https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/how-i-convince-boomers-to-trust-bitcoin

This is an opinion editorial by Dan Weintraub, an author and high school teacher who first became interested in Bitcoin while teaching economics.

Trust is a funny thing. Generationally speaking, one could make the argument that it is the job of the younger generation to essentially tell us older folks to go fly a kite (perhaps in more raw terms, and metaphorically of course) when it comes to our values, our norms, our advice, etc. Music provides an apt cultural landscape on which to view this tension.

The Same Old Song

In every generation, emerging and evolving musical forms have been decried by the older, traditional set as being bad music, noise, even not music at all. In the late 1950s, Walter Cronkite referred to jazz as “musical noise,” and his words were not offered as praise. Rockabilly of the 1950s was surely detested by many in the traditional country community. The music of the Summer Of Love was rejected by many parents who likely embraced jazz and bebop. Punk rockers were undoubtedly met with blank stares and utter contempt by their hippie parents, and rap continues to be the object of musical scorn the world over. The point is clear: Tradition hates innovation, mostly because tradition doesn’t understand innovation and feels threatened by this new iteration. And yet, the truth remains; it’s all just music.

Here’s where things get a bit complicated.

It’s one thing to not understand, dislike, even personally reject something new. It’s another thing entirely to discredit the new, to actively fight against the new, to try and destroy the new. And within that effort to destroy and to bury the new form of expression, those seeking to kill off the new thing will, in their rather tired and sad desperation, create false narratives and stories to rationalize their adherence to traditional ways. Unfortunately, these narratives can become so powerful, that they lead to the development of institutions and movements guided entirely by falsehood, led by self-serving and power-hungry zealots, armed with all of the cultural weaponry that tradition has at its disposal; shameless and conscienceless, these forces will often go to extreme lengths to kill the thing that they have decided, in their self-concerned ignorance, is evil.

As much as I hope that, somewhere far in the future, such destructive and reductive forces can be disempowered by truth-informed mechanisms like the Bitcoin protocol, I am not holding my breath. But in the present, the power of verification — that very thing that makes Bitcoin such a revolutionary moment — can be leveraged by the Bitcoin community as a way to bridge the generational gap, to push back against the narratives that baby boomers and others embrace in their rejection of Bitcoin, and to move the protocol adoption curve forward.

My Bitcoin Pitch To Fellow Boomers

Here’s my point:

My generation (I’m a youthful 61) has many qualms with Bitcoin. Some of these concerns are valid (old people hate volatility), while others are informed by entirely false narratives and prejudices. And just like with the musical examples above, so many of these false narratives are incredibly difficult to disarm; for embedded within these rejections of something new there exists a desperate clinging to something understandable, something empowering, something unifying in its self-righteous disgust and self-concentered defensiveness.

Now granted, I’m a boomer, so I have a little more natural validity when I speak with my peers about Bitcoin. I’m not the AirPods-wearing, yoga-mat-toting, entirely-self-absorbed and personal-development-obsessed millennial who my generation loathes so very much (wry smile). But even such affinity does not get me far with Bitcoin. Rejection narratives come hot and they come quickly: environmental degradation, dark web currency, gambling casinos that make TikTok’ers rich, etc.

My strategy in pushing back against these arguments goes back to music:

“Look,” I say “You may be right. Bitcoin may be energy intensive and not helpful to the environment. Bitcoin may be used by scammers and defrauders as part of their schemes to get rich. Bitcoin may be the currency, or one of the currencies, of a generation of social-media heads, people who you hold in such contempt. This may all be true. But I would argue three things: One, that you are embracing arguments that you have heard but have not investigated yourself; Two, that you are basing your hatred and rejection of Bitcoin not on the merits of Bitcoin, but on the way Bitcoin shows up in the world (just like our parents rejected our music, because it came with long hair and blue jean jackets); And three, that you are rejecting Bitcoin because you don’t understand it, which is so very much what all older generations do about shit they don’t get.”

And then I say this:

“There’s one thing about Bitcoin that makes it different from anything else in the world, and that is the dynamic of verification. Ignore all of the other stuff just for a second, if you can. I am entirely willing to stipulate that, after you do your own research and after you challenge your own prejudices toward those yucky millennials (another wry smile) that you may still reject Bitcoin, but hear me out on this one thing, this one really cool and rather revolutionary element of Bitcoin: Unlike every other human interaction in the world, Bitcoin does not ask us to put our blind trust in anyone else. No one owns it or controls it, so we’re not being asked to trust the words and deeds of bankers or government officials or scammers or anyone; no one can hack it (take some time to learn about why), so it is, even in its volatility as an investment, the most secure network of all time; and no can destroy it, because it is software that runs on millions of computers, all of which are verifying each and every transaction that takes place.”

And then this:

“Look, I’m not saying you should invest in bitcoin. And lord knows that in a world replete with greedy people and liars, bitcoin is just as apt to be used by these people as are dollars or gold or real estate or whatever gets them rich. And truth be known, millennials make me roll my eyes as well. But you know what, that’s my generational B.S. It’s my own crap. Just like my parents shook their heads at my Grateful Deadness and my punk rockness, I shake my head toward millennials. But that rigidity and silliness shouldn’t inform my views about an emerging monetary technology and protocol. If it does, then I am guilty of the very thing that we blamed our parents for being guilty of 40 years ago. I don’t want to be part of yet another anti-intellectual generation that rejects stuff it doesn’t understand, or that embraces false narratives about things because those are the narratives we are exposed to the most.”

And then my closing:

“All I’m asking is that you take a moment and consider what a world in which verification of truth, rather than trusting someone else’s words, might look like. For example, bitcoin and the Bitcoin network could have totally ended all of the stuff about stolen elections, because within this realm of verification there exists the ability to validate and verify each and every transaction (every vote) beyond any doubt. Also, with the Bitcoin network and protocol, you can say goodbye to things like identity theft and credit card scams and being double charged for stuff you didn’t buy; because with Bitcoin every, every, every transaction is verified on an entirely secure network by tens of thousands of computers running unhackable software. And the thing is, there are so many examples of how verification could make the world in which we live so much better, because when we can verify stuff then we end up trusting the whole process. So all I’m asking is to do a little investigation about this thing before you reject it; you may find, despite yourself, that as you get it more, your appreciation for it changes.”

We live in a world in which trust is an ever-diminishing construct. As I noted in my first two pieces in this series, as trust continues to erode, we, as a species, are in increasing trouble and distress. I totally grok why my generation doesn’t trust Bitcoin. But I also get that our mistrust is informed by false narratives, by petty prejudices, and by a tenacious adherence to things we understand and know. The thing about Bitcoin that makes it so novel, and so elegant, is that the protocol, by way of example, cuts through all of the falsehood. This I feel is the most powerful thing about Bitcoin, and this I feel is a route toward bringing more and more people into the fold.

Virtually everyone on the planet, boomers included, is concerned about the direction we are heading as a species. And at the heart of this fear is the fact that we can’t trust anything anymore. Bitcoin changes this through its inviolable verification mechanism. It begins with money, property, assets. Who knows where it ends.

This is a guest post by Dan Weintraub. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/trump-election-denials-and-the-need-for-bitcoin-verification

This is an opinion editorial by Dan Weintraub, an author and high school teacher who first became interested in Bitcoin while teaching economics.

I recently watched with bemused indifference CNN’s Donald Trump town hall charade, yet another in an endless list of macabre political and social zombie dances.

The truth is, I don’t care all that much anymore about party politics, about the upcoming presidential election cycle, about supposedly heartfelt and earnest liberal and conservative political expressions within the American polity, about the hand-wringing surrounding the tenuous future of American Democracy, etc. What I do care about, however, is how easy it is for human beings to be manipulated, to believe the lies.

We are all sheep — blind followers with little sense of discernment — we are all entirely programmable and entirely impressionable. History may not repeat itself per se, but as an endless record of follower-humans following leader-humans off of proverbial cliffs demonstrates (and for no other reason than the leader-humans were/are really skilled at lying), it certainly feels like déjà vu all over again.

Worry not! This is not an article about Trump or about ideological disaffection. Trump is just one man in a human melodrama that spans millennia. The focus of this piece is about the role Bitcoin can play in restoring belief and in ending human somnambulance; it is about how we disempower the disinformationalists. And it is a warning, for those in power will go to any lengths to maintain their hypnotic grip on humanity.

Why Governments Fear Bitcoin

So, the first question we must examine is this: Why are governments seemingly so afraid of Bitcoin? Interestingly, it’s not simply because Bitcoin has the potential to end governments’ monopoly on money (which is admittedly a pretty big deal in and of itself). No. The underlying reason actually indicates something far more fundamental: Governments are afraid of Bitcoin as a construct because governments can only govern through deceit and dishonesty.

You see, the most powerful and successful governments throughout history have been (and remain) the ones that are the most adroit and accomplished at lying. The United States government, that bastion of supposed democratic righteousness, is in fact a compelling example of this principle. From Vietnam to Iraq, Joseph McCarthy to Lyndon Johnson to Jerome Powell and beyond, U.S. history is replete with examples of the power of lies, and of the malleability of the minds of well-intentioned, patriotic, innocent, hopeful, lost citizens.

Bitcoin Outs The Lies

Back to Trump for a moment. This from the BBC:

“Mr. Trump has questioned the legitimacy of the election process in a series of tweets, the latest of which said on Monday: ‘Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day… Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!’ “

The above quote is not from the fall of 2020. This is from 2016, when then-candidate Trump was facing then-candidate Hilary Clinton in the general election. Lest we forget, Trump has been making claims of rigged elections for years. A masterful and, in fact, quite sophisticated practitioner in the art of exploiting human neurological frailty, Trump brilliantly leveraged (and continues to leverage) his skills as a purveyor of disinformation. Indeed, tens of millions of Americans continue to believe that Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2020 are correct, and that the presidency was stolen from him and from his followers.

I find this entirely fascinating and frightening at the same time.

The point is not whether Trump’s claims are accurate. And, if I am being honest, I must admit to having no way of knowing whether or not Trump’s claims are true. (The fact is, if I reject his claims, I may simply be choosing to believe the narrative that has been proffered by the other side. Both sides adhere tenaciously to their data. Both sides dwell in echo chambers that reinforce their narratives. Both sides suffer from the anti-intellectual effects caused by the frailties of human neuroplasticity. And both sides are composed of millions of follower-humans, unaware of the power that the leader-humans wield through their manipulations, through their theater, through their deceits.)

The point here is that, without the capacity to verify Trump’s claims, we are all potential prey; without the ability to know beyond any doubt what really happened in the last election cycle, there is no way to trust the election results — indeed, there is no way to trust our political process at all.

Bitcoin And Neuroplasticity

Neuroscience 101: Hear something enough and you will believe it to be true. Get on your knees and pray to God every day for an hour, and within months, perhaps weeks, even dyed-in-the-wool atheists will believe in God. Read only articles on Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit, listen only to podcasts by Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck, and you will, beyond any doubt in your mind, believe the election was stolen. Read only articles on Mother Jones and HuffPost and Slate Magazine, and you will believe beyond any doubt in your mind that the election was valid. Listen only to YouTube channels broadcasting the views of Michael Saylor, Balaji Srinivasan, Mark Moss and Jeff Booth and you will believe that bitcoin to $1 million dollars is inevitable, that hyperinflation is coming and that the banks are all going to collapse. Listen only to YouTube channels touting the views of Warren Buffet and Peter Schiff and you will believe Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme and a scam.

Humans are sheep because we are wired to be sheep. We believe that we are critical thinkers and great discerners of truth, but we are all of us just ingesting and internalizing the narratives that we hear, over and over and over again.

Without verification, we are all potential victims to the lies told by those in power.

Again, enter Bitcoin.

As I posited in my previous article, we need to have some imagination. We need to have the willingness to see that, in time, the Bitcoin network could act as the foundational layer to all digital interactions. And in time, there is every possibility that such a network could have the capacity to verify beyond any possible doubt each transaction, each interaction, each news story, each claim by the government, each tweet, etc.

But here’s the thing: We actually do not need to have much imagination at all to recognize that elections and blockchain technology are present tense, not future tense, considerations.

Imagine a system in which every ballot is imprinted with a digital private key/signature. All voting records live on an immutable ledger. While this will not disempower those who employ lies and disinformation as a way to manipulate the neurologically susceptible, it will move us in a direction in which claims of voter fraud, like those touted by Trump, have no teeth. And perhaps in time, as Bitcoin and the Bitcoin network proliferates, more such forms of verification have the potential to undercut the liars’ superpower.

I recognize that at this moment, Bitcoin is feared more for its ability to circumvent monetary control than it is for its inherently truthful nature. U.S. leaders are frightened at the prospect of the dollar losing its status as the world’s reserve currency, and as such, they will do pretty much anything to question and undermine the legitimacy and accessibility of anything that furthers such a possibility. (For example, right now we hear far more about the evils of China and of RNB ascendancy than we do about Bitcoin.)

But can you see, in a possible future in which lying becomes increasingly difficult, why our leaders might fear Bitcoin so very much? And can you see why our leaders will do anything to stop the ascendency of truth and verification? I have little doubt that, as the Bitcoin network becomes increasingly capable of vetting any and all forms of data, of verifying any and all forms and claims upon truth, that leaders the world over will do everything — everything! — in their power to destroy this network — because without the ability to lie, to manipulate we the sheep, all governments, all centralized power brokers, must by their very nature fail.

In time, Bitcoin can become so much more than a monetary network. It can become so much more than a store of monetary value. It can become so much more than property. In time, The Bitcoin protocol and Bitcoin network can become the very thing that those in power fear most: the truth.

Where there is truth, the sheep awaken.

The Trumps Of The World Must Be Held To Account

As I said at the beginning of this piece, this is not a political screed. Politicians lie, regardless of ideology. Leaders on the left are just as apt, just as skilled, at employing disinformation and dishonesty as are those on the right. The point is, without the ability to objectively verify the truth, humans will continue to hurl their mindless selves into the fray, believing to their core the lies proffered by those who benefit from such duplicity.

I know that many of you reading this will see my views about the evolution of the Bitcoin network as the stuff of fantasy. I ask you though: Throughout human history, hasn’t every advancement at once been thought of as fantastic? Bitcoin is only just beginning. Once our leaders come to realize that, in the not-so-distant future, the Bitcoin network and protocol could morph into a global and inviolable lie detector, they will go to any length to kill it. For they are only as powerful as are the believability of the lies they tell.

This is a guest post by Dan Weintraub. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.