Fourteenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Shawn Baker, one of the headline speakers for the 2024 Bitcoin Conference, the largest Bitcoin-centric conference in the world, is presenting on a topic that may, on the surface, seem irrelevant to the cryptocurrency cause: total carnivory. Baker, author of The Carnivore Diet, has found his following among a growing online community of self-described Bitcoin Carnivores who are dedicated to eating meat and using Bitcoin exclusively. Emphasizing anti-government, hypermasculine, and money-driven values, the dietary-meets-economic lifestyle this group promotes holds up an ideological framework where a liberated technological future motivates and makes possible a return to an idyllic (re: patriarchal) past. Bitcoin Carnivores see dietary, political, and economic choices as deeply and almost spiritually intertwined; they imagine both Bitcoin (with its finite supply and decentralized status) and meat (with its ties to the mythology of man as a naturally-born hunter) as valuable resources for achieving a level of primal “purity” not afforded by mainstream diets and currency systems. In this paper, we show how the Bitcoin Carnivore community’s conceptualizations of health and technology inform the group’s political and social perspectives and decision-making. Drawing on a collection of online videos, guides and forums dedicated to the meat- and Bitcoin-centric lifestyle, we discuss how technochauvinist attitudes (Braussard) and neoliberal rhetorics of health and wellness intersect to form the foundation of the Bitcoin Carnivore agenda.