I do not agree with this approach because it fight lies and wrong perceptions with just more lies and wrong perceptions. I believe bitcoiner's weapons should be truth and honest information
Discussion
I agree with honesty. I prefer that.
Somehow I feel that people has big negative feelings about btc and crypto. So if you bring up this topic, they get into defending mode, and won't listen to you.
Also what btc fights for is not really concerns of people until they face issues with it. Like the third party risk, control of third party, open sourceness.
In my opinion the great use of btc for the masses can come from merchant side. It is cheap to receive sats on the lightning compared to traditional solutions like visa, mastercard payments, where these companies have a monopoly. So for merchants it would be a cost reduction option to switch to lightning. Also a bonus, if they care about third party risk. (Cost increase is also third party risk though). So they have a benefit of using it.
For people who would pay with sats over lightning have less utility depending on the country. Usually for consumers it is cheap to have a bank card, and as the merchant pays the fees for card payments, people have less cost issues with cards I guess. So for people, in my opinion, paying over lightning have less benefits compared to merchants. So for them we may need different incentivization.
So merchants could prefer this, but if it is not similarly conveniant or even better for people to use lightning they might keep using their cards.
That is why I was thinking to show people how lightning works, without putting them in defense mode because of crypto scams that happened in the past.
What is your opinion?
Another idea came to my mind:
Maybe we shall promote different features/usecases that can only or more easily done by btc.
So let's say we don't say that start to use bitcoin because it is not controlled by state, supply can't be inflated, etc. Or to stack sats as a future "investment".
So we don't want people to use btc, but want them to do a task that requires the use of btc.
Examples:
* Support your favorite artists over the internet easily.
* Give tips easily.
* Earn money shitposting.
* Earn money directly with creating content.
* etc.
So we generate lots of usecase for using btc, because this is one of its strength that due to its open-sourceness, more development can be done in the field, which enhances market competition, and generates better and better products.
I believe that you cannot change the mind of persons who don't want to. At this point the best strategy could be to support the merchants that are brave enough to accept Bitcoin actually spending Bitcoin in their store. Spendl and replace, without using your stack. In this way merchants who accept Bitcoin gains new customers and at the same time opt out of fiat. Other merchants would gain their customers back and hence are incentivized to accept Bitcoin too.
I wanted to write "other merchants will want their customer back". Sorry for being not to clear: I'm posting from phone 🙂
Good point! I agree!
Somehow I think that for merchants it worth it to accept bitcoin if they can decrease their cost of payment.
But somehow it shall worth to people to use btc payment in a shop over other payment means.
It is a free market, and we shall not force people to use btc by only allowing that, but incentivizing them to use it. That would be the best.
I think we shall aim to fulfill multiple needs with btc to be able to make it widespread.
Some needs I can come up with right now:
* Merchant's need is to accept electronic payments cheaply.
* People's need on bitcoin standard is to be able to pay with btc
* Developer's need for open-sourceness of payment solutions to easily create new payment related apps to fulfill customer needs.
But somehow if I don't care about btc, and merchant gives the option to use btc, I wouldn't change, because btc is volatile, and I need an extra step to convert my fiat to btc to use it in a shop. So I don't feel this a great need for an average people.
If we find a general need that people have, they will instantly start to use it. Or at least the adoption will be faster.
Just my idea.