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I have done 2 onboardings this year. On the technical level, both were less than half an hour and just
- here is how you create a wallet
- save your seedwords!!!
- now let's send bitcoin to you
- if you get over x amount of bitcoin, we should talk about a safer setup
But in both cases, we had been casually talking about bitcoin on and off for a few months before and we've continued to talk since. A one-shot download may be too much for most people.
I have no doubt you did a great job and perhaps it's just the sort of thing that he will need to think about for a while.
Before "here is the seed, and here are the sats" he wanted to understand "what gives bitcoin value"... and there's a lot of talking there. If you skip that part, normies will became ETF-boys.
All that part with "here are the sats and the seed" is the wrong way if you start with. If they do not understand what really they are doing and what they use, it will be just some numbers without meaning.
We are NOT teaching how to use a "new paypal"... we are teaching a new way to FUCK THE GOVS AND BANKS !
Someday people will remember my words...
In this case, idk what failed: me, my knowledge, my way of explaining, too much info, his brain capabilities, idk but it was a temporary failure for me.
I really start to think that some people are not meant to understand and use Bitcoin. Is too much.
Maybe you are right, but I have had the most success with people when they actually see Bitcoin working, especially on chain. It's so weird compared to how we normally do money that it catches them by surprise.
Maybe they need an ideological grounding, but it is enough for me that they get some seed words and make an address and wait for a block to be found. There's usually enough there to spark an interest.
It’s common for people with expertise in a topic to practice different kinds of explanations for different situations because it can be very difficult to tailor it on the fly.
With how much you know, it might be worth trying to think about the most important and digestible 30/60/90 minutes.
In the last 10 years I was onboarding hundreds of people.
But I notice that for more we advance with Bitcoin, harder is to get them on track. We have so many things to explain that is almost impossible for a normie to get it in few hours of talking.
I love details, he also is a smart man, educated doctor, 50 yrs old, not a kid. And we talked serious stuff not meaningless zaps with few sats.
Really hard task, if you want to do a good job onboarding. I do not just want him to get few sats, I want him to be a real bitcoiner. FFS he drove 1000km to me just for this session !
I am sad because I couldn't transfer all my knowledge in just few hours we were talking. He have to go next day to another city for a conference. He just pass by to my house because was in the way.
I'm sure you gave him a lot to think about. If he's smart and interested, I'd be surprised if you didn't help him quite a bit.
Sometimes a person needs time to reflect on a large ingestion of profound information.
Yes indeed. In fact that was his conclusion too: let me "digest" the huge amount of info you gave me and will come back. Is too much.
But my feeling was that I was like an alien trying to explain him a hyperdrive technology...
Anyways this post was just to release the pressure from inside. I am a bit angry of this situation. He's could be a good bitcoiner.
He wants to learn so much, he goes out of his way to discuss it with the most knowledgable person he knows.
You need to be planning the next discussion with him.
How often does he pass through your area?
I think you might have inverted the pyramid; you should have started with LN—which is simpler—sent him a few satoshis, had him send some back to you, and then gradually moved him over to the mainnet.
You could have opened a website and bought a few things with those sats; I don't know if there's a coffee shop, a pizzeria, or somewhere near you where you could pay with Bitcoin, but you needed to let him "touch" the reality of what it can actually do. That’s what I think he really wanted, and it’s what I believe we often lack when explaining Bitcoin.
sent him a few satoshis, had him send some back to you, and then gradually moved him over to the mainnet.
No. That is the biggest mistake many are doing. The whole thing is to LEARN WTF is Bitcoin not how to throw some sats. Otherwise will remain a dumb fuck that will never know what really is Bitcoin and end up like this:
I do not want him to just use sats to buy gift cards, I want him to start a damn bitcoin circular economy, out of fiat.
May be just an hour talk, 10mn video, a kid book.... for the 1st time and wait for the next day
a kid book
LOL I think you are dumber than my normie cousin. We are talking about a serious discussion with an adult,, about a serious amount of money here, not with a 10yrs old kid.
You guys live only with few sats, meanwhile normies with lots of money want to do serious stuff with Bitcoin.
i meant to start easy...with easy language and so on...
Look where you talk lead you at the end with your cousin...
Is it cause of him or you ?
I think you didn't paid attention to my post, what did I said and also don't know my history in Bitcoinlandia...
You put yourself an objective where you’ve set the bar may be too high for one day
that is why i was saying to start easy
Technical terms and analogies are bad for normies in general, I say for myself that it is much simpler to understand seeing the operation that receives a flood of theories and technical terms. After they learn the base, it becomes difficult to fall into traps.
The sad part for me is the false expectation stuck in fiat, when I tried to approach with some acquaintances the first question was similar to that of your cousin "is it going to yield over time?" There are many more things to destroy before knowledge settles.
Yesterday I failed.
I failed to fully onboard my cousin, visiting me. He's a total normie, living 100% in the rotten fiat world, but slowly realizing that is a lie. So he came visiting me from 1000km away just to teach him in person about Bitcoin.
He's really interested into getting Bitcoin, he read something about, but the failure was at the usage level, as a zero-knowledge beginner.
As much as I tried to explain in simple terms, how to use a bitcoin wallet, the amount of technical terms is overwhelming for these normies.
He calmly took notices and asked pertinent questions, but after 3h talking and talking he said to me that is too much. And I said: "and this was just the beginning,, we weren't even touch the part with LN...."
Then he left overwhelmed and with a bunch of notes and with the promise that he will start testing alone some wallet apps and read more about the technical details.
It was a sad day for me because I couldn't finish the course in 1 day. Some people simply cannot assimilate this amount of new information. And I have the feeling that the bitcoiners are moving too fast away from the normies, living into another world, totally different than the "normies world". Who already know some basis, will learn fast, but for a 0 knowledge noob these things are like speaking another language from an unknown world.
Sad.