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Yesterday I had a chat with a guy called Marco from Lebanon, a country which faced hyperinflation. His story helped change my mind about how hyperbitcoinisation might come about. I've always thought hyperinflation would be a huge catalyst for immediate Bitcoin adoption because people would be forced to look at other alternatives. But there were other factors I hadn't considered.
From his experience, Marco saw two things happening during and after hyperinflation in his country:
  1. People were too busy trying to survive and thinking about what the immediate next steps were to save their families. They were in fight or flight mode. This is not the right mindset or situation to be in to learn and be receptive of a complex new topic. Learning about bitcoin takes a lot of work and people don't have the time, energy or resources to do that in a stressful situation.
  2. People have just lost their wealth. They don't have money to buy fuel to leave the country, food to feed their children, let alone the money to buy bitcoin. Let alone the ability to save their earnt Bitcoin. Let alone the ability to learn the relevant skills to be hired by a Bitcoin company to earn a paycheck in Bitcoin.
After this conversation I felt less radical about cheering on the collapse of fiat. The reality of it is heartbreaking.
On a more positive note, we talked about what the catalysts for hyperbitcoinisation might be if not hyperinflation. We riffed about loss of trust in mainstream media and social media. We noticed more convos happening around building local communities or people of the same feather flocking together in small online groups. And these people are getting into Bitcoin because a trusted friend in that group has the patience to orange pill and has a vested interest in seeing their community thrive.
TLDR; education from trusted sources seems to be a powerful, decentralized force towards hyperbitcoinisation.
It makes sense that the education of Bitcoin mirrors the decentralised nature of Bitcoin itself. It makes sense that a catalyst for Bitcoin adoption is fuelled by empowered individuals proactively making a difference and causing a positive ripple effect as opposed to cheering on the collapse of the old system which is completely out of our individual control.
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Bitcoin is only useful in a hyperinflation scenario for those who prepared and were able to accumulate some in advance. People who are "too busy trying to survive" in hyperinflation are screwed. The best they can hope for is that they have a friend or family member who is a bitcoiner.
It's like telling someone actively having a heart attack they need to diet and exercise. Sure it's good advice but they're hearing it too late.
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It might even take multiple generations before this thing really kicks off.. Who knows.. patience is key.
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After this conversation I felt less radical about cheering on the collapse of fiat. The reality of it is heartbreaking
Good. Being a radical Bitcoiner is always a sign of provilege.
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This is like a Debts... every Debts has purpose... #Bitcoin has purpose to lock the Value of Energy and Times. āš”šŸŒžāš”
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Some might see over time their one 'bitcoin guy' friend having an easier time buying food & fuel for their family. Then they will have to start becoming interested in learning about bitcoin.
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I always say there is nothing more high-time preference than being hungry, Bitcoin is an amazing form of money, but you still need surplus and free cash flows and conviction to take advantage of it, not many people have those 3 things going for them right now.
I also saw the hyperinflation in Zim, I've worked for Zim companies, and I've seen how you they had to pivot to South African rands or USD to keep going and how out of wack pricing for everything becomes as their base layer gets rugged
In places with high inflation, I don't think it's about the poor running to Bitcoin, but the middle class, hyperinflation is a time-compressed wealth transfer to the rich, upper middle class, and politically connected if you're not one of those 3 you need to find something to hold on to, or like you say you end up with zero but you're not going to look to BTC if you don't know it exists or its properties
For sure Bitcoin education has to be adapted for different people, while I got OP'd by Andreas A, he might not appeal to everyone, he might reach the tech guys, but that's where it stops, you get a lot of finance guys now, and they speak in their circles, that's why there is so much opportunity, be it different languages, or speaking bitcoin in terms that a certain interest group can understand.
People also relate to locals who can explain things, like here in SA we've had 3 big Bitcoin ponzi schemes, all driven by the fact that people took a bit of BTC info and wrapped it into a story that resonated with people, it drew in millions before they exit scammed, now imagine if they didn't do that, and those people ended up with self custody sats, would have made a major impact.
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here in SA we've had 3 big Bitcoin ponzi schemes [...] it drew in millions before they exit scammed, now imagine if they didn't do that, and those people ended up with self custody sats, would have made a major impact.
Ugh. And also imagine how everyone who knows those people now probably thinks "btc is for scammers". What a headwind.
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Lol 100% if ever I talk about BTC, you'll get that one person trying to dismiss what I say by bringing up MTI (Mirror trading), Mining City, or Africrypt, like its some kind of dunk.
There are a few smaller ones going right now, which i've tried to warn people about, and got a few people out in time. But there are too many, I can only warn people of the ones that have a visible social media but there are those that stick to WhatsApp groups, which are much harder to expose.
These scams are quite popular here, and one of these local Ponzi bros here even started his own political party, FML!
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Thank you for your service :)
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i absolute agree with
education from trusted sources seems to be a powerful, decentralized force towards hyperbitcoinisation
but let's picture hyperinflation starting to happen - not in a small, economically isolated country - but in a country that is more intertwined in the global markets, that has a currency used in international affairs... maybe Argentina or Japan, the extreme example would be the dollar itself (like Balaji is predicting)
in that case, there will be people in the same situation, struggling to 'fight or flight', but the impacts of hyperinflation will be perceived all around the world in international affairs, and there will be a lot of people in a better situation to make the 'move' to harder assets..
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Absolutely. It needs to be done on the way to hyperinflation.
But I think you're missing something.
Here in Argentina for example, people escape inflation by buying US dollars. Is the dollar inflating 7%? That's absolutely nothing compared to 130%! So people demand and save in dollars. It would be much easier to jump to bitcoin if dollars didn't exist.
Bitcoin has different onramps but I think zaps (like on Nostr/SN) are the least difficult way to get acquainted, and these social places have the potential to scale adoption the most. Memes help.
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If you are unbanked under hyperinflation and/or living pay check to pay check you are screwed. You cannot plan even a few days ahead because you are constantly thinking about survival. You have to start digging the well before you feel thirsty.
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I agree on your 2 points but not on the what you think the catalysts could be.
I think the introduction of the CBDC worldwide will be adapted very easily because it will be a gift from your government on introduction (or later people will need support from the government thus makes it easy to introduce this). But when all these people see the side effects of being punished by buying meat, going on holiday by airplane, negative yield, etc, will be the moment people will search for alternatives to obtain the privacy what they lost. Slowly they will talk with each other about the benefits and being the solution. At that time bitcoin will be more mature with more privacy and will have better UX. Then we can welcome these people who didn't study bitcoin like us, and have no economic knowledge, but want to use it because they understand they lost their freedom and want to flee the eyes from above.
I think in that moment bitcoin will thrive to become a real medium of exchange after now being a store of value. After the hyperbitcoinisation will bitcoin be a unit of account.
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That is sad to hear and I somewhat agree with you. The last thing on their mind is learning something new that takes hundreds of hours of research to truly grasp but that's why it's so important for all of us to educate them before the collapse of their money.
After hyperinflation has taken place, I feel like the only thing that their devalued money can buy is some sats to preserve and move what little of their wealth is left.
I certainly don't want a complete fallout of fiat currency all at once but the unfortunate reality of fiat and hyperbitcoinization is that those who dump their fiat last, will lose the most. They will be stuck holding a bag of worthless fiat.
On the other hand, it's possible that poor nations have very little to lose so even after they lose everything to hyperinflation, it might not be that difficult for them to build the same amount of wealth and store it in an asset that will increase in purchasing power over time.
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"education from trusted sources seems to be a powerful, decentralized force towards hyperbitcoinisation"
this 100%
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Bitcoin means democracy. Because it brings justice to the economic system. If there is inflation then they were printing money from thin air. Where would go that printed money? Equally to all citizens? I don't think so. Excessive printing money occurs non-democratic regimes. Same could be Said for the hyperinflation. The law maker is anti democrat executives in no-democracy countries. In short, they wouldn't decide on behalf of Bitcoin. They would decide printing more money till the collapse.
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because people are uneducated
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Happy spending today = debt of tomorrow = slavery of your children in the future
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correct, thanks to all the social media and tailor-made ads from big data šŸ„“
more buying - more debt - more working hours so to buy more..
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haha, I don't really pay attention to saylor šŸ«£
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In a hyper inflationary environment it makes sense to take out tons of credit though, as the value of the debt shrinks very quickly.
If you use that credit to buy real assets then your children will have freedom in the future.
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