Explain Bitcoin to Your Mom with Andreas

Below is the full transcript for Andreas M. Antonopoulos’ Bitcoin Q&A: Explain Bitcoin to my mother? Sometimes you may find yourself in a scenario where someone you know is interested in Bitcoin but has no idea what it is. For this matter, Andreas holds lots of valuable information you can direct or share with others. Please share his video if you know someone who would be interested in learning more about the future.

Amber asks: "Could you explain bitcoin to my mum. If so how? I ask this because I want this video to exist for my mum and everyone like her who wants to understand the basics."

Alright. Whether it's your mom, your dad, your grandpa, your kid, your nephew, your niece or even your grandchild, and you need to explain bitcoin or any cryptocurrency to somebody who is not technical let's see if I can do a good job about this.

So, what is Bitcoin? What are cryptocurrencies?

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are a form of money invented recently and introduced on the Internet. This is a form of money that only exists in a digital form and it can be sent and received just like an email.

The advantage of that is that in many countries people have very limited access to traditional financial institutions, but even in developed countries traditional financial instruments like credit cards and checks and paper money are not suitable for our digital lifestyle and so it's actually very difficult to use financial systems that were designed in the 1950s like credit cards online to do ecommerce.

A lot of people suffer from identity theft, charged back transaction stolen credit, cards being overcharged by vendors once they've given a credit card. And all of
these problems and bureaucratic problems with traditional financial payments.

One of the advantages of having a new digital currency that lives on the
internet and operates entirely in digital form is that it is much more suited to our modern digital lifestyle.

So, doing things like making payments online is a lot safer it's faster and in many cases it's cheaper. When you make a payment with a credit card you may not see the level of fees that is being charged because that gets charged to the merchant and not you. But inevitably because of market economics someone's gonna pay for that fee and what the merchants are going to do is pass that on to you in higher prices.

So, another advantage of using this new digital form of money is that you can save because the fees are lower for you they're lower for the merchants it's more secure, there's less opportunity for chargebacks and fraud, you risk your identity less on all of these things reduce the cost of doing commerce and engaging in commerce online.

Now your first experience with these digital currencies is not going to be as simple as you imagine. Remember back in the days when the first time you try to do some online shopping or maybe the first time you tried to connect to the internet and send an email perhaps you struggled with modems and setting up a connection with an ISP.

Maybe you had a clunky desktop a Windows machine trying to install a browser that was confusing and weird and gradually over time a lot of these rough edges got smooths out. Nowadays you can take a device that's very easy to interact with such as a tablet. It already comes pre-installed with everything you need to use the internet. You can easily connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot you don't need to sign up with an account. With
almost anyone sending email and doing online shopping is easy. Well, digital currencies are still in the earlier stage and as a result the software is pretty clunky the services are still in their very first iteration.

The companies haven't yet developed easy ways to use them so maybe digital currencies like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are not quite right for you yet. In places where people are desperate for financials… where they have access to nothing other than cash and they're surrounded by corrupt governments, corrupt officials, corrupt cops and corrupt banks, the effort to learn and use this technology is well worth it because it can be a really meaningful change in their life circumstances.

But for most Westerners still this is more of a curiosity. It's more of an interesting technology if you're a geek or fascinated by a new technology. Maybe you'll put in the effort to learn about it.

In any case, it might be interesting to experience one of these transactions but don't let this early-stage technology fool you. Just because it's clunky now doesn't mean it's going to be clunky forever.

The fundamental principles and structure of these new digital currencies and the open world they create where money can be transmitted. Where commerce can be engaged. Where people can hold on to their assets securely; anywhere in the world and transact with anyone else near instantaneously - securely and with very low or no fees.

That is really going to change the world you can either jump on that bandwagon now. Maybe go through some of the early pain of trying out a new technology or just be aware that this thing is happening wait a few years and eventually it's going to be easy to use for everyone… and then we'll have to try to explain to our children and our descendants what the hell we were thinking with these plastic cards and this linseed and cotton money that was covered in terms… and they will not understand what we're talking about.