-jr antispam patch on my nodes).

I’m not sure how to interpret http://trilema.com/2014/the-usg-wasted-another-hundred-million-dollars-it-previously-stole-from-average-hard-working-us-citizens-nobody-cares/ but this certainly sounds cultish. I don’t care if it is true or not, and I didn’t partake in this bet for many reasons. But this sounds like altering reality when it doesn’t fit your way, the socialist specialty. And it smells of bagholding; I wonder what would happen if BTC falls gain, will the price be “wrong”?

I left because I realized challenging cults would be fruitless, so would arguing about why I left (amusingly, a circular argument that works). It just smells too much of circlejerks and (lately) bagholding. I cut my losses (mostly not-financial, though the last weeks I was staying only because I was waiting for someone to buy my way out of MPIF). And I should have kept my mouth shut.

I also sold a significant part of my bitcoins (I planned to write about it on my blog, but real life issues make it unlikely). Bitcoin is way too full of idiots and evil people. Even though #bitcoin-assets stands out, it doesn’t mean it’s always right because others suck. Conversely, it’s not because fiat sucks that Bitcoin will crush it; fiat will just crush itself and there’s no clear winner yet.

I also don’t see any opportunities arising. The “project” I had went nowhere, and when I see what happened with the others, I’m glad it died early (though it was actually MP who stopped responding first, go figure). And with the focus of the Bitcoin “community” on all the wrong things, it would probably never have worked anyway.