- Hey, grandma, since when do you remember the prices of food and things always going up?
- Oh, son, since always.
- And do you remember, besides how hard grandpa worked all his life, it was always very hard to save the money because everything keeps going up, until today?
- Yes, son. The poor bastard worked really hard.
- That's because since one hundred years ago our government keeps printing new money, when it needs, and the prices goes up, stealing from workers and savers, like grandpa.
- I imagine. Those motherfuckers! (My grandma swears a lot!)
- So, there's this new money that tries to fix that, it's a computer money. Controlled by machines, not people. And, in theory, the prices of things goes down or stays the same in the long haul when you use it.
- Computers?!
- I understand computers, you know that!
- Oh, son, you're really smart. I hope god gives you everything in double for everything you do!
- Thanks, grandma. It more than doubled already.
This!
Start by asking her about money, and how stuff always got more expensive, and first ask her why she thinks that is.
This should lead into how politicians always lie. Aka if a politician says he is only going to print 1 million dollars, do you trust him?
Now there is this program for the computer that got created, and basically every computer checks that all other computers that are running this program aren't cheating. Under this principle, I know what the rules are and can verify, however I can't change the rules unless more than 50% agrees with me.
One of these rules is that there will be maximum 21 million coins.
Now what would happen if we increase the amount of coins, all other coins become worth less because there are more. (printing more money)
So if you have any of this money, would you want the maximum to increase? (aka you will never get 50% or more)
And if she knows how computers work, she'll ask how you prevent copy/pasting the money. (I don't expect you'll get this far but just in case) Then you can go into the distributed ledger and p2p. Explain how you can share files with bittorrent, without anyone holding a database of what is shared. She will most likely be able understand the concept of a hash at this point, a math function, which always gives a unique result. (you might need to do your research in how this is easiest explained) Once she grasps the concept of hashes, it should be a walk in the park the rest of the way
(at this point I really suggest going through all of Satoshi's correspondence in the mailing list, he really had a knack for explaining things in simple english, his rephrase of Byzathine's General Problem, instantly make me understand the logic of the blockchain)
Note, its to big to understand all at once, first try to get the basic concept out, and work from there. (I needed 6 talks of an hour, to get my mom to understand it... and she got to the point of how to prevent copy/pasting, me started ranting about crypto... stopping pretty soon just ending with, trust me mom, I can't copy/paste this stuff, its next to impossible if not impossible. Which did the trick
)
