"Hey man! I heard you mention Crypt to your friend. I love that band man!"
And suddenly I was brought back to, and reminded of the reality that not everyone knows what ‘cryptocurrency’ means. It’s a good reminder, and something that the ‘older generation’ of bitcoin and crypto-enthusiasts very often forget.
(Crypt is off course a 90’s band that lasted till 2000 before they resurfaced in 2016. https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Crypt/3150)
Imagine you’re trying to explain ‘Fiat’ to someone that has no reference or idea that his or her, ‘legal tender’ are widely categorised as ‘fiat currency’? They might just tell you that they are not a fan of French cars and much prefer Ford… Not a great way to start explaining that ‘normal money’ or legal tender, is known as ‘fiat’.
I find this sometimes hilarious problem all too often when I visit the local drinking hole with my fellow crypto-minded friends. It was recently quite evident just how funny, when Dennis Rodman appeared on CNN Live while wearing a potcion.com t-shirt and the visuals was overplayed with “Historic summit between Trump & Kim Jong Un underway”.
PotCoin got a solid 16 minutes worth of exposure! Off course we know that he is sponsored by PotCoin. A friend that’s not as clued up however, was on a rant that Dennis Rodham was in cahoots with Trump to plant ‘pot’ in North Korea as a new economic boost for the impoverished nation… I didn’t want to tell him that PotCoin is positioning itself as a banking alternative for the cannabis industry and that the greatest competition that PotCoin currently face, are from CannabisCoin, DopeCoin and HempCoin. I was laughing too much, but in hind site, I probably should have.
Now of course we know that there’s a whole list of these.
Dogecoin. Be careful how you say it, and definitely don’t discuss it in front of your animal lover friends without clarifying. -I have my hands full explaining what a Shiba Inu is before I get to the actual coin.
InsaneCoin? Unobtanium? ‘Useless Ethereum Token”!?
(Laura Shin wrote about these in a Forbes article here https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/07/10/cryptos-in-wonderland-12-of-the-weirdest-wackiest-coins/)
Not even to mention Steem (“What!? Are you a train driver or something?”), Pepe Cash (“Are you kidding me!?”), PutinCoin that must be in a constant ‘price war’ against TrumpCoin.
Tittiecoin (No! I did not make that one up!), but I might be holding too many; wait for it…. ‘Antimatter’ (Yes. It’s an actual crypto.).
I think you get the point.
There’s so many shitcoins out there (O hell! Did you just read that out loud and your mother heard you?) that the conversation around all these can get pretty confusing for new crypto enthusiasts.
And we didn’t even get to Proof of work, Proof of stake (No man. Nothing to do with your local butcher or Dracula.) or even Proof of space (how about some Marscoin with that?).
Now add getting to explain Blockchain to a new person and pointing out that Bitcoin (with a capital ‘B’) refers to it’s blockchain, while bitcoin (with a small letter ‘b’) refers to the actual currency; then you have lost half the fight.
I think that when Einstein said:
"You don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."
that he had a very good point.
So my take away here is just this; let’s keep it simple when we explain bitcoin and crypto to newbies. Because we forget that it’s a wild world out there for any one that’s new -unless you bribe them with some ‘Hobonickels’ of course…
As always -have a good one! Cheers for now.
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(Most images here CC0 Creative Commons, https://pixabay.com/ or from the respective cryptocurrency websites and CNN Live screen grab)