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No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
Here's the thing: nobody needs to be "dollar-pilled". I don't remember people going around "smart-phone-pilling" normies. People use dollars and smart phones to avoid massive inconvenience.
Some ideas spread because people see how they solve a problem for them. But when it is not incredibly obvious how the idea/technology solves a problem for someone, true believers have to do the spreading. For instance, I can understand pretty easily that email is more convenient than the postal service. It is not so obvious, however, how a belief in Jesus Christ makes my life better (whether it really will or not--you have to convince folks there's a problem before you can pitch them your solution).
Most of the time when people talk about orange-pilling, it seems like what they mean is telling people about a lot of problems they didn't know they had: how fiat money is ruining our society, how bitcoin is censorship resistant and why they need truly scarce money. While all these things are true, something important is missing.
In that famous scene from the Matrix, right before Morpheus offers Neo the red and blue pills, he says, "No one can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself." I think we've lost this in the whole orange-pilling conversation.
The most success I've had with orange-pilling has always come when I've helped someone download a wallet and sent them some sats, had them send some back, and shown them how easy it is to move bitcoin around.
We can try to increase bitcoin adoption by proselytizing, we can treat it like a religion. Lots of religions have achieved global success by convincing people that they had a problem they didn't know they had, and then offering their solution--but it seems like doing things the hard way.
There are plenty of problems people face every day that bitcoin really does fix: selling anything online without chargebacks, tipping and micropayments for online content, the friction of payments that cross international borders--just to name a few. I think Bitcoin adoption will be most likely when we show people how bitcoin fixes the problems they already know they have.
So, this is just a reminder: what Morpheus said is true: no one can be told what bitcoin is. They have to use it for themselves. Don't forget to include sending and receiving some sats when you are doing Satoshi's work orange-pilling.
+100 sats for:
There are plenty of problems people face every day that bitcoin really does fix: selling anything online without chargebacks, tipping and micropayments for online content, the friction of payments that cross international borders--just to name a few.
I made a similar introductory webpage here: https://anarkio.codeberg.page/bitcoin/
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Nice page!
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Codeberg is not your friend. Maybe they will soon cancel your page.
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Well said. Orange pilling to me is knowing when to veer away from the subject. For most that is even just the mention of the word Bitcoin, I test the waters. If they seem adverse I back off.
Often times it has nothing to do with Bitcoin, just dialogue around the economy and what the government us doing building debt on debt.
This is a personal journey. And it takes time. Especially face to face, you can't go too hard. But if I happen to find anyone into crypto whatsoever, game on. I'll explain what I can to the best of my ability. Until they start to press back, then I find mutual ground to settle on and move on.
Plant the seed. Send some sats of they will accept. They need to see the value themselves.
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Excellent take. I feel the same way but I think I have a different approach. Naturally, I will help to onboard anyone who wants help but I have found that people are the most responsive when they see me enjoying the benefits of bitcoin. As it stands right now, mostly people see it as a price.
I get way more people asking me about Bitcoin when the price pumps and everybody comes to me asking how they can buy some.
So, how does the price pump? When people buy bitcoin from an exchange order book, withdraw it to their own wallet, and HODL.
If we can get enough people to do this, then the people will come to us asking all of their questions and all we need to do is send them to the best tools available.
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Indeed the choice is there’s, we can only be there with answers and knowledge when they turn to us or others. Stay transparent and never give financial advice… get people into free apps like this! Stacking sats can be a fun learning and earning experience for all as long as honest people prevail.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @om 9 Mar 2023
selling anything online without chargebacks, tipping and micropayments for online content, the friction of payments that cross international borders
If you're coming from that angle, people would want stablecoins. Not that it's a bad thing - if it solves the problems they see, why not. But they also have problems that they don't see, and that indeed presents the difficulty you've described.
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I'm not sure people care that much when it comes to tipping/micropayments. I still get a little zing out of a 100 sat tip on SN, and it's not really affected by the price of BTC in dollars.
I'm thinking that since sats are such a small monetary unit (for now), people could treat them much like they do likes and upvotes, but the advantage is, if you accumulate a pile, it actually ends up being worth serious money.
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Very true in terms of Bitcoin. Not veryone is going to be screeming freedom freedom and use btc.
What is scary is that people need orange pilling in the first place. It is like paddling up stream. But this hopefully changes with time as the ecosystem becomes more mature.
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Yes, I think what I'm (poorly) trying to express here is that we need to really refine the use cases so that people don't really need to be orange pilled. It is already happening a little--even though it was a bit of a cluster, the thing people thought back when the Canadian Trucker protests happened was 'Ah! we should use Bitcoin for this!'
I think that bitcoin does solve the bigger theoretical problems, but a lot of people don't even know they have those. But most people have one or two day to day problems that bitcoin (with a little better UX) can solve.
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Tools > Tawk
...and those who have deeper understandings of monetary economics realize there are many foundational tools that remain to be built that no one is working on. But people like cargo-culting.
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Man two day ago I wanted to send some sats to a mate and he couldn't even manage to install a wallet so send me a full trailer of oranges pills LOL. We need somehow make things easier to most of population
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Agreed. Which is why I created this newbie-friendly orange pilling rabbit hole:
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