Close friends are our house guests for a few days. The husband is an old college buddy who is battling serious health issues. They are both around retirement age, but still working.
We were sitting around after dinner last night when my wife says something along the lines of "Siggy is a complete bitcoin nut." She says this often in social situations, but it rarely spurs any conversation. My friend's wife said "what the hell is bitcoin, anyway?", and everyone turned to look at me. Even though I have been obsessed for more than 8 years now, I always struggle with this simple question. I blurted out some stuff about internet money, double spending, inflation proof, etc. I second guessed every word that came out of my mouth. None of it mattered anyway. They wanted to know how much a bitcoin cost when I first bought it, and how much it was worth now. They liked the answer. The wife wanted to know if it was hard to buy bitcoin. I mentioned cash app, and she said she uses it but didn't know you could buy bitcoin. I explained that it was easy to start buying on the app, but then I talked about NYKNYC and hardware wallets. They both were very interested, which surprised me.
This morning they asked if I could help them make their first purchase on cash app. First my friend's wife bought some, then my friend downloaded the app.
They had many more questions, so I suggested they read Lyn Alden's book Broken Money.
So far, so good. They will be staying with us through Monday, so I'll post any significant updates.
The lesson I learned from all this?
Never underestimate NGU.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is NGU? Since I'm not Native American, I don't understand the concept...!
On another note, I'm happy you're helping your friends enter this wonderful world...!
No excuses needed; please always ask stupid/ignorant questions!!
You always learn something new....
It stands for Number Go Up. It means people want to get rich
Haha...I understand the ending now....thanks..!!
You hit a home run without even knowing you were at bat!
Exactly. I have made an ass of myself with planned conversations more than once. This had to be one of the most garbled, incoherent bitcoin explanations ever uttered, yet it didn't matter.
I'm not 100% sure of this, but in my own life I sometimes suspect that people respond better to incoherent babble than a polished presentation
My hypothesis is that the polished presentation makes them feel intimidated or makes you feel arrogant/snooty.
Again, not 100% sure about this, and maybe it's more of a "me" thing. But it's something that's crossed my mind more than once.
My dad and I had the same incoherent rambling math professor (decades apart and at different schools!). We both loved him and learned a lot in his classes.
Our theory is that the listener has to do more work and there's no illusion of comprehension with that sort of delivery. If you want to understand it, though, you can put the pieces together for yourself.
There must be something to that. I often hear from students that I'm very clear in my explanations and they feel like they understand when I do it on the board, then they go on to fail the test.
Maybe I should be more incoherent.
It's worth a shot. Maybe do some A/B testing next time you have multiple sections of the same course: one polished and one a rambly incoherent mess.
Main problem: I'm too lazy to actually try and teach two different ways.
It would be kind of difficult to be rambling and incoherent when you've prepared a polished version.
That's what has begun to happen. They asked me questions yesterday that led me to believe they are reading about it on their own.
You might be right
It's probably about expectations. If they go to a conference and are sitting in an audience, they want to hear a polished presentation. If they're sitting with you at a dinner table, they want to hear unfiltered garble.
It makes me think more of our effort should be on search and less on message.
There are probably lots of interested people who just need someone to talk to.
Amazing!
I've also had such NGU experiences recently. It's so true people get much more interested in Bitcoin as soon as the 'first buy price' hit the conversation, the most complicated part is also the same everywhere.
This is a great story! I really sympathized with your feelings about being a deer in the headlights when people unexpectedly ask about bitcoin and always feeling like I butcher my pitch. Thanks for the reminder to never underestimate the power of price.
I've had a lot of success with: "Bitcoin is just a new form of money, with fixed supply, and a public ledger. And the thing about the public ledger is that no one controls it, anyone can write to it, and yet somehow everyone trusts it. We've never had that before."
Sad but true.
Imagine. It's almost as if they think you're obsessed with it or something.
I know. The gall.
I think I should keep a little cheat sheet on my phone that I can read from.
Careful with that, they might start to think you're getting your information from online forums.