Thanks everybody for the kind words. I really appreciate it.


I do definitely agree with your general take here, although the danger is that by trying to cut it down as bitesized as possible you automatically start making a lot of concessions. As a result, it risks becoming very generic quickly and not really providing any new or profound insight. At least, this has been my experience. The result is that, indeed with the Journey as is, a newcomer has to push through perhaps a little more, and I do think that in its current state it requires at least some initial commitment and real desire to learn more about Bitcoin. Nevertheless, I will be thinking about creating shorts/snippets ancillary to the journey that are a little easier to digest in a short amount of time, which then hopefully piques the interest to dive deeper. I'll have to think about whether this would become part of the journey itself or whether it would be content to pull people in. Your point is absolutely well taken nonetheless and hopefully we can make that transition to the deeper content a little easier.

Hi everybody,

The past couple of months I have worked on creating a free, open-source curation of resources to help newcomers better understand Bitcoin in a meaningful way.

The desire to do so originated from an experience that to many of us will be familiar. As I went through my own Bitcoin journey over the past 4 years, I have had many conversations with the people around me trying to convey the deeper implications of the technology. What I noticed is that helping them really understand why Bitcoin exists and why it can be so impactful for people all over the world, was what shifted their ideas about Bitcoin from "How can this help me get rich?" to "How can this new technology improve lives?", even if ever so slightly. I think it is important that there is more of this type of understanding, also in developed countries where the trust issues of money feel very foreign to many.

In my opinion, although there are so many excellent resources out there, this fundamental understanding of "why" is not often focused on. On top of that, because Bitcoin is such a complex topic with so many implications for the world, it can be incredibly overwhelming to start learning about it with so many different points of entry.

My goal with this curation was to help newcomers first understand why we are even talking about Bitcoin in the first place and why this might be something for them to be excited about - even if they feel it is not directly valuable to themselves. Only then does it go into how it works and what it is. Because it uses existing resources from excellent educators in the field, it also immediately provides readers with creators and authors to learn more from if they wish to do so.

My hope is that this will become an open-source project that is collaborated on, as such that it can grow with the best content and it can remain updated over time. It is hosted on GitBook with an underpinning Gitlab repo which should makes this easier.

I thought this would be a great place to share it. I would love to hear the feedback you all have and I invite anybody to fork the underpinning Gitlab project and create pull requests with modifications or additions if you see ways of improving it. I am not entirely sure yet how to best organize this but I will try to figure this out.

You can find the GitBook here: https://btcjourney.gitbook.io/start/

Hope this can be of value, and appreciate your time.

The biggest problem I have found when trying to educate people around me on Bitcoin is the distance from and lack of exposure to the trust issues of fiat it is attempting to solve. A lot of the conversations around Bitcoin tend to be about what it is and how it works, and indeed the price, but why it exists and why it can be so incredibly important for people all over the world is not often well explained or understood.

The few people around me that had enough drive or interest to learn more about Bitcoin would eventually come across resources that underlined what Bitcoin can be to somebody in an authoritarian regime, where trust issues of money are incredibly real on a daily basis. It's that insight that seems to have provided the biggest shift in their thinking from "how can this help me get rich?" to "how can this new technology improve lives?".

The past couple of months I have made my own attempt at creating a wholesome resource to help people better understand Bitcoin in this way. The goal was to create a journey of curated resources from expert educators in the field, allowing them to first understand why Bitcoin exists and why it can be so important, and only then touch on how it works and what it is. At the same time, the hope was that they would immediately be connected with great educators and resources to learn more from if they wish to do so.

If anybody here wants to take a look at it and share your thoughts, that would be amazing. It is a free, open-source GitBook project and I hope I can get others to contribute to it as well via Gitlab, making it a community-driven resource that can improve and stay up to date over time (there are still quite some things to add, such as the different methods of obtaining, storing, and paying with bitcoin).

https://btcjourney.gitbook.io/start/

I really hope this resource can become the resource we all wish existed and could share. Really looking forward to any input or contributions you might have.