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GM 🫂 's

Rate my reply to my old friend asking me about Bitcoin:

Hey xxxxx

Nice to hear from you.

I am definitely not a financial advisor.

Can I suggest you read my book, it will tell you a lot. It is important you understand what Bitcoin is before you invest anything into it.

Firstly, Bitcoin is not like anything else you have ever experienced in your life. Everything else is based on trust and there is a higher authority you can always turn to.

If you loose access to your bank account, you can walk in to a branch with your ID papers and within half an hour or so, your account access will be restored by them. The bank control your account and the money held within it.

If you loose your passport or driving license, the government can issue you new ones. They control your identity.

If you get locked out of your house, you can call a locksmith and they will break in, legally, for you.

Bitcoin is different, it is permissionless and trustless. Nobody can stop you spending your money and you can send it to anyone anywhere in the world instantly without having to trust a third party to authorise payment for you.

By that same token, if you make a mistake and send it to the wrong address or if you loose the keys that secure your Bitcoin, it is gone, nobody can help you. You need to understand and be comfortable with that.

As for Bitcoin as a store of value, this is the first stage that all new Bitcoiners go through, but if you do it properly, it will eventually be the least significant feature.

However, as for Bitcoin price cycles. Every 4 years the supply is automatically halved. This happened on the 20th April this year, you probably saw we were in Warsaw at a halving party. It happened at 3:09am European time, so we were asleep.

Nothing actually happens for around 6 months of the halving, but from 6 - 18 months after the halving, the price rises significantly to adapt to the new supply and scarcity.

So, from the start of November the price has started to rise and will continue to do so in a saw tooth pattern for around the next year.

The price rise often overshoots the new natural price level and so expect a crash around the end of next year, it will be significant and will take a year or so to recover, but will eventually settle to a new price.

In 4 years time, around April 2028, the cycle will happen again.

Bitcoin is not a short term investment, don’t invest unless you are prepared to hold for a minimum of 4 years.

Holding bitcoin for 8 years can produce generational wealth.

The three core tenets of Bitcoin are:

Not your keys, not your coins - in other words, don’t leave them on exchanges

Don’t trust, verify - which leads to:

Do your own research

Study Bitcoin, it will give you back far more than you can imagine.

Its a very good response with lots of information. You covered all the important points.

I wonder whether it's abit too much information in one go? Might be abit overwhelming for newbies.

Consider taking out bits, try to prioritise. Objective is to get your friend to the next step. The temptation to try and teach it all in one go, we've all done it.

Your reply is so well written, and put together, I'm not sure how to reduce / prioritise.

Eventually your friend will needs to learn everything in your response.

You've written a book on Bitcoin, so your a Bitcoin expert and knows what you talking about. If he is really interested he will bite.

Yeah I agree, research more important than showing how to buy. Once they know enough, encourage your friend to buy small amount. Once invested more likely to explore more.

Out of curiosity what is your rough % success rate to orange pill?

My record isn't great 1-2% at most, I really tried orange pill last bull run, the negative responses and lack of enthusiasm was so frustrating. I dont actively talk Bitcoin any more. If someone expresses interest I spring into orange pill mode. But its not very often. Maybe I will try again.

Although this is the time when most people are receptive to listening when price goes up and air time on news, whoever we onboard, we should definitely prepare them for a crash. It always happens. My first bullrun i fell for the hype and thought it would go up forever. But I don't think it should be the first thing we emphasise. If we are surprised by a supercycle well that's a bonus.

Hopefully you will find my feedback helpful.

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Hey, yes, thank you, very helpful.

I'm not certain I can give percentage success of Orange pilling.

I have created two Bitcoin maxi's.

One doesn't know very much, which worries me, the other is getting there and I'm confident he will keep growing.

I've also had 2 F**k ups, 2 separate people I thought I'd orange pilled. One went out and bought Kaspa, knowing it was an altcoin.

The other bought something called $MUSE without knowing it wasn't Bitcoin 😩

I've also Uncle Jim'd most of my family, but they are not really bothering to learn anything.

My 14 year old nephew we gave 50K Sats to instead of the usual 20 GBP for his birthday, he now checks Bitcoin price daily and since his coins have doubled in price, he now thinks he's a millionaire😂

I think he might onboard hismum 😂

We are giving all our niblings 50K Sats for each Birthday and Christmas until they are 18 when they will be allowed to self custody if they can prove competency. Until then, we are using a spreadsheet to keep tabs.

Its a brilliant approach to gift SATs to under 18' and they can check the address as price goes up.

I've also learned how to send messages on bitcoin block chain. Most wallets have OP_Return feature, so it becomes an unspent transaction, just costs a fee and can send message on special occasion inscribed on bitcoin blockchain forever. Its one way to create awareness for newbies.

I've on boarded my brother but he won't take the time to learn, so he still perceives it as "making money" and talks about cashing out. Hopefully I can persuade him to hodl, he will regret selling any.

Kaspa is very interesting, I've briefly looked at it, but I haven't bought any. Surely your friend hasn't bought more Kaspa than bitcoin. All the alt coins, narratives behind them can be very persuasive but extremely misleading. No doubt there will be plenty of money made on altcoins this bullrun, but those that don't sell will regret it.

With Bitcoin I can confidently buy and never sell(or atleast hold for multiple decades, most likely longer). The rest, who knows.

I think people that go to alts haven't quite escaped the make more money stage.

I'm fascinated by how Bitcoin could effect and change direction of society. Taking away the money printer changes it all.

On an individual level, Bitcoin is so empowering. Truly life changing.

Isn’t inscribing OP_Return Ordinals and Runes? 😂

I have a Trezor, and I've sent short messages via the op_return feature.

I'm not entirely sure if its ordinal/ runes.

This was the info I found online, and then realised trezor has the op_ return feature and then I was able to send messages.

I believe there is something similar with most other self custody wallets.

https://github.com/merendamattia/op-return-tracking-message-bitcoin

Also Sparrow I believe 👍