I don't normally orange pill people, but I've tried to educate three friends. One is someone who (unsuccessfully) tried to get me into Bitcoin years ago. The other two specifically asked me about Bitcoin.

I'm going to refer to them as B, J and S. Below is a summary of my experience with these people, which I think make interesting archetypes. All of them view Bitcoin as a way to make money and little to nothing else, which -- given their normie status -- shouldn't come as a surprise. None of them is tech savvy.

B loves money and investing, or what he views as investing anyway. Ever since I met him he's been talking about gold, stocks, crypto, forex, trading, copy trading, signals and dodgy investment programs. And yes, Bitcoin too. Years ago he tried to get me into Bitcoin, but I wasn't interested at the time. I started studying Bitcoin in late 2020. I went through a shitcoinery stage too and lost a lot to it until I went down the rabbit hole and saw the light of Bitcoin. Sadly, B, after all these years, still hasn't seen the light. He's mostly in XRP, because "Ripple is doing great work" and recently told me he believes in Shiba Inu, because the company behind it is trying to get McDonalds to accept it and if / when that happens, it will become a worldwide payment system 🙄He also said SHIB has a massive market cap (I think he meant supply, which is one quadrillion) and the company behind it ingeniously made it so, so it could become a global currency.

So that's his understanding of money. I suggested Lyn Alden's "Broken Money" to him and that he could learn a lot from it. He was excited about it, but I'm skeptical about his willingness to commit to and understand it.

Now, he's only ever held corn or shitcoins on exchanges. Years ago he got rugged by a South African exchange custodying his bags, which were worth $60k at the time. That didn't put him off, oh no! These days he holds his shitcoins on crypto.com, which he believes will never rug and he also holds their CRO token for a yield. He has owned a Trezor for a few months, but hasn't gotten around to figuring out how to use it.

B is also in a number of crypto trading WhatsApp and Telegram groups, where signals are posted. He thinks most of them are mediocre, but also mentioned a special one, which is using an AI signal bot, and apparently has a nearly 100% win rate. He's been offered access to the AI bot for $10,000, but "unfortunately" he can't afford it right now, because he only had $200 and has just lost it trading... using that group's free signals.

He also mentioned that he got into Bitcoin a long time ago, and had a lot of BTC, but he stupidly (in his own words) sold it / lost it all trading; and if he'd only held it, he'd be a multimillionaire and could retire now. I asked him "So, did you learn a lesson from that?" to which he replied "I see what you mean... You're trying to say I should have held it. But I think my mistake was the trading groups I was in were sh*tty. I need a better one. And I've found one, but can't afford it yet."

B is into conspiracy theories, but not in a particularly discerning way. And he believes many of the problems are caused by the government, but the problem with the government is the wrong people behind the steering wheel. "If they were only replaced with the right people..." So I don't think I can market Bitcoin to him from an anarchist angle, which for me would be the most enjoyable and passionate one.

I've known J for years. She feels financially insecure and she asked me 3 years ago "how to invest in crypto to make money". At the time, I knew less about Bitcoin than I know now, and our dialogue on this subject only lasted a couple of months. I told her "A strategy I personally believe in is DCA: you buy bitcoin regularly with fiat you're not going to need in the near future and hold it. Simple as that." Then I sent her a few memes, like "1 BTC = 1 BTC" and she laughed and said it could be said of any currency.

She was concerned that if she buys it it may go down. I tried to explain that it's short-sighted, but she didn't really pick up on it. She also expressed concerns about it being used for terrorism and money laundering, and asked me if I'm not worried I might lose all my bitcoin, to which I replied "No, it's the thing I'm the least likely to lose."

Politically she's a statist and thinks those who evade extortion lack integrity.

S is a good friend. He seems to live with his head in the clouds though. He genuinely believes the Earth is flat, with the Arctic in the centre of the pancake, and the Antarctic around its edges, where there is a huge wall patrolled by the US military and if you try to climb it, they will pick you up with a helicopter and send you where you came from.

Another friend told S some years ago to buy some bitcoin, so he did. On Binance. A couple million sats, IIRC. He left it on there and when he found out I was into Bitcoin, he asked me how to sell it, because he had lost his old phone with Binance, forgot his password and didn't know how to regain access to his account. I told him selling was a terrible idea, Bitcoin is not for selling for illusory fiat gains, to which he replied "OK, so can you help me sell it?"

In September of this year I sat down with him and gave him a lecture on Bitcoin - as a freedom technology, a sound money, a tool for self-sovereignty etc. I told him how the network works, mentioned the halvings, showed him my full node, told him about the importance of self-custody, the choice of security and decentralization at the cost of scalability, LN as an L2 scaling solution and so on. Then I got him to install a custodial LN wallet (for a wow factor and minimal friction) and Fountain (and subscribed him to some good podcasts) and sent him 100 sats using a QR code. It got him excited. I sent him a few videos, recommended additional podcasts and channels and mentioned the cypherpunk movement, cryptoanarchy etc.

He asked me about his corn on Binance, and I suggested (as homework following our session) he contact their customer service to see if he could recover the funds, which then he would ideally withdraw into cold storage. He said "Yes, I'll do that! Thank you!" It's been 3 months and, presumably, he hasn't gotten around to it, because he hasn't said anything.

Also, I don't think he has bought any additional bitcoin, beside the IOUs he's had on Binance for years he can't even access and apparently is not even trying to do anything about it.

At the same time he's dreaming that Bitcoin will bring him great material abundance and he's very excited about it.

I thought he had learned something from our session, but a few weeks ago he announced excitedly he had enrolled in a Zoom course on crypto trading. "I think it's going to be great, they even mention THE HALVING!!!" and asked if I wanted to join it too, which I politely turned down.

At this point I don't feel like doing much more in this regard. I'll probably still answer any questions my friends have, but I feel like pointing people towards studying the foundations - economics, human action, what is money and the importance of self-sovereignty - and not talking about Bitcoin itself.