After the FTX collapse I got into an argument with a guy on Reddit who said something along the lines of "This was the last nail in Bitcoin's coffin. People are going to realize Bitcoin is a scam and you can only trust the established financial institutions." My response was that FTX had nothing to do with Bitcoin, which is a p2p system, and "not your keys, not your coins", which he ridiculed as a cliché statement, without providing any logical arguments. I proceeded to saying "Study Bitcoin for a year, if you have further questions I'll be happy to answer them", to which he responded "What for? Study a scam?" I left the conversation with a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like my logical mind had been offended by engaging in that straw man farce. But in hindsight, I only had myself to blame.

I don't know where people like him come from. Whether they really believe what they say, or are they trying to suppress the price so they can buy more. But anyway, it doesn't matter.

A few days ago I saw another guy, who got rugged on a CeFi platform, say "After all this, I believe most crypto is a scam [I agree on that one]. I also believe Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin is a scam." A few months ago such a statement would have made my blood boil. But this time I just ignored it.

If that's what he really believes, that's his problem, not mine. He's doing me a favour by suppressing the price, so I can stack more sats for the same fiat amount. I may think of him as an idiot - however unenlightened of me it may be - or as a poor, brainwashed fool, a victim of government/banker/media driven FUD or whatever, but I can't change his mind and it's not in my interest to get into arguments with strangers on the internet to try to convince them when they're so, in my belief, mistaken that I wouldn't even know where to start. My time is better spent discussing Bitcoin with bitcoiners at a similar or higher level of understanding of Bitcoin than mine. My Bitcoin journey has been long and winding - from the interest in the tech and the desire to build wealth, to the study of what is money, Austrian economics, value etc., to freedom maximization, and ultimately to the paradigm shift, the state of mind that is Bitcoin. And I'm not going to summarize that in a Reddit comment and turn someone into a bitcoiner. It's a walk that everyone has to walk themselves, from the beginning, and for most people it will probably be in that order, only with differences in pace.

Now I'm grateful for those fools. Everyone buys bitcoin at the price they deserve. That's selfish of me, but selfishness is an indispensable part of this world of Duality; There must be both competition and cooperation. That's what makes the world go 'round, just like the positive and negative poles are both needed for the electric motor to spin, + and - merely being labels, no need to attach a moral judgment to them. Selfishness is the incentive that drives the Bitcoin network and makes people cooperate. Outside of the distorted, skewed clown world that fiat creates, selfishness breeds cooperation.

I care about my friends and family much more than I do about strangers, but still, I'm not going to orange pill them unless they show genuine interest. I can test the waters and nudge them (e,g, by pointing out the flaws of the incumbent system) without even mentioning Bitcoin. And take it from there.

At the end of the day it's not about money, but about becoming a better person. Instead of forcefully trying to convince people about the merits of Bitcoin, the best I can do is exemplify the values I believe Bitcoin nurtures. If Bitcoin is to make me a better person, I don't have to go knocking on their doors to promote it; one they will notice the change in me and come knocking on mine. And if it doesn't, I'm not the right medium to spread its gospel.