Excerpt
I discuss different ways to introduce Bitcoin to newcomers, highlighting the importance of showing its practical use in everyday life and tailoring the conversation to the people’s specific needs. I emphasize the value of practical demonstrations, security education, and maintaining a supportive community for ongoing questions and learning. Watch now to help spread the word effectively!
Transcript
“Based on your experience, what’s your best approach to orange-pill new people? How do you start? So, for me personally, I mean, there are so many different approaches to that. Recently, I spoke with Okin from Namibia, and he said, yeah, well, I’m basically going to the pub and I’m paying with bitcoin there. And when people start talking to me and asking me about Bitcoin and saying things like: “Bitcoin is a scam, it’s not a real thing.”, then I’m buying them a beer. And then the discussion is suddenly a different discussion, because suddenly the people saw that it’s possible to use bitcoin to buy real life goods. And then he said he’s just discussing with them and showing them how it works. For me, it’s a little bit different. I tend to do it that way, that either I come to a new town or a new area, or I attend as a speak at a conference. So I set up a meetup, for instance, or a talk. And with that, I already target the right audience, because only people interested in Bitcoin will be coming to an event like that. So I filter out already all the people who might only be against it and be like the “naysayers”. So find people who are interested in it is the first thing for me. Or if someone asks me a question and then I try to find out their specific needs, that depends on the country I’m in, because I believe the needs of people in terms of monetary value are very different from Zimbabwe to Germany or the US. Although a couple of use cases for Bitcoin, like hedging or being a sound money that helps you against inflation and things like that, that’s something that’s similar everywhere. It only has different levels of how hard it is or how much it is, how big the value loss is in a short time. So try to find out their specific needs and then I will share a talk. It must not be a long talk. 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes are enough and specially tailored to the needs of the people. So I speak to the problems in their country, for instance. So I include the problems that they might have. I try to find out what kind of people are they. Are they students? Are they people from other professions? Are they rather middle class? Or will they have a lower grade of wealth and things like that? And that’s all important. It’s very complicated, that’s sadly true. But I think it’s important to speak to the specific needs and the utility of Bitcoin, because just with the ideology driven, you can be self-sovereign, with it you can hedge against inflation, etc. all these fancy things that Bitcoiners might say on Twitter and get a lot of followership, they don’t apply to regular people, they don’t understand it, and they don’t need those ideologies. So give them something which helps them in their daily life and they will use it. Because as soon as they see how Bitcoin can help them either get money in and out of the country, or store money for a longer time frame, or instead of hoarding cash at home, which might rot, which might be eaten by rats. I mean, it sounds silly for someone in the western world, but for people in South Africa, in Bitcoin Ekasi, they told me that happens on a daily basis, or it’s much easier to steal cash than bitcoin from a wallet because you would need the phone, the wallet, the seed, the pin and all these kinds of things. So going back to how to orange-pill someone, showcase something as Okin does it with buying people a beer. You can for instance, show them how they can buy a mobile top up via Bitrefill or a eSIM if they want to go to another country, or how to buy an Amazon voucher or a Azte.co voucher, and all these kinds of things that are there, that are ready to be used. Because only then people see it’s real, it’s not a scam. You cannot touch it, but it buys you things that you can touch. As I said before, I was in Witsand recently and I bought petrol with Lightning. I bought my groceries with Lightning at PicknPay here in South Africa. So I think real life things are important. And don’t forget the most important security tips for them. That depends now how you onboard them, which wallets are you showing. And then it’s important, like if you have a wallet with a 12 word seed phrase, show them how to secure their 12 word seed phrase, if you have Wallet of Satoshi, because it’s someone who really doesn’t have a lot of money and they can just start stacking sets, then show them how to backup their Wallet of Satoshi. And what I believe is very, very important is that there is a person, and that might be you or your regional meetup where people can go to when they have questions. Because it’s so important to build trust and it’s important in a technology that is so fast developing like Bitcoin, to have a contact with the people to be able to tell them, look, you need to go into your wallet now and do these changes because there was a change to the wallet, and if you don’t do that, you might lose your funds. So I think this permanent connection like we are having here, on a monthly basis, every month, you can ask me questions if there is something that you don’t know. And every month, and not only every month once, but I’m basically constantly producing new content for you. And if there’s an emergency, I will say something to it, and you will receive that news. And that’s why I think it’s so important to stay in contact with the Bitcoin community and your educator. That’s basically what I try to do. And then I try to find out, okay, based on their profession, on their wealth, on their interest, and also on their goals, like, do you want to save? Do you want to receive remittance? Do you want to apply for a job in the Bitcoin space? Whatever. I always try to give the most focused answer to that specific question, so it’s easy to start, but actually, it never ends because there’s always something changing.
