The difficulty of explaining Bitcoin to people is massive

[QuickAccount]

Hey guys!

I have noticed that whenever people in real life find out that I use bitcoin, they ask me to explain it to them. For example, some family friends that are my age came over to my house around 2 weeks ago, when they arrived, I was looking at crypto graphs because I had a little bit of money saved up to invest. Bitcoin was on one of the charts, so when they walked into my room, they asked about it, "You do bitcoin? How does it even work?." So I started explaining it to them, but what they didnt get was that it is decentralized. When I was explaining it they asked "Why doesnt bitcoin's creator give himself a billion bitcoin?" I told them that it is impossible for the creator to do so since he doesnt have control over the network, but after I said that, they told me that I was wrong and that since He made it, he can control it, which is incorrect. Do you guys have any suggestions on how to explain coins to non-crypto people?

[mk4]

You'd just have to get used to it. Even as a decently tech savvy person, it took a while for the concept to click in my head as well. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are just a "bizarre" concept in general that people not getting it immediately is to be expected.

Take note that most people don't even understand how their local currency works, and now you're telling them about the concept of predictable inflation schedules and hard caps and  such.

Of course, it helps to really dumb down your explanation for it to be more easily graspable. Use a lot of analogies and stuff.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

You can sit with somebody all day but just tell them to read the whitepaper. They can make their own mind up then, I can’t be bothered to go into too much detail because it annoys me when people are uneducated & unwilling to listen to the positives that bitcoin can bring to their lives.

[TalkStar]

Bitcoin was on one of the charts, so when they walked into my room, they asked about it, "You do bitcoin? How does it even work?." So I started explaining it to them, but what they didnt get was that it is decentralized. When I was explaining it they asked "Why doesnt bitcoin's creator give himself a billion bitcoin?" I told them that it is impossible for the creator to do so since he doesnt have control over the network, but after I said that, they told me that I was wrong and that since He made it, he can control it, which is incorrect. Do you guys have any suggestions on how to explain coins to non-crypto people?

Its little bit hard to explain them about bitcoin who have are completely new in this world. Basically people think that someone have full control over bitcoin and they are manipulating its price. I have faced similar situation like you and most interesting thing is that which people were not ready to accept bitcoin as a safest payment or investment option now they are starting to believe on it. From my personal opinion I can suggest you to share some online based bitcoin and blockchain network related information with your family persons or relatives rather than explaining everything from your end at the very first time. All they need to realise that bitcoin is decentralised and its community have its control.

Before making investment on anything people want to know about investment fund safety and security. Its pretty much same in your case where your relatives are actually disagree with you in this matter. You can tell them about bitcoin transaction privacy and safety which is gonna make economic revolution in the upcoming days. Yeah few years back it was really tough to spread knowledge about crypto currency but now its much easier than past because worldwide people are introducing with this day by day. Hopefully there will be a time when you don't need to explain what is bitcoin and that day isn't too far.

[RokokGudangGaram]

You'd just have to get used to it. Even as a decently tech savvy person, it took a while for the concept to click in my head as well. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are just a "bizarre" concept in general that people not getting it immediately is to be expected. Take note that most people don't even understand how their local currency works, and now you're telling them about the concept of predictable inflation schedules and such.

Of course, it helps to really dumb down your explanation for it to be more easily graspable.

I could not agree more with you. Some people even have to see every single I do first before they can even entertain and even start to grasp the ideas. I think that this difficulty is due to the different capacity of people to comprehend and their level of interest and enthusiasm towards bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Do you guys have any suggestions on how to explain coins to non-crypto people?

Question them the following:  What if I told you there's a currency which isn't regulated from any authorities and each user has equal rights upon it? That the tasks of securing the system are managed collectively by any user who wants to participate in a mathematical procedure?

If they have their doubts of Bitcoin being completely independent from any “Administrators”, mention terms such as public-key cryptography, peer-to-peer network and open-source software.

If they insist that you're wrong, tell them to provide some counter-arguments (since they won't have provided, but just canceled you prejudicially). You've done your best on convincing them it's decentralized and it'd be advisable to message those people some useful links which would make their opinion less prejudicial.


Don't fault them; Bitcoin isn't an easy term to understand.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

It's fairly simple, tell them the basics or the things that they need to know, that's already enough because they need to decide for themselves whether they should satisfy their curiosity or not, if they're curious they'll go and search for it on their own.

[gabbie2010]

The few colleague, students and friends I explained Bitcoin to never bothered to ask me whether the founder has any control over it not, I told them how decentralized Bitcoin is and it blockchain cannot be hacked, majority of them are after how to  creating a wallet, transact, hodling their coins and learning how to buy dip and sell high thus they are all after profits making nothing else, however I also informed them about high volatile the price is in an event of massive crash in it price, I think these are basic things for any newbie to take into cognisance before venturing into it.

[DooMAD]

Try glossing over the 'how' and stick to the 'why'.  If you tried to explain the technical process of how card payments are routed through automated clearing houses, people would probably give you confused looks as well.  No one cares about that, they just want to know it works.

Tell them the benefits they can gain from using it.  That's something they will understand.  Total freedom and control over your funds (providing you don't let custodians hold them for you like a schmuck).  Stable and predictable supply, meaning very little inflation (it's not technically deflationary as some people suggest).  No intermediaries unless you decide to involve some.

Crucially, you can also point out what they won't get.  Some governments are currently talking about the potential for "programmable" central bank digital currencies, which would allow the central banks to dictate where you can and cannot spend your money.  It sounds utterly horrifying.  Such a thing will 100% never happen with Bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Some governments are currently talking about the potential for "programmable" central bank digital currencies, which would allow the central banks to dictate where you can and cannot spend your money.  It sounds utterly horrifying.  Such a thing will 100% never happen with Bitcoin.

It sounds utterly horrifying the way you've put it.

A government may or may not dictate the way money circulates. But, the government has to somehow have a role in its currency; it can't leave the people responsible for the state's economy. The government has to intervene in businesses to maintain law & order. It has to protect the citizens from living a free market.

So, unless you want a complete disappearance of the state's intervention to the society, what you were trying to mean is oxymoron. Either way, a society being preserved solely from Bitcoin sounds much more horrifying to me.

[Woodie]

Explaining bitcoin sounds easy but it isn't!! I find myself being asked more questions than I can provide answers. I have gone as far as explaining bitcoin to my friends to be money which one gets for a task achieved, like in the video games you get some kind of coins for a task completed which could present the bitcoin,you have it and no one can take it away from you unless you spend it. But the simplest we all know is bitcoin is internet money or digital gold these are usually self explanatory.

[DannyHamilton]

they told me that I was wrong and that since He made it, he can control it, which is incorrect. Do you guys have any suggestions on how to explain coins to non-crypto people?

Imagine that you create a club for people to join.  When you create the club, you create rules for the club.  One of the rules that you create is that the only way any new rule can be created or any existing rule can be changed is if all of the members of the club agree to the modification of the set of rules.

Now imagine that people start joining your club, because it's a really great club to be a part of.  After a while, you decide you want a new rule.

You are the creator of the club, does that mean that you can "control" it?  No.  Everyone that joined the club joined it with the expectation that the rules won't change without their consent. If you tried to create a new rule without consent, everyone would just ignore your new rule and it wouldn't have any effect.

If you want to, you could split off and create a new club with most of the same rules as the original club. If enough people like your new rule, they may become members of both clubs, or they may leave the first club to join the second.

A group of people in the club could all decide together that they like some new rule, but they can't force anyone else in the club to accept that new rule.  If they tried to implement the new rule, they'd end up splitting the club into those that still follow the old set of rules and those that follow the new set.  Still the original set of rules would exist with members of the original club.

Bitcoin is that club.  Satoshi created the club, he made it so that rules about how the club functions must be agreed to by all members of the club.  If he wants to change any rule, (such as giving himself bitcoins out of nowhere) then all members of the club would have to agree.  If only some members agree, then the blockchain would split into the original Bitcoin, and the new "SatoshiWantsWoBeExtraRichCoin". If you don't want to be a part of the system that makes Satoshi extra rich, you can just continue to run software that adheres to the original rules (along with everyone else that thinks like you).

Or, just have them sit down and watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4

It does a great job of explaining it all.

[QuickAccount]

Do you guys have any suggestions on how to explain coins to non-crypto people?

Question them the following:  What if I told you there's a currency which isn't regulated from any authorities and each user has equal rights upon it? That the tasks of securing the system are managed collectively by any user who wants to participate in a mathematical procedure?

If they have their doubts of Bitcoin being completely independent from any “Administrators”, mention terms such as public-key cryptography, peer-to-peer network and open-source software.

If they insist that you're wrong, tell them to provide some counter-arguments (since they won't have provided, but just canceled you prejudicially). You've done your best on convincing them it's decentralized and it'd be advisable to message those people some useful links which would make their opinion less prejudicial.


Don't fault them; Bitcoin isn't an easy term to understand.

I get what you're saying, but the people that want me to explain bitcoin to them have a hard time navigating windows 10. Technical stuff when it comes to computers just isnt their thing. Most of the time when they dont understand it after that. I will most likely use one of the ways listed to explain it to them, they also dont believe in bitcoin because it "Isnt in the bank." Sometimes they will not like my answer about bitcoin, walk over to my dad, ask him about it, get the same answer, and be confused. So I might just start sending them the whitepaper.

[Fesatmas]

So here it is, my friend, in my opinion, when I will explain how the concept of Bitcoin and the system works, don't explain it clearly. Because the portion of your understanding with the layman who just got to know him will obviously be different. If you really understand the whole concept of how Bitcoin works, what is decentralization, what is Blockchain, then use simple language and activities related to everyday life they encounter.

So, that way there will be no misunderstandings that will make other people not even interested in cryptocurrencies. The point is it depends on you, how you convey is valuable evidence if one day the person likes crypto.

[jakasantosa]

Hey guys!
~snip.
 Do you guys have any suggestions on how to explain coins to non-crypto people?

Yes you are right, it is a bit difficult to explain to non-crypto people. In my opinion explaining accompanied by action would be easily accepted especially by showing the advantages of Bitcoin. However, explaining Bitcoin to people who don't like Bitcoin will still be difficult even if we show the ways and advantages of Bitcoin

[uneng]

I wouldn't explain them how it works, but would show them how it works in practice instead. I believe practice is a much easier way to learn than through theory. Do your friends have money to buy any satoshis? So do it side by side with them. In negative case, sign up them at freebitco.in and some similar sites and that will be useful to learn how to deal with bitcoin for real.
Once they get more confident about crypto universe and have some spare money to invest they will do this by themselves and thank you later.

About doubting Satoshi doesn't control the supply of bitcoins I think it's more like a distrust people have due to the reality of the local society where they live than a difficult in understanding bitcoin. So they imagine everyone has second intentions and a goal of taking advantage of others when launching a service, product or in this case, a currency.

[Fortify]

Hey guys!

I have noticed that whenever people in real life find out that I use bitcoin, they ask me to explain it to them. For example, some family friends that are my age came over to my house around 2 weeks ago, when they arrived, I was looking at crypto graphs because I had a little bit of money saved up to invest. Bitcoin was on one of the charts, so when they walked into my room, they asked about it, "You do bitcoin? How does it even work?." So I started explaining it to them, but what they didnt get was that it is decentralized. When I was explaining it they asked "Why doesnt bitcoin's creator give himself a billion bitcoin?" I told them that it is impossible for the creator to do so since he doesnt have control over the network, but after I said that, they told me that I was wrong and that since He made it, he can control it, which is incorrect. Do you guys have any suggestions on how to explain coins to non-crypto people?

It's probably best to keep it to the basics when describing bitcoin - say a wallet is similar to having a bank account and the blockchain is the open ledger of all transactions that will ever exist. You will never be able to explain certain concepts to all people, especially the know-it-all's that you've described who think they have found a flaw by the original creator somehow having control over it. They already had a preconceived notion of how they thought it could be abused and weren't going to change their mind. If people really want to learn beyond the basics it is best that they do the research themselves as lots of different websites will explain it in different ways, some of which they might understand better than a single source.

[electronicash]

how curious is the person who ask the question?

if he just want to know how it works, you can just say BTC is just like a currency. you can buy things with it which we now consider a digital currency.  if it doesn't end there, the person is interested to learn but he will with just analogies you can comeup.

[aoluain]

We have to realise that the majority of people are computer illiterate, they can
switch it on and use the apps but when something simple  goes wrong they are in trouble.

So Bitcoin can be completely alien to a lot of people, its explanation stretches across
computing, cryptography, finances and trust.

I dont think there is an easy way to explain Bitcoin, if you make it too simple there will
be questions which will bring them deeper and deeper into the workings of it.

If you want to visit my site I have a very basic explanation of it there.

[CaVO32]

how curious is the person who ask the question?

if he just want to know how it works, you can just say BTC is just like a currency. you can buy things with it which we now consider a digital currency.  if it doesn't end there, the person is interested to learn but he will with just analogies you can comeup.

If the person is really interested, he will further search on his own. There are tons of knowledge regarding bitcoin and crypto over the internet. Explaining to someone is really a tedious job because he may not get the full idea of it. Even me, when I was starting, I had so many questions and you can't get it at one sitting. It will be years in the making to understand these things and up until now, with new networks, we are still understanding how they work. So if you encounter a person who has too many questions, you can only answer what you can but the rest, he needs to dig over the internet and learn on his own.