The extent to which bitcoin has leveled the playing field across the world is just astounding. Whether, by luck of genetic lottery you grew up in Palestine, or on Wall St., bitcoin offers the same access to the protocol and network. It grants global financial access to the most repressed, and limits the power of their dictators and abusers.

And in an era shaped by ever faster productivity improvement, whether by AI or other technology advancement, bitcoin is the first credible solution to the age old problem of spreading around the benefits of our ingenuity. Without it, we risk a dystopian future, where the benefits accrue to an ever shrinking pool of the population while the majority struggle to survive. Our fiat inflationary system is coming face to face with the cold hard realities of technological progress.

All this to say, the world needs bitcoin, and the degree to which it changes the game can't be undersold. It's a true revolution in decentralization and a trust in math and cryptography over politicians. There are no insiders in bitcoin.

It's unfortunate that we still have snake oil salesmen and affinity scams in this day and age, but it shouldn't be surprising. However, if people took a minute to understand what they have in Bitcoin, it's actually quite easy to spot the fraudsters. I'm sorry about your friend, but he clearly didn't learn what bitcoin is, or what it's about before he was sucked in by the lure of "easy money" by a con man.