Advice for the Reddit Bitcoin Husband

[runpaint]

If women aren't on board, a technology or invention is useless.

LOL!

Women don't get on board with anything unless it is useless.  They might like something that is useful to themselves, but then they have to make sure it's useless to other people before pledging their full support.  

We can go into several pages of detail if you want, but the lack of female users is a strong indicator that Bitcoin is a good technology.

Compare it to the progression of computer technology, and notice the point at which it gained widespread acceptance among women:  when the keyboard was removed and its main function became browsing fashion pictures and/or trying to get other people to look at pictures of themselves.

For perspective on how technology gets developed by men, here is the Mother Of All Demos, from 1968:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

[Q7]

It's really sad that bitcoin get embroiled and becomes the center point of this whole argument. What needs to be worked out here is basically mutual understanding to be reached between both parties. I'm a bitcoin supporter but what the guy did wasn't correct in the first place because basically he made all the decision by himself.

[Aswan]

Oh god I am so glad my GF believes in bitcoin just as I do. She even owns a few.

To the guy mentioned by OP: Bitcoin is great but you shouldn't but all your eggs in one basked. Maybe she is fine with you buying some Gold or Silver and less Bitcoin. You'd still have some bitcoins but not to the extent that it gets toxic for your relationship.

[kolloh]

I can totally see this story being true. Investments should really be agreed upon by both parties and taking it too far can become an addiction much like gambling. In this story, it looks like it escalated quite far.

It can be hard to agree on investments when the other party has different risk-aversion than you or is when the other party is completely biased against a particular investment type such as bitcoin. The other view point does help keep you level headed though and you should never put all your eggs in one investment basket.

[spazzdla]

Electrical sector here.

Every time I go one site there are at utter most two women out of 10-1000 men.....

Go to a hospital then go to a construction site....  Then go to a bitcoin conference.. the women that are paid to be there don't count as attending.  The idea that women are equal or better at everything is getting pretty stupid.






As for the topic in the OP, that guy is way to obbsessed with BTC :S..  While yes it is utterly amazing and things the potential has benfits that we cannot imagine it is like preaching about the web in 93..  Most people just do not give a damn about anything but what Paris Hilton is wearing or if Dallas is playing on the weekend.

[MakingMoneyHoney]

It's no secret women are less interested in technology than men.

Seriously? Yes, I know not as many women know about bitcoin compared to men, at this juncture. But that doesn't mean they won't be as interested, if not more, than men in the future when everyone starts learning about what Bitcoin is and what it can do. Bitcoin isn't a gender-thing, technology isn't a gender thing.

Isn't it a joke that women love to spend money? This will let them spend money faster and easier in the future... why would they be against it?

Edit: I wrote the above jokingly before hearing the more sexist posts below:

LOL!

Women don't get on board with anything unless it is useless.  They might like something that is useful to themselves, but then they have to make sure it's useless to other people before pledging their full support.  

We can go into several pages of detail if you want, but the lack of female users is a strong indicator that Bitcoin is a good technology.

Compare it to the progression of computer technology, and notice the point at which it gained widespread acceptance among women:  when the keyboard was removed and its main function became browsing fashion pictures and/or trying to get other people to look at pictures of themselves.

For perspective on how technology gets developed by men, here is the Mother Of All Demos, from 1968:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

Electrical sector here.

Every time I go one site there are at utter most two women out of 10-1000 men.....

Go to a hospital then go to a construction site....  Then go to a bitcoin conference.. the women that are paid to be there don't count as attending.  The idea that women are equal or better at everything is getting pretty stupid.

Seriously guys? I bet there are far more females on this board then you think and they just don't say it because people like you guys.

[Elwar]

During college, as a computer science major...there would be maybe 2 girls in the class of 30-50 guys. One asian and one ugly but with a boyfriend.

[runpaint]

During college, as a computer science major...there would be maybe 2 girls in the class of 30-50 guys. One asian and one ugly but with a boyfriend.

So even among the nerdiest of girls, the most aspie of girls, the most socially awkward and ugly - 100% of them are able to find boyfriends, get married, and have children if they choose.

And what percentage of the guys in that class had girlfriends?  Less than 100%?  What percentage were virgins?  What percentage will never find anyone to marry them?

See, people like to show up and point fingers and label things as sexist against women, and make up imaginary examples of how women have it harder or how women are oppressed.  But women don't have it harder - feminists just whine the loudest, so there's a general public perception that their problems are bigger. 

If a young man spends every day programming, there's a good chance he will never get a girlfriend.  Men are required to make things happen, while even feminists focus mainly on what happens to them.  The lonely programmer will sometimes leave the house, go to the grocery store, but no female will make any attempt to start a conversation with him. 

Because women have everything handed to them for free, and everything is done for them without requiring them to know anything about what's going on, why should they make any effort to get to know a guy?  There will be a dozen better guys begging them for sex by the end of the day, and willing to give them whatever they want as payment. 

So for the lonely programmer, nothing will ever happen in his life unless he makes it happen.  But a nerdy female programmer can do the exact same things, live the exact same routine, but she'll end up married.  Because things will happen to her without any effort on her part.  Even if she goes nowhere but the grocery store, some man will eventually approach her and find out whatever it is she requires in exchange for what he wants.  That's why 90% of all modern women have at least one child (and closer to 99% of women who are physically able), while an estimated 40% of men throughout history reproduced.

 And even if you do get married and support your wife and children, there's a pretty big chance that she violated your consent (raped you) and got pregnant from another man without your knowledge, forcing you to raise someone else's child against your will for 18 years, and robbing you of your right to reproduce.  And she is perfectly within her legal privileges to do that, while you are forced by law to pay for her lies and pay for the other man's child even if you prove in court that the child doesn't belong to you.  Too late, pay or you lose your driver's license and go to jail.

That's female privilege - to have the cake and eat it too.  Everybody likes to talk about how women are oppressed in Saudi Arabia, because a man can beat his wife in public and nobody will do anything to stop him.  Well, I live in the United States, and a woman can beat her husband in public and then have him arrested.

[gentlemand]

Male self pity, fictional original post and rampant sexism aside, if you're in a long term relationship with a woman, man, Shetland pony or Realdoll part of their future is in your hands and vice versa.

If either party risks that on something as potentially disastrous as BTC without the other's total consent then they've earned the right to have their arse handed to them.

If I were him I'd risk a moderate amount of my own money and not tell my beloved. If it turns to shit then life goes on. If it explodes then you're a hero, or you still keep it a secret. My sympathy is limited.

[sangaman]

I'm embarrassed to read some of the misogynistic comments made in this thread - and to know that to casual observers these attitudes will appear representative of bitcoin users. Maybe save those comments for a different part of the internet? They have nothing to do with bitcoin and have no place on this forum.

As for the OP, assuming that story is real (if it's not real it's at least plausible) then it's a sad situation. I'm not a relationship expert and don't have any great advice, but to me the husband looks like he has a gambling problem or addiction that happens to involve bitcoin. I strongly disagree with the wife's assessment of bitcoin, but I can understand why she'd grow to resent it if this is really how it's caused her husband to act.

What I would tell this husband or anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation, make an honest assessment of your life's goals and look at things from other people's point of views. For someone who believes bitcoin is truly the future of finance and that its current price is likely a small fraction of what it will be in the future, the urge to invest every last penny is understandable. But even if things work out with bitcoin and you become wildly rich at some point in the future, that is no guarantee of happiness. Meaningful relationships and well-rounded lives, on the other hand, do have a pretty reliable track record of making people happy. Sacrificing those things so you might be wildly rich (or as rich as possible) - instead of just financially secure and comfortable - in the best case future scenario for bitcoin makes no sense.

And while I certainly find bitcoin fascinating and could talk about it for hours if prompted, it's very obvious to me that forcing conversations to bitcoin (or whatever topic I find interesting or important) is not the way to make other people interested in bitcoin or enjoy talking to me. In fact, it's counterproductive. This is true of bitcoin, it's true of politics, and it's true of your family's most recent vacation. If you want to make people care about your interests and responsive to what you have to say, talk to them on their terms and let them ask questions.

Maybe I'm talking to nobody with these last two paragraphs, and if so that would be fine by me, but those are my two cents on the topic.

[runpaint]

I'm embarrassed to read some of the misogynistic comments made in this thread

Why?

and to know that to casual observers these attitudes will appear representative of bitcoin users.

We are Bitcoin users, and these are our comments, so the comments are representative of Bitcoin users.

Maybe save those comments for a different part of the internet? They have nothing to do with bitcoin and have no place on this forum.

So you're saying I have no right to talk about gender politics, but you will continue to talk about gender politics and use your politically charged buzzwords like "misogyny" and try to silence minorities. 

[cakebet]

It's not that women are less interested.  It's that no one expects them to understand it.

Well, first I gotta say I don't believe that story to be true. I think it's a buttcoiner's joke or prank, whatever. But I have to say that this sounds really sexist. Why is everyone continuing to differentiate between men and women that much. And then calling her names... Well, I think this is the proof we're still far away form mass adoption. If women aren't on board, a technology or invention is useless.

It's no secret women are less interested in technology than men.

The story can be true, I don't see why not, every time we discover something new and exciting we talk about it to everyone we know, and more compulsive obsessive personalities can lead to unhealthy amounts of time spent studying it or even spending too much money on it...

Are they? How do you know that? I know enough women who are highly successful in the STEM fields. The only thing they complain about is men who treat them as if they were stupid or not as good, just because they don't have a Y-chromosome. And, as a man, I gotta say I'm quite fed up by this, as well. This stupid cycle just needs to be broken at some point.

I'm in the tech sector (informatics/computer engineering) since 2000...

[runpaint]

It's not that women are less interested.  It's that no one expects them to understand it.

Yes, women are helpless to learn about Bitcoin until men start having higher expectations of them.

The female-only internet that they use isn't able to display Bitcoin-related websites, so the only way for them to find out anything is if we patiently explain it to them like children.  Unfortunately, because of the patriarchy, men keep it a secret.  I can't count how many times I've heard a woman say, "Are you guys talking about Bitcoin?  I've never heard of that but I'm very interested in it, please tell me more."  But the men just coldly ignore her and lower their conversation to a whisper, frustrating the natural female appetite for knowledge of cryptography.

It's high time women who are interested in Bitcoin are allowed the equal right to use the internet and access the collected knowledge of humanity, clicking links and finding out as much as they could possibly want to know about any subject that interests them. 

I'm quite sure that if I was female, the Bitcoin Foundation wouldn't have come to my house and demanded to explain Bitcoin to me, which is how most of us got started.

[sangaman]

I'm embarrassed to read some of the misogynistic comments made in this thread

Why?

and to know that to casual observers these attitudes will appear representative of bitcoin users.

We are Bitcoin users, and these are our comments, so the comments are representative of Bitcoin users.

Maybe save those comments for a different part of the internet? They have nothing to do with bitcoin and have no place on this forum.

So you're saying I have no right to talk about gender politics, but you will continue to talk about gender politics and use your politically charged buzzwords like "misogyny" and try to silence minorities. 

Because I find those comments ignorant and, more importantly, needlessly malicious and hateful and I would hate for people who encounter comments like that to think the attitudes they represent are typical for the bitcoin community. To me personally they are repulsive, but I have thick skin and can ignore them quite easily. My greater concern is that many people will be turned off to the idea of using bitcoin after reading comments like these. Bitcoin, like any payment and/or peer-to-peer network, is stronger and more powerful when it is used by more people.

"Representative," according to the dictionary and how I intended to use it, is synonymous with "typical." It's not enough for a few bitcoin users to hold an opinion for that to be representative of bitcoin users. I'd like to think that indeed only a small fraction of bitcoin users are spiteful of women as a few people in this thread seem to be.

Where did I talk gender politics? To the contrary, I said that any such discussions and comments should go elsewhere. I don't consider this silencing minorities I just consider this following basic forum etiquette. This forum is "Bitcoin Discussion." And I used "misogyny" not as a political buzzword but according to how it's defined in the dictionary.

[runpaint]

I would hate for people who encounter comments like that to think the attitudes they represent are typical for the bitcoin community.

People who aren't in the Bitcoin community wouldn't be reading this forum, this topic, and certainly not page 2 of this topic.  So their little delicate female feelings are safe from our ignorant words.  I appreciate you doing everything you can to protect your mom, but IMO it's unhealthy for you to treat every woman as if she's your codependent mother. 

Where did I talk gender politics?

It's your entire purpose here.

And I used "misogyny" not as a political buzzword but according to how it's defined in the dictionary.

Maybe a radical feminist dictionary.  But in the real world, "hate" isn't defined as "anything my mother disapproves of".

Of course, to you, any man who disagrees with a woman is hateful and should be punished.  Especially if he speaks the truth when a woman doesn't want to hear it.  Because your nature is violent and you want to kill or otherwise eliminate anyone who upsets your mother, so that you can earn the love you've always wanted from her.