Over New Years I found myself telling my cousins and their friends that the dollar was going to zero and it made sense to spend it as soon as you get your paycheck. They said so what is the alternative for saving, gold?
I said the problem with gold (besides inconvenience) is they already confiscated all of it back in the 1930's. It was all in banks so it was easy. Then they marked up it's value so the dollars based on gold were worth less. Of course bitcoin needs to be discussed at that point.
Bitcoin is automated and distributed and the infrastructure is owned by people like me who have a record of every bitcoin transaction that has ever been written to the blockchain. A transaction is created and verified by countless nodes within 10 minutes becoming immutable on the blockchain which is spread all over the world and cannot be stopped. This happens without any central control. You cannot change the rules or the total amount of bitcoin. Unlike the dollar or the euro which are printed and manipulated for political reasons.
Who do you trust to enforce the rules about money? I think an automated, distributed peer-owned system, is a better choice than politicians.
Note: I had spoken about bitcoin at Thanksgiving with a subset of the group and told them "Don't spend money on bitcoin until you understand how it works". So the New Years conversation was an attempt to explain how and why it works the way it does.
45 sats \ 4 replies \ @0fje0 15 Jan
"Don't spend money on bitcoin until you understand how it works".
Sounds like good advice and I've used it myself, but if we're honest about it, I suspect many of us only started "understanding how it works" after we'd spent money on it. No?
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This is the first my advice when people ask me how to buy Bitcoin
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Sounds like good advice and I've used it myself, but if we're honest about it, I suspect many of us only started "understanding how it works" after we'd spent money on it. No?
True
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That's true, but I feel like I still need to say it.
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Explain Bitcoin is Trustless. How I explain to Relatives is How Bad Fiat is Inflation and Fractional reserve banking. The ask them if their Groceries have gone up. They say yes and then Ask what Can I do about it ? Then you Pill them.
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Just thought of an experiment. Ask a family member for a receipt from a trip grocery shopping. Note the amount and (on paper) trade that much money for Bitcoin. In a year buy the same items from the same shop. Compare the increased fiat expense with the potentially decreased sats amount. Ask them to make a prediction about which will purchase more, winner gets the sats or the groceries. Call it the 1-year Receipt Challenge.
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Sounds fun. I don't know if these people have a year long attention span though :-)
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I like your analogy on Gold here
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wait until the price starts sky-rocketing. They genuinely get interested then and genuinely want to learn.
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Obviously I could be wrong, but I can't imagine a worse way to convince people to buy bitcoin, to be frank.
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