In the age of sound bites, memes, and thirty second TikTok attention spans, it becomes increasingly difficult to recognize a major paradigm shift like Bitcoin. Unlike many things that can be expressed coherently, concisely, and quickly, real paradigm shifts take time and effort to dig deeper into the tectonic displacement. There is this unspoken expectation that if something cannot be explained immediately, then it is too premature to pay attention to or simply not worth investing more time researching. Steve Jobs is well known for his launch of the iPod with the, "thousand songs in your pocket" phrase which catapulted Apple. A perfect example of marketing and packaging. A simple explanation that resonated with millions.
People connect dots. Our brains are pattern recognition machines. To understand something quickly, it must connect with what is already known, and that by definition excludes Bitcoin. When people first hear about Bitcoin, it is frequently immediately connected to the concept of: yet another another investment, technology, or scam. And for many people, Bitcoin can remain in that pigeon-hole for a very long time. This gut reaction, or "thin slice", as Kahneman describes it, conceals the revolutionary impact that Bitcoin unleashed.
The irony is that you have to research Bitcoin deeply to clearly reveal the full scope of the problem that Bitcoin solves. The paradox here is clear. Why research something more deeply if you think you know what it is already? That's just a waste of time.
To add complexity to this phenomenon, Bitcoin has been lumped into the noisy "crypto" sphere filled with charlatans and scammers and even some benign but misguided useful idiots. This results in understandable trepidation touching Bitcoin because no one wants to be cheated of their hard-earned money and be made a fool.
To boil down the paradigm shift that Bitcoin represents, Satoshi Nakamoto, in his white paper said, "What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust"
Replacing trust with cryptographic proofs.
This is the profound breakthrough. This is the paradigm shift. A fully decentralized system that for the first time allows the transfer of value across time and space by replacing trust with math. The additional properties including that Bitcoin cannot be confiscated, censored, or debased make it the best form of money humanity has engineered.