@AlilSiadSo

Selection no 4 from @AnilSaidSo's Bitcoin primer collection

If you’ve ever had trouble explaining #Bitcoin to someone, you’re not alone. Some tips:

Ditch complex definitions & jargon

Meet people where they stand

Use words & concepts they already grasp

Here's a thread of the best teachers with the most intuitive explanations.

'The platypus was so distinct that scientists had to create a new animal category... The platypus was a category creator.' 'Bitcoin is very similar. It exhibits characteristics that cross asset classes: currency, commodity, stock, technology platform.' -@CremeDeLaCrypto

‘Bitcoin’s monetary policy does not bend for anyone: it gives zero fucks. And in a world where central banks can “just add zeros”..., people’s only hope is a “zero fucks” money…’ -@Breedlove22 , The Number Zero & Bitcoin

Bitcoin serves as a monetary lifeboat for people forced to transact and save in monetary media constantly debased by governments’ (p.212) - The Bitcoin Standard by @saifedean

‘Bitcoin represents the explicit encoding of previously implicit values* of the tech community. It's not just software- it's a Schelling point and a symbol.’ -@balajis *intrinsically internationalist, agents of hyper-deflation, quietly revolutionary

..the Bitcoin protocol grows & changes as its users change, ultimately controlled by no one. Bitcoin, is nothing more than a common lingua franca, enabling multiple parties to communicate usefully with each other.

The Bitcoin Big Bang by @BKBrianKelly

'Bitcoin is the single best hedge against the traditional financial infrastructure... Whether you support the fiscal and monetary policy or not, it doesn’t matter. This is the schmuck insurance you have under your mattress.' -@chamath

'It’s kind of like a land-grab phase where you know this is going to get big… and you know it’s very scarce, so, let’s just stake our claim and then see what’s going to be built on top of it, later.' -@TuurDemeester

'Bitcoin’s PoW is the buyer of last resort for all electricity, creating a floor that incentivizes the building of new energy producing plants around disparate energy sources that would have otherwise been left untapped.' 'PoW is about physics, not code.' -@danheld

Bitcoin as the numeraire- the global base unit of account. 'It's a whole different discount rate trying to outpace a deflationary currency... few understand that today, but they will learn...either through experience or by following the right people.' -@PrestonPysh

'If you’re hedging against uncertainty, then you want to hold the least uncertain asset possible... Bitcoin, with halvings and with the difficulty adjustment, it really has the least uncertain monetary policy.' -@pierre_rochard

Skeptics will keep jeering about the ‘year of retail Bitcoin adoption’ while the underpinnings of the entire financial system get swapped out from beneath their feet.’ -@lopp

"Bitcoin is a fast growing country in cyberspace with a population of sovereign individuals who prefer to use BTC for storing wealth and doing transactions: - population 3M (#134 largest of the world) - monetary base $200B (#21 largest globally)" -@100trillionUSD

“Bitcoin is resilient. Bitcoin is principled. Bitcoin is native to internet ideals. ..I think it has the greatest chance of being the Internet’s native currency. If you think of the internet as you would a country, that’s huge.” -@jack

"Many label it as a speculative pyramid scheme - without realizing that all government-printed money is such." "Bitcoin is insurance against politicians." -@naval

Paul Buchheit is credited with creating Gmail and developing the prototype for Google's AdSense. "Bitcoin may be the TCP/IP of money." -@paultoo

Bitcoin will mature. It’s setting up to be digital gold. As millennials and the generation under us become more significant market participants, from a purchasing power perspective and [as a] population, the use case becomes even better for bitcoin." -@mjdsouza2

“When you change how money is created and valued, there is going to be major pushback. Bitcoin is a marathon, not a sprint." "We’re just at the beginning of building the internet of money, and it’s going to be a wild ride.” -@starkness

“Bitcoin is the world's first risk-on save-haven. What this means is it goes up during traditional boom cycles, it also goes up when investors flock to safe-havens. The former is due to its adoption curve, the latter due to its technical design.” -@woonomic

"If you dismiss bitcoin mining, you don't understand how bitcoin works. By the end of this decade, the economics of the bitcoin value chain will re-shape the world's physical infrastructure and as a result, its power structures - in every sense of the word power." -@Melt_Dem

About the author

Anil is an independent bitcoin educator based in Canada. He holds an MBA, CBP and was part of MIT's inaugural FinTech certificate cohort. He's guest-lectured at Business schools and launched the first Bitcoin-specific university scholarship in Canada. His focus is on simplifying concepts through visuals and storytelling to make bitcoin easier to comprehend.

You can follow him on Twitter @anilsaidso and you can pre-order his book below representing approximately 3,000 hours of research, teaching, writing and design in an effort to best communicate Bitcoin as a concept.