it really depends how long your talk or interview is going to be.
if you have the time, I recommend including a bit of general sociological/archaeological history[1]; how human societies got from the point where outstanding debts and favors were simply remembered and passed on by word-of-mouth, through the emergence of various technologies [monetization of jewelry, written records, eventually currency that functioned only as such]. I think it's an important perspective when introducing Bitcoin, otherwise the problem of coordinating all of humanity with one financial technology seems a little contrived.
covering this in any significant level of detail takes time, so if you're pressed maybe at least mention that there is this background and you don't have time to go into detail. The most important point is how inflation of modern currencies dilutes the poor into wage-slavery, making the modern world with its cognitive dissonance in some ways bleaker than the less "enlightened" civilizations that preceded it.
it really depends how long your talk or interview is going to be.
if you have the time, I recommend including a bit of general sociological/archaeological history[1]; how human societies got from the point where outstanding debts and favors were simply remembered and passed on by word-of-mouth, through the emergence of various technologies [monetization of jewelry, written records, eventually currency that functioned only as such]. I think it's an important perspective when introducing Bitcoin, otherwise the problem of coordinating all of humanity with one financial technology seems a little contrived.
covering this in any significant level of detail takes time, so if you're pressed maybe at least mention that there is this background and you don't have time to go into detail. The most important point is how inflation of modern currencies dilutes the poor into wage-slavery, making the modern world with its cognitive dissonance in some ways bleaker than the less "enlightened" civilizations that preceded it.
I always liked Nick Szabo's blog post on this topic, and the Nakamoto Institute site has a copy of it: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/ ↩