If you have ever dared to direct criticism at the world of crypto, the chances are you will have received some charming rebukes. You are likely to have been told to “have fun staying poor” as you’re “never gonna make it”; your criticisms have probably been dismissed as mere “FUD” (fear, uncertainty and doubt); and you may well have been informed that you are in fact nothing more than a “salty no-coiner”. But there is another slightly more sophisticated flavour of counter-criticism finding its way into my inbox with increasing regularity these days. It usually starts with something designed to appease — some kind of agreement that crypto is immoral, a scam, or some version of a Ponzi scheme. But then it quickly changes course, to explain that none of this applies to bitcoin.

Bitcoin, the bitcoiners tell me, is not crypto. And, you understand, crypto bad, bitcoin good. Very very good.

“Bitcoin is a lifeline for so many people around the world,” one altruistic bitcoin holder said to me recently. “Please stop lumping it in with crypto, which is morally reprehensible.”