How to understand people that don't understand bitcoin.

Every new significant technology is "paradigm shifting".

The term paradigm shift means "a fundamental change in approach, or change in underlying assumptions".

In other words, to understand any new technology whether that is human flight, electricity, the internet or bitcoin you first need to change your underlying assumptions and change your approach. Trying to understand a new technology while maintaining legacy assumptions and legacy approaches will leave you unable to comprehend the feasibility of the new modus operandi.

To understand human flight you first needed to accept that air could hold the weight of a human, and let go of the false assumption that humans were too heavy to ever be able to sustain travel through the sky.

To understand electricity you first needed to accept that lightning could be contained in copper wiring, and let go of the false assumption that electricity could not be controlled and manipulated without electrocution.

To understand email you first needed to accept that information could be transmitted between computers digitally, and let go of the false assumption that information flows needed telephone lines and pieces of physical paper (mail/fax).

In the same respect, to understand bitcoin you need to change your paradigm. It is impossible to understand bitcoin without changing your approach to money or changing your underlying assumptions of what you think money is or what you think money has to be.

To understand bitcoin you first need to accept that money can be digital, money can be decentralised and money can be intangible, and let go of the false assumptions that money needs physical form, money needs to be backed by government or backed by gold and money needs to be tangible.

Money can be anything we collectively choose it to be, money can be purely digital, money can be decentralised and money can be intangible, so long as it holds utility and scarcity.

The ability to send any amount of a scarce asset anywhere on earth instantly for free without intermediaries holds immense utility.

So, in order to understand people that don't understand bitcoin, just know it is because they are slow to let go of their false underlying assumptions of what they think money is or what they think money has to be.

Submitted July 18, 2020 at 11:16PM by slvbtc https://ift.tt/2ZFnUqu