Oddbean

Why You Can’t Understand Bitcoin Here are some of the reasons why people can’t understand Bitcoin. It’s taken years to dispel the many myths, misunderstandings and lies that have swirled around Bitcoin. Here is what ails the stragglers. Computer Illiteracy You can’t understand Bitcoin because you are Computer Illiterate. This means you have little to no understanding of how your devices or accounts work, and very probably have no interest either. You use Microsoft Windows, “Because its the Standard” . You don’t care how things work as long as they appear to work. You defend your ignorance like the Beavers shore up their dams. This class of user is a massive problem, not only because they are computer illiterate; most people can get along without knowing the intricate details of the tools they use. They are a massive problem because they are computer illiterate, and they insist on “having their say” about Bitcoin, how it should be treated by market actors, by developers and how Bitcoin itself works. Crypto Illiteracy You can’t understand Bitcoin because you are Crypto Illiterate. You don’t encrypt your email, despite knowing that the State and other attackers can and do read all your emails and look at your photos. You prefer wilful, blissful ignorance to easily obtained absolute security, and when pushed to explain why you behave in this irrational way, have only platitudes, fallacies and learned by rote garbage as a response. This user presents a cultural challenge to anyone who wants privacy to be the default. Many great efforts, aside from the writing of privacy enabling software like GPG, have been undertaken for years, and its only now that that work is bearing fruit in the form of mass adoption on Instant Messaging platforms. There is a long way to go before we achieve total blackout, but now the light at the end of the tunnel is approaching. Monetary Illiteracy You can’t understand Bitcoin because you are a Monetary Illiterate. Monetary illiterates come in serveral forms, but there are a small number that are the worst of the worst, and they are responsible for the majority of what’s wrong in this category; Keynesians and Statists. Keynesians believe that the money supply must increase forever. This is a lie. It’s like arguing that the number of numbers must increase over time because the number of things you need to measure is always increasing. This user of government money is a problem to anyone who wants a stable economy and an end to the warfare state. The inflationary fiat currencies in use today are toxic to liberty, prosperity and peace, and this was one of the reasons Bitcoin was developed; to create a money that was separate from the State, economically sound, global and irrevocable. Monetary illiteracy is what stops people clamouring for sound money. They have no idea they are being robbed on a daily basis. If they understood what was being done to them, it would be pitchforks and bonfires in every world capital. Statism You can’t understand Bitcoin because you are a Statist. A Statist is a man or woman who believes that only the State should be the final arbiter of every activity man can engage in. In Bitcoin, Statists are a constant irritant and lethal toxin. Their belief that people should be forbidden from sending messages to each other over a public network is un-American and completely irrational. You don’t need to identify yourself to use WhatsApp, and its messages are fundamentally no different to Bitcoin; its encrypted with the same “tech” Bitcoin uses, yet these Statists can’t explain why the latter should require a passport to use and the former does not. This user is delusional, violent and extremely destructive to human progress. She believes everyone must be dragged down to her level of base stupidity, and is very often a monstrous admixture of all the bad qualities listed above and below, increasing her toxicity. Once again, these people are not content to wallow in their own mud; they insist on dirtying and contaminating everything they touch with their error, making it increasingly difficult to get work done, make progress, integrate seamlessly with the market and help humanity. Eventually these people are always swept away by the flow of history, but when they are at their peak, they are a constant chafing, sore making irritant. Clinical Paranoia You can’t understand Bitcoin because you are Clinically Paranoid. People with paranoid personality disorder are very suspicious of other people. They often feel that they are in danger, and constantly look for evidence to support their irrational suspicions. They have trouble seeing that their distrustfulness is out of proportion to their environment. There are many people like this, who will (for example) immediately select only the perceived flaws in a new device or service, rather than the obvious benefits. In Bitcoin, an example of this would be immediately pointing out that it can be used by criminals to pay debts. Once again, this demographic overlaps with some of the other categories listed here. This user is highly distracting and negative, and they exist in every generation. The same class of individual made bogus, unsubstantiated claims the State had broken PGP (it never did) and today, they claim that Bitcoin is broken (it isn't) or that some vendor with a radical new design is vulnerable to an abstract Straw Man Flaw (nonsense). It appears that we will be stuck with these types forever as there are always insane people in every generation, and the only way they can be shut up is if mass adoption of the trigger for their paranoia makes it socially unacceptable to spread FUD. There are only two good things about these types: 1) They sometimes provide healthy analysis. 2) They are powerless, since they don’t overlap with the State when talking only about the hardware and software. Eventually, as the killer Bitcoin business model emerges, everyone will settle on the correct definition of Bitcoin, and no one will suffer from any of the traits above. Bitcoin will become as normal as bottled water. It will invoke no curiosity, questions or false assumptions. It will just be. It will be everywhere, in every pocket, on every computer, just like email, just like cameras and telephony. Computer Illiteracy will not matter, because the workings will disappear. Crypto Illiteracy will not matter, just as it doesn't to WhatsApp users. Monetary Illiteracy will disappear with the death of Keynesianism. Statism will disappear…because there will be no State! Clinical Paranoia will remain. For the lulz. https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money https://m.primal.net/IVBa.jpg