Chapter 2 and 4 have some recycled and some fresh anti-bitcoin takes from the yuppygeist. They pretty thoroughly scratch the surface. Of the criticisms they get directionally right, they amount to "bitcoin doesn't achieve theoretical perfection in this XYZ thing, and I don't know enough to understand it's way closer to theoretical perfection than alternatives, so it doesn't work at all." One of my personal favorites shows up: it's centrally controlled by a few whales, miners, and blackrock - and its only use case is illegal activity.
You can see them back-reasoning from "bitcoin is bad," not unlike many bitcoiners back-reason from "bitcoin is good," yet they put diffuse effort into finding what they probably thought were steelmen at least.
We need more money literacy. Bitcoin is impossible to understand without it.
We need more money literacy. Bitcoin is impossible to understand without it.
Agreed, or maybe we need to do better on the literature. Now that TBS is finally declared dead (#1058251), there's space for something more than just Broken Money. Something positive, something visionary.
Silly idea: Maybe we can crowdsource a new, better book (or books) on SN? We definitely have skilled writers here, and great minds.
There might be enough content out there already and one could get 80% of the way there by curating them in one place.
Either way, the hard part is motivating people to want to learn about money. Learning is not a great marketing angle. Maybe we can get Sydney Sweeney to make the videos.
If you can get a student to want to understand something, most of the work is done. So when I look at school, I can't believe how badly structured it is, because the idea is effectively to threaten you into learning something. That's not going to make it stick, it's not going to make you want to learn more.
So my feeling is that you want to create a desire in the student to understand the thing, then your work is pretty much done, then it's like play.
So I wonder if there's a game out there where you can learn about money in a fun way.
There might be enough content out there already and one could get 80% of the way there by curating them in one place.
I thought about this for 20 seconds while I was typing above comment and my mind went to curating into a nostr-git. That gives editing transparency and could set a nice standard of using freedom tech.
Maybe we can get Sydney Sweeney to make the videos.
Better than my idea to just copy what works: the mentioned "Margot Robbie in a bubble bath" from Ch 1 of the OP, haha.
It's ironic that one of the legitimate criticisms of chapter 2 is that Wall St. now owns and deals in bitcoin. Well yeah, if you wait 15 years on the sideline you're eventually going to get passed by. This is like the stick in the bicycle meme.
And what about those terrible, horrible traditional financial institutions that bitcoin was supposed to do away with? Well, a bunch of them have joined the party too. For example, the financial giant BlackRock (we’re talking more than $11 trillion with a “T” of assets under its management) started offering a bitcoin exchange traded product in 2024, making it much easier for people to invest in bitcoin.
Bitcoin is valuable because it is useful as a form of money. Money needs to maintain a relatively stable value, but the stability we prize in money is no good for an investment where the appeal lies in its ability to become more valuable. As the Brookings Institute’s Tonantzin Carmona has painstakingly explained, bitcoin can’t be both money and an investment. Pick one. Better yet, pick neither.
You can't be both a child and an adult at the same time so humans don't exist.
Broken Money. Something positive, something visionary.nostr-git. That gives editing transparency and could set a nice standard of using freedom tech.