A very wise article.
All you need to benefit from a technology is utility. It just has to improve people’s lives somehow, whether they understand it at a granular level or not. We can tell people about bitcoin’s benefits until we’re exhausted and they’re annoyed. What matters is how they actually experience it. We should stop telling them how great the bitcoin economy is going to be and start showing them. Less theory, more practice.
reply
Thank you 🙏
reply
I swear Roy is one of the most thoughtful people in the space. No, not the Bitcoin space, THE SPACE. He understands that Bitcoin is not the end, but the means, and he sees the way to make it obvious for others as well. Mad respect.
reply
What space is THE SPACE? "crypto"?
reply
Well if it's not that, then it must be THE UNIVERSE.
reply
"The Final Frontier"
reply
Yes.
reply
109 sats \ 0 replies \ @roy OP 7 May
Means a lot, thank you ❤️
reply
357 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 7 May
Let me be Mister Meaner here :
Orange-pilling is working very well, but it depends on what tools you use to do it. I agree with the general sentiment that it has to be useful to people. But it is. So many people now understand what we're up against (the parasites having tried to force the death jabs on people really helped). Everyone I talk to already knows they can't trust the Gov't anymore. It's an easy sell.
The problem is using the right tools.
I've run a lightning node. Tried opening channels. Finally found a few that allowed channels small enough for what I'm willing to put in a hot wallet (and that weren't NSA in Virginia). But I guess they weren't well connected. Roughly 50% of payments would fail with something like "can't find route/path".
I tried to send from coinos to Breeze, failed. Tried to send from Breeze to another one, failed. Tried to send to a Blockstream Green Lightning wallet (experimental), failed. Tried mutiny wallet, failed; and had a bunch of sats that were sort of stuck to potentially pay for a channel closure. I've had enough. I'm the tech support for my friends. I won't be doing that.
I want one app that helps me onboard people in a way that is simple and just works. Sorry for all the haters out there, but for me that's Green (Blockstream) with mainnet bitcoin, liquid bitcoin and Jade support. Plus Adam Back is the CEO and he's the PGP t-shirt guy. I feel good about that. Choose your poison.
I can onboard someone on liquid bitcoin without worrying about channels, liquidity, etc. I can send them sats from the start for cheap. And more importantly, without worrying about a payment failing.
I tell them from the get-go : this is not for your pension fund. As soon as you have a thousand or more, got back to mainnet. Mempool.space will tell you when fees are low. Then use sideswap.io to go back to mainnet.
Need to pay a lightning invoice? Use boltz.exchange
Need to pay a website that only accepts shitcoins? Use sideshift.ai
You have more than a few thousand on first-layer bitcoin? Put in in Jade.
They can do it all from one app.
If I use lightning, it'll be with an e-cash mint. I understand the trade-offs. I'm willing to take the risk to be rug-pulled. I'm willing to take the risk for small amounts, in exchange for better privacy. Plus, those wallets actually work. When I pay a lightning invoice, it actually goes through. (Boltz.exchange also goes through)
I'm not paying a percentage to Phoenix and then have all my transactions go through them. That's not privacy.
So, for all the haters out there: yes, I use e-cash mints and I use liquid. I understand the trade-offs and I'm happy with them. And my orange-pilling has been going great for years.
I live on bitcoin. It's not theory. I use it daily.
Just my two sats! P.S. Shoutout to Darthcoin and Justin_Shocknet!!
reply
Great article, Roy. Really love the "show don't tell" mindset.
Quoting the wise Stephen DeLorme: "Who email-pilled you?" Of course it's no one, email's just useful.
reply
Thank you Alex 🙏
reply
good job on the article. As much as I love bitcoin and what it stands for, unfortunately, most people do not care about the idology of it. They care about things like: does it make my life easier or better, is it instant and is it cheap. Bitcoin, is none of those things for majority of banked people in the western world. It only makes their life harder (taxes and understanding how it works). If LN is not used, then it is slow as hell and expensive for daily transactions. I am afraid other shitcoins and stable coins might be slowly, but surely taking over that money side of things (just check Stripe's announcement). Bitcoin stays as a valued asset, but unless there is more progress on the monetary side, I am afraid, it ain't gonna happen.
reply
💯
reply
Indeed, we've probably got most people who were going to adopt bitcoin for ideological reasons here already
reply
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 7 May
When I grow up, I want to be able to write articles like Roy Sheinfeld. I mean it.
reply
😂🙏❤️
reply
Hey @roy you should let the orange pill app people know :P
reply
lol
reply
40 sats \ 1 reply \ @Car 8 May
A bitcoin hub in every major city, so we can 10x the amount of companies furthering adoption. This is what works in Austin, and will work every where else given the chance.
reply
Can you elaborate? What is a Bitcoin hub? Can I buy Bitcoin with cash and no kyc there? I bet that would bring a lot of people in.
reply
I agree but bitcoin has so much friction
  1. The tax issue
  2. Volatility
  3. Ease of use
I think these three things keep most people out and away from bitcoin.
For instance I had a person download breeze so I can send them sats for different things then one day I go to make an LN payment and it constantly fails then I look like the fool.
Things have to get so easy that people don’t have to think and sats travel easily and don’t go down in value.
reply
151 sats \ 0 replies \ @quark 7 May
agree and speaking about self custody, there is also the issue of security. being hacked or being assaulted.
reply
And so store-of-value remains the primary use case for westerners with access to banking services. We are a long way from medium-of-exchange because of these issues, but mainly because of lack of need. What is needed right now is a way to store value that can't be debased.
reply
As it becomes adopted as of a SoV, its market cap will grow, making it easier to send larger monetary value, and making it more liquid and less volatile, which will help the MoE and UoA use cases.
reply
Yeah if bitcoin didn’t have these huge pullbacks in dollar units then it would have been adopted by the masses
reply
It has never worked.
reply
10 sats \ 1 reply \ @roy OP 7 May
I say I'm the article that Bitcoin education has succeeded in building our community. I was oranged pilled, weren't you?
reply
No I wasn't and never believed in it, people orange pill themselves. Anything that's pushed on people and they are not ready for it (and usually that's the case) it almost certainly backfires.
reply
This is the way.
I've often thought that here in the 1st world we're already at max adoption without some kind of major banking failure event to force the normies in.
Global south adoption, specifically circular economies (like the http://FBCE.io) are bitcoin's largest adoption metric right now. By miles.
But if we, like the OP says, improve every existing app out there with a bitcoinized version then we'll do far better at capturing 1st-world normies too.
And let's not forget nostr! Don't just add tips when you can add zaps!
reply
💯
reply
I don't know that this is true. Everyone has heard about Bitcoin now and likely has some opinion about it but I think Orange Pilling in the sense of helping people understand why bitcoin is valuable and important and why it is different from other cryptos still works.
reply
20 sats \ 1 reply \ @roy OP 7 May
Fair enough. I'm just sharing my thoughts and trying to validate them with some data. But it is after all my subjective option.
reply
Not necessarily disagreeing with you. Running around telling people about bitcoin isn't likely to work but I have had a lot of success guiding people who were curious to learn more about Bitcoin. So I think orange pilling is now more about guiding folks to the best resources and information than the shout it from the rooftops strategy that used to be employed.
reply
Nice one
reply
Isn't it ironic that I found this post because as a recent lightning adopter I tried searching SN for advice about "Ran out of routes" issue on coinos...
reply
Unspoken channelling of buckminster fuller.
An inspiring article; great call to action.
reply
It’s just that affluent Westerners are a more effective way to move the market and propagate the technology. They’re the gateway drug, the beachhead to mainstream adoption. But yes, changing the whole world and improving the lives of everyone in it with bitcoin remains the ultimate goal.
Yes! Most things seem to follow this pattern. I remember when there was a lot of talk about a bitcoin phone last cycle, and how to make it cheap so it could be used in developing countries, and I was like "make it $2k and sell it to everyone that already attends bitdevs first."
Make it expensive. Make it excellent. Then make it cheap.
Like connecting gig drivers to passengers directly without Uber taking its cut. Like connecting artists directly to fans without Spotify and the record companies taking their cut. Like paying Dashers directly without DoorDash taking its cut.
I don't think these companies maintain their monopolies through the financial aspects of their products. They are just really popular coordination points. If we are going to disrupt them with bitcoin, we need to build better coordination points first.
reply
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @roy OP 11 May
Thanks for the feedback @k00b 🙏
Re the financial aspects of the marketplaces: these aren't easy to create, especially in a global expansion. If you're able to do it successfully, it definitely helps the popularity of coordination point. W/o this barrier, it's far easier (and cheaper) to offer different coordination points.
reply
Great point! Its far easier to create coordination points when the payments across it are permissionless.
reply
It has not stopped working. But it is out of stock.
reply
Wow I like their analogy of work from home. How many people think that is a success?
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Taft 7 May
Good article! I enjoyed it!
reply
Thank you 🙏
reply
This article had a lot of good advice. Stay humble.
reply
No, it can't stop working. I suppose people aren't tasting it like candies for kids.
reply
It seems to me that Bitcoin has become too technical for everyone to use, not everyone is willing to study something in depth.
reply
A very comprehensive article!
So the way forward is to leverage bitcoin’s strengths as a borderless, open, censorship resistant, and — most importantly — P2P currency in order to improve the lives of affluent people with money to spend. Give them better ways to transact directly with each other.
I agree. Just asking, if we tell them to do so in Bitcoin, isn't that a kind of orange piling?
reply
Thank you 🙏 "show, don't tell" is kinda the main message I wanted to convey.
reply