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I set up a workshop yesterday, to talk to people about my new book Bitcoin, Hands-On: 28 “learn by doing” exercises to master the basics of managing your own Bitcoin, including wallets, transactions, and self custody. (If you're interested in buying the book and reviewing it, that would be very much appreciated! Also you can email feedback@bitcoinhandson.com to get a free pdf).
Anyway, my idea was that I would do a short slideshow on bitcoin, and then we'd spend the rest of the time working through the practice exercises, so I could see whether people understand it, what they're confused about and if they get stuck.
Well, that was a bust. They uniformly wanted to just have bitcoin explained to them, and talk about it. Nobody was interested (in this session, anyway, there's 2 more sessions) in dipping their toes in, and actually buying a tiny bit on an exchange.
It was still a good session, and they really appreciated the info and are very interested. BUT they're still not quite ready to take the step of buying. Some of them said they would do it next session.
I guess as someone that's been interested in bitcoin for a couple years, and "gone down the rabbit hole", I have huge base of knowledge on bitcoin, compared to them. I think all of us on stacker.news forget just how much we know.
It's hard for me to understand that the majority of people just have no idea. An experience like this, though, just slaps me in the face with that fact.
We are SO EARLY!
94 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 4h
How many people did you have at the session?
Nothing wrong with starting at the basics before folks dive in and buy, set up self custody etc.
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I had about 11 people. There's supposed to be more at the next session.
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32 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 3h
That's not bad at all. Did you get a lot of questions after?
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It was all questions. I had a very short slide show, that I expected to last about 15 minutes. When I realized that people weren't prepared to actually purchase any bitcoin and do the exercises, I extended the slide show by asking for a lot of audience feedback and questions.
Let's see, what came up. The quantum thing. Lots of talk about inflation.
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95 sats \ 0 replies \ @Wumbo 3h
Do you mind saying what city you were doing the workshop in? (I understand if you don't want to dox yourself)
If you happen to be near by a Stacker News user, they might offer to be your assistant teacher. So you can give more one on one instruction to the students in the workshop.
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42 sats \ 2 replies \ @anon 4h
Why would you advise people to use an exchange??
You could have just given them some free sats to play with
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I did give them some free sats to play with. I had them play with CoinOS a bit, and sent some sats around. Started a little circular economy.
Honestly though, I think that's a distraction, at this level.
They first need to understand a bit about private keys, what is a wallet, what are addresses and transaction fees. Zapping sats around, while fun, doesn't help in that regard. And it doesn't help them understand self custody (of course CoinOS is not self custody).
I explain in depth (in the book) the differences between kyc and p2p, and the benefits of p2p.
But in all honesty the only people who would START with p2p, on their bitcoin journey, are extremely rare. It would definitely intimidate your average person.
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What's wrong with starting P2P by buying from you? It's certainly easier than going thru the hoops of creating an account and getting KYC'd with a CEX.
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How/where did you advertise to get the audience you got?
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