Pitching Bitcoin: Part 2 of 3
If you’re reading this for the first time, please check out Part 1 available here.
What is Bitcoin? And why should you care?
For both of these questions the interweb already provides hundreds, if not thousands of answers. At Tantra Labs we care deeply about Bitcoin and fostering growth in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and we love seeing all the amazing content emerging to help people become Bitcoiners.
There are many books, guides, videos, and podcasts out there that do a fantastic job of explaining the importance of Bitcoin. Jameson Lopp’s website is always an excellent place to start. Great books include Saifedean Ammous’ The Bitcoin Standard, basically anything from Andreas Antonopoulos (See The Internet of Money), Yan Pritzker’s Inventing Bitcoin, and even the Bitcoin Rabbi’s children’s book, Bitcoin Money. The Bitcoin podcast scene is large and growing too, and some of our favorites include Tales from the Crypt, the Stephan Livera Podcast, What Bitcoin Did, and Trace Mayer’s The Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast.
The problem with these resources, especially when recommending them to friends and family who might be new to Bitcoin, is that they are generally pretty specialized and not necessarily suited to pre-coiners or new-coiners. This problem pertains more to podcasts than books, as the books mentioned do a pretty great job of introducing their topics, but if you are a Bitcoiner trying to pitch Bitcoin to friends and family, it’s not always easy to know where to start.
So before you go and hand grandma a copy of Jimmy Song’s “Programming Bitcoin,” we thought we would help you out with a unique and hopefully humorous guide on how to pitch Bitcoin to various types of people.
In Part 1, we highlighted “The Wall Street Fat Cat,” “ The Millennial,” and “The Goldbug.” In Part 2 we take a look at three more categories of pre-coiners:
You beckon them over to where you’re sitting. You tell them that if they each buy you a drink, you’ll pay them back in Bitcoin using the Lightning Network. Being from countries with a history of hyperinflation and government confiscation of wealth, it’s likely these folks have already heard about Bitcoin. But maybe not. You have an opportunity here to teach them how Bitcoin can act as a hedge against the instability they know all too well. Ask them about the hardships they’ve faced back home. Speak to them on a personal level. Bitcoin doesn’t fix everything directly, but it can certainly help. Tell them how when properly secured, Bitcoin can’t be confiscated or censored. It’s a neutral currency that no government can control. Tell them about the 21 million BTC hardcap and known supply schedule. Tell them how Bitcoin’s monetary policy is secured by code and not by greed prone humans. Orange coin good.
This is a hard category. While baby boomers may have ushered in great societal change in their youth, they have since become a much more conservative group of people. Many were hippies who thought they could change the world, and when that didn’t come to pass, many became disillusioned, regretful, or worse, became standard-bearers for the political and economic status quo. But not all boomers are alike, and this is where knowing your audience is key. Sit down with the boomers in your life, whether that’s mom & dad or grandma & grandpa and talk to them. Ask them about what it was like living through various financial crises, the Vietnam and the Cold Wars, and what it’s been like seeing the rise of Big Government. If they can tap into those memories and get them to remember how they felt back then, you might be able to make them see that with Bitcoin, positive societal change is still possible. For the baby boomers who can’t or won’t think back to their youth, there is always the savings argument. Many boomers are still working, trying desperately to grow their retirement funds and praying that their pensions will be a reality when the time comes. These folks may be risk averse when it comes to their future plans, but in a world where pension funds are drying up, Bitcoin may just fill the gap. Talk to these boomers about Bitcoin’s potential for asymmetric returns. Urge them to dollar cost average each week, even if it’s just a small amount. Number go up.
According to The Economist, “Generation Z is stressed, depressed, and exam-obsessed.” Gen Z’ers are similar to their Millennial forebears, but they’re the first generation to grow up in a fully digital world. They’re also the first generation to have been born after 9/11, and they’ve never known a world without war. But these delicate snowflakes are tougher than they look and they’re resolved to change the world for the better. If you can manage to pry the phones out of their hands and get them to look you in the eye for a conversation, Gen Z is fertile ground for pitching Bitcoin. As internet natives, Gen Z understands the concept of digital money better than any of us. Is the Gen-Z’er you’re talking to an avid Fortnite player? Explain to them that Bitcoin is just like V-bucks, but there’s no one controlling where and when you can spend them. Frankly you might start telling someone from Gen Z about Bitcoin only to have them teach you a thing or two. But for those who are too obsessed with Snapchat or TikTok to have heard about Bitcoin, it might be productive to tell them about Bitcoin’s potential to do good. Gen Z may not be thinking about their retirement yet, but they are thinking about all the injustice in the world. Bitcoin, with its sound money principles, can take away the power of the fiat printing press, thus making the prospect of never ending war far less likely. And just like Millennials, perhaps more so, Gen Z cares passionately about the environment. Use the same arguments as mentioned in the section on Millennials. Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy, but for good reason. And as Bitcoiners, we know that Bitcoin actually encourages the growth and development of renewable energy sources, ostensibly by fixing the root problem of destructive consumption, i.e. easy money. Parker Lewis writes that Bitcoin does not waste energy, and for the ultimate energy-fud-dispelling article, see “PoW is Efficient” by Dan Held.
Worried about the environment? Bitcoin fixes this.
Click HERE for Part 3.
Thank you all for reading and I hope you found this amusing and hopefully a little helpful. Next week we will release Part 3. Special thanks again to those who shared their thoughts and suggestions on this piece: Nik Bhatia, Bitcoin Tina, Phil Geiger, Gigi, Marc Weinstein, Brett Morrison, and Russell LaCour,
— Brekkie von Bitcoin, Creative Director at Tantra Labs
Stay tuned as we present more thought pieces and our ongoing research!
For more from Brekkie von Bitcoin, follow him on Twitter @BVTBC.
For more about Tantra Labs, check out our introductory post here.
To learn about BTC denominated portfolio management, read this article from Nik Bhatia.
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