For Bitcoin to Make More Sense, We Need Better Stories
“Most stories are held together by the weight of the roof rather than by the strength of the foundations” — Yuval Noah Harari
Bitcoin is what people believe bitcoin is.
The first bitcoin story as a digital cash on a peer-to-peer payment network was simple and enticing enough to attract the first wave of bitcoin followers, but what is the current bitcoin story?
According to a historian and intellectual Yuval Noah Harari, humans think in stories rather than facts, numbers or equations. In order to cooperate with strangers, we invent fictional stories, we make others believe in them and obey the same laws to ultimately dominate the world.
The simpler the story the better. To make stories simpler we rely on mythology and false myths. In fact, Harari argues, false stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to uniting people because truth quite often disheartens followers or undermines social harmony.
Commonly accepted fictional stories create value. A dollar, for example, is just a human convention. Its value depends on our common ‘trust’ that another person will exchange it for a banana. We know it is just a piece of paper, but the story is so strong that we rarely question it. ‘Humans have this remarkable ability to know and not to know at the same time’. Even Islamic terrorists accept dollars as payment despite the hatred towards the US.
When stories become widely accepted, the facts do not matter. The story creates reality, it creates and defines the facts.
A decentralized Bitcoin story
As long as everybody believes in the same fictional story of bitcoin and crypto industry as a whole, it will unite the community and lead to a greater crypto adoption.
Bitcoin has a branding image problem and is full of contradictory narratives. Yet it is unavoidable. Contrary to Facebook or Amazon, bitcoin does not have a centralized branding team. As bitcoin itself, bitcoin's story is decentralized and driven by the community.
Additionally, we should keep in mind that similarly to myths and fictional stories, branding involves retelling the same fictional story until people become convinced it is the truth. It is much more difficult to do it in a community that is global and spread around the world, with people of different cultures, languages, and believes. Yet having a coherent story, that is easy to understand and attractive is crucial if we want to avoid deterring possible converts like it happened with J.K. Rolling conversion to bitcoin attempt.
Bitcoin and crypto stories are always changing and adapting to the new realities instead of changing the reality as a commonly accepted fictional story would do.
The most recent and perhaps the most successful attempt at making a coherent story which could have bent the reality was of a bitcoin as a digital gold. The narrative failed to garner critical mass of believers and the reality of Coronavirus was heavier than the belief of bitcoin as a hedge against this type of a Black Swan event.
The narrative as a hedge against different kinds of risks (feel free to choose among inflation, political uncertainty, censorship, or populism) is not in wrecks though. The latest bitcoin core release called ‘Asmap’ was included to protect against ‘Erebus’ attack (an attack that allows nation-states and/or large internet providers such as Amazon Web Services to spy, double-spend or censor Bitcoin transactions) shows that political uncertainty and censorship is high in the agenda for the community.
Branding bitcoin as a hedge against inflation seems to be a growing trend, but this time will the narrative hold against the reality when inflation finally (or will it) comes? (Spoiler alert from 2022: it didn’t).
Other stories competing for the crown to someday bend the reality include “unbank the banked,” “long Bitcoin, short the bankers,” “The rich got bailouts. The people got Bitcoin” are all libertarians seeking freedom from financial authorities, especially from central banks. It is the dissident tech. The narrative certainly has followers and for it to spread we need to convince the masses of why they need to ditch their banks and get bitcoin instead.
The majority simply does not really understand central banks and does not know why they should go against the authorities. The first bitcoin story as a digital cash on a peer-to-peer payment network was simple and enticing enough to attract the first wave of bitcoin believers. The technical realities of high fees and slow transactions limits the digital cash story in gaining a critical mass of followers.
If the community fails to convince a reality-bending number of believers to join the crypto revolution, to stand up against banks, governments, and central banks to achieve crypto mass adoption, then we would only prosper in an anarchic world. We would be like the rich building bunkers for an apocalypse that might never come.
Start with WHY.
According to the ‘Start with WHY’ book author Simon Sinek, the ability to inspire those around you and to achieve remarkable things starts with WHY.
WHY is a purpose, cause, and belief. A true WHY does not manipulate, it inspires. This ability to inspire makes us feel like we belong, to make us feel special and safe. At the end of the day, people cooperate with people who believe what they believe. The WHY is essential for lasting success and when WHY goes fuzzy, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the growth, loyalty, and inspiration that helped drive your original success.
If the crypto community had talked less to J. K Rowling about WHAT Bitcoin is and HOW it works and focused on a clear WHY it is needed, it is more likely she would have been inspired to join the movement.
The good news is that finding WHY is a process of discovery, not invention, so we still have time to find our common story, our common WHY.
When we succeed, we won’t need to call bitcoin digital gold. It will be just Bitcoin.
Fictional stories are never static and always need to find a balance with technology. In order for the story to stay relevant, it has to adapt to technological realities. On the other hand, technology has many different applications thus a community’s crucial goal is to define a common mission, a widely accepted narrative that will help people make sense of the world and one day bend reality itself.
Bitcoin can be viewed as a tool for money laundering, currency for purchasing drugs and guns, or financing terrorist activities. Yet dollar is also used for these purposes, so it depends on our power of storytelling to make people believe what bitcoin is and WHY it is needed.
When we succeed, we won’t need to call bitcoin digital gold. It will be just Bitcoin.
