Community-Initiated ‘Bitcoin Stackchain’ Exceeds $160K in One Week

by · July 26, 2022

The Bitcoin (BTC) community, or “plebs” as they are affectionately known, are a force to be reckoned with. They teamed up in less than seven days to stack over $160,000, or 7 BTC, in a “stackchain”.

The so-called stackchain, a portmanteau of blockchain (Bitcoin’s ledger) and stacking Sats (buying BTC), is a community-driven meme. The Investment Chain is derived from one man’s desire to express the idea that buying Bitcoin every day and doing Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) is essential to being a Bitcoiner.

ArizonanHodl, the Bitcoiner in question, told Cointelegraph that he would “eliminate all excuses” by posting a $5.00 buy. Here is the original tweet:

Bitcoin buyers from around the world supported the gesture. They took the idea by the neck and turned it into a movement. The community began stacking bets in increasing increments of $1.00 at a time. $5.00 became $6.00, $7.00, etc. until the total passed the $100,000 mark over the course of the Saturday weekend.

According to stackchain’s official GitHub (because of course it is an official GitHub), Derek Ross explains that stackchain is “just fun and shitposting with a little bit of Bitcoin lingo thrown in to make it funnier when we shitpost like we buy Bitcoin.”

However, the “bit of fun” grew exponentially. While the Arizonan had set a target of $10,000 for the bear market tomfoolery, within days the plebs had piled up a whole BTC, or $22,000 at the time of writing:

“At that point I thought people might think the goal was reached and lose interest, but the opposite happened. Plebs started FOMOing into the stack chain!”

On Monday, stackchain passed $150,000. Each “stack” is now well over half a thousand Norwegian kroner. The incremental amounts will soon approach four-digit purchases, and the hype surrounding the stack chain has caught the eye of Bitcoiners worldwide.

For those of humbler means, “stack joins,” or combined efforts by Bitcoiners working together to reach large Bitcoin purchases is possible. In addition, well-known Bitcoiners in the space, including Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan Bitcoin, have been in on the action:

Klipsten told Cointelegraph:

“#stackchain is classic Bitcoin Twitter – something fun, exciting, just a little bit competitive and great for Bitcoin.”

Behind the scenes, the stackchain core developers – a riff on the Bitcoin core developers – keep the stackchain in check. A Telegram group of stackchainers, called the Lightstack Network, helps the organization and shares memes. “We need fun too,” says ArizonanHODL.

The Telegram group also strives to avoid stackchain forking. A fork occurs when the stackchain Twitter thread splits and a stacker inadvertently “doubles the user.” An undesired result, the disguised stack can disrupt the orderly flow of stacks and thus must be merged into the stack and validated by “nodes.”

By the way, the Twitter thread has become so overloaded with stacks that Twitter servers reportedly break under the 1,000-long thread load. ArizonanHODL sums it up succinctly:

“The stack chain is actually pretty complicated, but these plebs made it look effortless and had fun doing it. It’s just so cool to be a part of.”

But why buy Bitcoin at all? Despite the price plunging from the meme-worthy $69,000 to $17,000, analysts suggest that the macro backdrop is forming a healthy bottom. Bitcoin, the asset, is a savings technology and remains the most effective asset in the last decade. ArizonanHODL that stacking bets isn’t just about money:

“I stack for so many reasons. I stack for fun. I stack for my mental health. I’m stacking for my future. I stack for my kids. I stack to defy central authority.”

In fact, undeterred by recent bearish price action, stackchain could rise to greater heights. At the time of writing, the cost to “mine” on the stackchain is approaching $600.