Oddbean

I mean, we've all heard some of the same concerns. Concerns over the "hackability" of the network, the lack of understanding surrounding self-sovereignty, the fact that you aren't FDIC insured, the way you have to get a cold wallet if you want to get serious about Bitcoin... I know the answers to all of those but even intellectuals are concerned about that and I can't blame them because the responses are usually just "Bitcoin is superior", "Bitcoin is unconfiscatable" and so forth. Again, I agree with statements like those but to an outsider, it really does just sound like a cultish ponzi scheme. Then, there are also the concerns surrounding the ways you obtain Bitcoin. I'm pro-BTC but there aren't any good ways to obtain it if you don't have friends who are willing to pay you in Bitcoin, and that has kept me from buying any for myself. Either you surrender your privacy AND risk your identity by buying from CEXes, you risk your money by buying from DEXes, or you pay a huge fee buying from an ATM. At the end of the day, no matter how great this technology is, I do believe that we -- as a community -- need to be ready to answer skeptics patiently and with proper information rather than "You're not bullish enough", "Bitcoin fixes everything", "all others are s***coins" and other such vague/cultish/goofy statements. We don't win people over by making them feel like idiots. Not every skeptic is a troll, and unfortunately, I've seen so much ridicule toward people who genuinely might have been interested before then.

I’m not too engaged in the twitter stuff day to day but I’ve found that the luck I’ve had with getting people to understand bitcoin, is not getting into bitcoin right away, but for them to understand why we use dollars today instead of gold, why did we stop using gold, gold’s monetary properties that made society, not governments choose gold and how bitcoin’s value, like gold, comes from its monetary properties. It’s hard for people to understand bitcoin and the why of #bitcoin if they don’t 1st get a sense of how we got here. I agree with everything you said above though. I believe if our friends give us the time of day, we gotta convey how we got to this point first within about 5 minutes and then the last 5 minutes break down why bitcoin is so important, adding the human rights element so that you’re not just talking number go up is also important.

Yes, I agree, that approach is what got me interested in Bitcoin. Previously, I only saw it as an "investment" opportunity until it started going up and down. I didn't realize how freeing it can be. I agree entirely about how we need to be able to quickly summarize it. An elevator pitch, as it were.

Absolutely, and I totally get that a lot of Bitcoiners and Nostr users genuinely are just really passionate about the tech. I'm sure the trolling comes from a minority of the community, and maybe some of them don't even realize they're acting the way they are. I just think that the easier we make this stuff for people, the quicker we'll start seeing something closer to mass adoption. There's a lot of skepticism in the world of blockchain (rightfully so), so keeping things difficult definitely doesn't help matters haha

Completely agree! And introducing them to wallets like Aqua for self custody, bitkey etc is the way. Bitcoin is such a major shift in how we think about everything so us being conscious that it’s going to be A LOT of information for anyone to take is so important. Little by little though, we’ll get there. I imagine bitcoin will be much bigger 15 years from now than it is today so we’ll get there.