Ask SN: Favorite way to orange pill? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

65 sats \ 6 comments \ @k00b 2 Dec 2021 bitcoin

I see the main impediment being that most people don't understand what money is. It wasn't clear to me until I read Debt: The First 5,000 Years which made it obvious that money is a shared ledger. Bitcoin's value prop relies on this fact, yet I don't see it discussed much. It's like Bitcoiner's suffer from the The Curse of Knowledge and forget they had this breakthrough at some point.

My general approach:

I ask, taking from Breedlove, "what is money?" Then I try to let curiosity and suspense build by allowing them to realize they don't know what it is.
I use concrete examples demonstrating its a ledger: "Your boss pays you $10, but what is $10? It's a voucher for $10 of goods and services from other people. Other people accept the $10 for their good and services, because they want the $10 to exchange for other goods and services. If you freeze the economy, the amount of money any one person holds is their voucher for goods and services - and everyone has such a voucher. If you list everyone's vouchers out, it's a ledger. Money is just a ledger, a record of what everybody is owed." Or something to that effect.
Then we talk about the properties of ledgers.
Then why Bitcoin satisfies these properties better than anything else.

tbh, I've only done this a handful of times so I'm curious if anyone else has a different approach.

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103 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 3 Dec 2021

It really depends on a person I'm talking to. I definitely don't push anything on anyone, but if someone shows interest I'm happy to share all I know.

For folks that are like "why would anyone need it":

I show how I can exchange USD for another Fiat with much better rate than any company provides, often literally gaining 2% extra (and all of this is internally using Bitcoin+LN, but I sort of mention the Bitcoin stuff only in the end)
I show how you can get 8% cashback on any Amazon purchase.

For folks that are like "this is a stupid idea, we already have dollars":

Same as @k00b I spin it through the how money works

For folks that are interested in "what it is":

I start with how it's valuable money that you can send anyone in the world (and show some LN transaction)
Then talk about how there's 21M, the tech is getting constantly better(how many new features did your gold gain over the last year?) and the implication of that is clear.

And I think that's all I experienced so far :)

One note: Outside of Bitcoin world, no one knows what is "ledger".

103 sats \ 0 replies \ @Ras 2 Dec 2021

I usually throw out that I've been using bitcoin as money for quite some time now and noticed prices for everything keep going down.

Without going too deep I explain inflation as a monetary phenomena that occurs when a money supply is expanded. Once that's clarified its seems easier to understand CPI and such as merely measuring the effects of inflation on specific baskets of goods.

Once they see that bitcoin emerged as money with zero unexpected inflation, its becomes rational to make bitcoin a part of a reasonable savings strategy.

Overall, I try to pull instead of push to save myself from burning energy on those who aren't ready for the rabbit hole. A few times a week people will ask me about shitcoins or some crypto bs and I just tell them its not for me, I like bitcoin. Sometimes people will follow up with more questions about why bitcoin. Those convos seem to be much smoother and more appreciated than the ones I initiate.

101 sats \ 0 replies \ @cozy 4 Dec 2021

I haven't orange-pilled anyone that wasn't already sort of looking to be orangepilled in some way. I have tried really hard with the sort of "deep" discussion about money, but one of them turned into a trader/gambler(exchange-only shitcoiner), and another one just treats Bitcoin as the next dogma (people like Saylor really help push this sort of narrative), which is really frustrating. Incredible frustrating. Ugh...

Anyway, RE: the sort of, almost cliche, "What is money?" path: I've done it, and, again, it ended with further problems described above.

Maybe it's better to put it: "What problems did creating each kind of money solve?" and "What bigger problems did that lead to, or perhaps reveal were there all along?". Then you can lead them to what problems Bitcoin solves, and what bigger problems it can (and is) creating / leading to. Then, they'll have a realistic understanding of why and when to use Bitcoin, AND a way to help solve problems that are still unsolved within Bitcoin--which could lead to them wanting to help out.

One thing I like to talk about with technical maximalists is the speed of light. Even in some utopian Bitcoin vision, it leads to interplanetary gatekeepers because of the speed of light limiting how fast blocks could be propagated between planets. Point being, problems are inevitable, problems are soluble, Bitcoin is not exempt.

Hmmm. Which makes me think, maybe when people ask, if you want to orange pill them--tell them how much you have invested (like a rough percentage), but then instead of trying to convince them, jump straight to the problems that need to be solved and solutions people are working on and talking about. More fun that way anyway.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @jack 2 Dec 2021

I'm not as orangepilled as others here, but when talking to more technical folks I'll show them how fast lightning payments and how they can be automated. Something like tanglesheep could be an easy demonstration that takes less than a minute. It's like "currency as a distributed data structure or API". No need to do stripe integration; it's easy to do payments in any country using bitcoin without worrying about international banking/remittances, etc. Especially with things like donations for minecraft servers or paying for bot functionality, it's the easiest way to fit money "into the stack"

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @relc 2 Dec 2021

we used to just gift 10 dollar in btc on a paper wallet.

something like: "take that here. this is bitcoin. i made this. keep it. do not tell anyone."

some lost it. some kept it. everyone remembers. they will never forget.

one guy i orange pilled was so orange pilled he went all in and he made it.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @02d10975a1 4 Dec 2021

I just say that Bitcoin is better money and it's inevitable that better money replaces the worse. Although people usually just want to get rich, so convincing them that it's going up is enough.