Been chipping away at an old friend for a few years now (I don't particularly like her anymore and our friendship is running on inertia) and thought I was finally making some progress.
She's a bit of a virtue signaler. Likes to larp as a humanitarian. So that's a good inroad with her. The other day she was complaining about the housing crisis and I suggested that Bitcoin could fix that (house hoarders reallocating their wealth into Bitcoin thus freeing up real estate and driving down prices). And, to my surprise, that seemed to vaguely land with her.
She doesn't sit with insights for long, though. She likes to pivot from one thing to the next in rapid succession. So she started on about other societal problems: bad health, depression, suicide, etc. Bitcoin surely couldn't fix any of that, as far as she was concerned.
I tried to stay neutral and avoid condescension. I asked her if she'd ever considered that the broken money was actually the thing breaking everything else. That perhaps with sound money we could have sound health, sound minds, and so on. Joe Bryan's video "What's the Problem?" highlights this point nicely, so I sent her that. And again, to my surprise, that seemed to vaguely land with her.
It felt like momentum was building after years of stonewalling.
But she kept on. Next she pivoted to how dangerous and irresponsible it was for me to go all in on something that relied exclusively on "such a new technology like the Internet." Again, I tried to keep a level head. I asked her if she'd heard of some of the cool Bitcoin projects involving satellites and radios and text messages and bluetooth. I sent her Calle's post about Bitchat/Bluetooth transfers. And again, to my surprise, that seemed to vaguely land with her.
Then...days of silence.
What was she thinking, I wondered? Surely the penny was finally dropping? I'd had an answer to everything she threw at me.
And then...today...she broke the silence with a text:
"What are your thoughts on XRP?"
My heart sank.
What do I do from here, friends? A part of me wants to respond snarkily. Another part of me wants to respond plainly with the facts. And yet another part of me wants to give up entirely. What would you do?
