Ask a better question and you’ll get a better answer.
A determining factor in success, can be traced back to how we frame the questions we ask ourselves. Let’s take losing weight — we often ask ourselves ”what can I do to lose weight?”. Most people can answer that pretty easily- eat less, eat better, exercise more- but how often does that kind of answer lead to a successful outcome? Society tells us not that often. However, if we simply change the question we ask- “Why should I lose weight”- the chances of success are dramatically improved. This type of question fuels the drive needed to make everlasting changes in our life. It’s not to say that we should always lead with a Why question but it definitely helps.
In cryptocurrencies this is all too apparent. “What should I buy?”, “When should I buy?”, “When Lambo?”, “When Moon?”. For every new comer the same question is asked, “What is bitcoin?” it seems no one is asking the better question — “Why is bitcoin important?”
Often this technology is compared to the internet and like the internet we can look at it in one of two ways
- What is it and how does it work? Or more importantly
- What does it enable?
The reality is that not many really care how the internet actually works but everyone, is interested in what it enables — this same method of thinking can be applied to bitcoin and what you find is why bitcoin is so important.
In the book “The Future of Money”, Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey give an example of the importance of Cryptocurrency in the form of a young Afghani girl, who earns small amounts of money for reviewing movies online. Females in Afghanistan do not usually have access to bank accounts. This girl was considered ‘Lucky’ because the girls father granted her access to her money via his bank accounts.
In 2014 the agency the girl worked for started using bitcoin as a payment method. Bitcoins are stored in a Digital Wallet and the design of it allows
anyone (assuming internet access) to download some software, install a wallet and manage their bitcoin. No banks, no identification, and no permission needed. For the first time in her life this girl had complete financial freedom. This is what bitcoin enables. This is the power of Bitcoin. This is the revolution and this is why Bitcoin is so important.
However, most people entering the cryptocurrency space today will not hear this story. Thus far the predominant media focus on cryptocurrencies, has concentrated on its benefits for illegal uses i.e funding terrorism, purchasing drugs etc., with little to no attention on how it benefits people, such as our Afghani girl who is able to find financial independence despite the financial oppression created by the politics of her country.
So if someone asks you what is bitcoin, maybe start by explaining that’s it’s not what bitcoin does that is important, it’s what it will enable. And maybe start by telling a story about the 2 billion people around the world without access to a bank account because of the lack of financial outlets that are willing to serve the poor. It’s certainly a more compelling story than ‘the token used in a decentralised digitised public ledger of transactions’.
It’s no surprise that we see criminals being some of the first to adopt something like bitcoin. They usually are the first to adopt new technology and use it to their advantage. Criminals were the first to get the fastest automobiles, the first to adopt VPN’s and no doubt they will be the first to adopt privacy coins. However, in the above cases do we consider the underlying technology itself bad? Fast cars save lives in emergencies, VPN’s allow the people of China to circumvent internet censorship and bitcoin will allow financial access to the billions of people who are unbanked. Bitcoin does have its problems to overcome but what is important to note here is, that you are part of something much greater than what you probably appreciate.
Bitcoin when invented in 2008, created an opportunity to allow ‘innovation without censorship’. As Andreas Antonopoulos puts it,
It is allowing us to ‘rethink, reshape and reconstruct our financial system from the ground up’.
This is the story that the world should be hearing. Bitcoin is full of drama, complicated and confusing drama but between all the hype, the white papers and constant flood of news that personifies the crypto world it’s important to remember to ask ourselves better questions, questions that will give us better answers — questions that will give us investment conviction when we need it most.
