nopara said this:
"There certainly were lots of "read the whitepaper" kind of advice early on, I think it was originating from Andreas, or at least his talks were the ones that got me to read it.
"But ever since the blocksize wars where the big blockers tended to fetishize the whitepaper - in a quite cherrypicky way may I note. This trend's ultimate manifestation was BitcoinSV (SV stands for "Satoshi's Vision")
"So the people who stayed with Bitcoin - including me - were recommending reading the whitepaper only when it was justified, which was never. I don't recall recommending it to anyone a single time.
"Furthermore the people like the saylors arriving later on were not technically minded at all, so reading the whitepaper was not something they would ever think of doing, let alone recommending.
"In my opinion - which is an educated one - the biggest obstacle to bitcoin adoption is software. Sure we have software to store it and it'd be silly to discount storing a trillion USD worth of value as "not adoption" but the adoption we're talking about is payments. When you must compete with touching your phone to a terminal and paying instantly with it, QR code + 1 conf or 15 second lightning payments that fail 5% of the time are just not gonna cut it."
Do you tell new bitcoiners to "read the whitepaper"?
I don't usually, unless I feel like they're the kind who would appreciate it.
But I do tell them that I read it, and it was actually through reading it that I became convinced that Bitcoin is the real deal.
this is interesting to me, because i did not really find much use in reading it until after I had already used bitcoin a lot. then reading it became more interesting.
I don't think I had any bitcoiners in my life to explain bitcoin to me. But people were asking me about it, and my brother in law was thinking about buying it, so I decided to look into it myself, and came across the white paper
We should stick this everywhere
what is this, a whitepaper for ants?
No. It's nerdy and cool and historic, but it doesn't help people understand money or Bitcoin.
what do you tell them to read?
Some of the good intro books. Principles or Resistance Money, or if they're squarely on the left, maybe A progressive's case for Bitcoin
For some people, it can
I don't usually recommend that newcomers read the Bitcoin whitepaper. Not because it isn't important, but because I don't think it's the best introduction to Bitcoin. The whitepaper is primarily a technical explanation of how Bitcoin enables peer-to-peer electronic cash. It doesn't really address many of the practical questions newcomers have about Bitcoin.
Funny thing, I recently paid about $12 to transfer $1,000 from a U.S. bank to an overseas bank. And after examining my bank statements, I discovered that withdrawing $1,000 through overseas ATMs could cost me almost $60 in fees - it seems criminal. Experiences like these make me appreciate the original vision described in the whitepaper. But I think newcomers are better served by first understanding what Bitcoin is, why it matters, and how they can actually use it. Then, if they are interested, they can read the whitepaper.
how do you get newcomers to understand what bitcoin is?
I usually explain that Bitcoin is a digital currency that isn't controlled by a central bank or government. I also mention that it allows people to send money directly to each other without relying on traditional financial institutions and it can be much cheaper. For example, Western Union might charge $10 or more to send someone $100, depending on where you're sending it. On the Bitcoin network, the transaction fee could be less than $1, and on Lightning, it could be just a few cents or less. Of course, converting between Bitcoin and regular currency can introduce additional fees but I think it's a much better way to send money.
I also wrote a book called Blockchain Lords: The Battle for Bitcoin, which uses historical fiction to introduce newcomers to Bitcoin and some of the major events in its history. Hopefully, it will help people understand Bitcoin while enjoying a good story. :)
I tell people the whitepaper is like the Declaration of Independence, a decent general description of the system. But if you wanna know how the government works on a granular level, you need to read The Constitution. Similarly, with bitcoin, you need to read the code (Bitcoin Core).
at first i thought that the analogy didn't work (the constitution, particularly the bill of rights, has a lot of ideas that are fairly easy to access like freedom of speech, right to bear arms, no unreasonable search or seizure -- but bitcoin's code base is not so accessible to most).
However, the more i think about it, the more i think you may be on to something. the simple structure laid out in the constitution is highly complex when it comes to putting it into practice. And so it may be the same with bitcoin -- but i don't think I'm going to switch to telling people to read the Bitcoin Core repo anytime soon.
I usually tell any girl she has to have at least 3 merged PRs to Core before I take her on a second date.
Not necessarily new bitcoiners, but around this time every year I bring it up with other bitcoiners and this year I wanted to do something creative to celebrate whtepaper day with the help of AI so I built an interactive version: https://bitcoinwhitepaper.art/
Makes it a bit more stimulating for our gnat-sized attention spans. But I won't hold a gun to your head and force you to read it. Might want to read it in case your financial well-being depends on it though.
nah, not for beginners.
You can tell someone to "read the whitepaper" if you can't be bothered arguing with them.
yes, this is the main usage now.
I don't like telling people what to do. The whitepaper, whether someone read it, understood it, and interprets in a way compatible with what I do, is what makes the difference between someone I could work with and someone I would either ignore or work against.
Funny timing on nopara's payments point: this week Square switched Lightning on at checkout for eligible US sellers by default, no application needed. I'd rather hand a newcomer a coffee paid that way than a PDF. The whitepaper answers "how does it work," but most people's first question is "why would I care," and nine pages of hash chains is a rough answer to that one. I save it for the second conversation, when they ask how anyone stops the same coin being spent twice, because that's exactly the question it was written to answer.
Funny. The charge to vote (which I paid) is 1 sat. The Lightning Fee, through Phoenix for me, is 4 sat. So the effective fee is 5 sat.
Note that with Tollbooth-DPYC, the patron (like me, here, today) can purchase "API Sats" offline in bulk (say, 1000 at a time) and pay a similar fee that is amortized over that larger tranche versus a micro fee like here.
This makes single-sat transactions more economical. (And now I pay 12 sats more to reply. The Tollbooth DPYC removes the light friction of invoice payment out of the "hot path".)