I often hear the question:

"How do I get more people to understand CryptoCurrency?"

A question you should be asking is in my opinion:

"How do I introduce people to anything new?"

Before we get started

I want to tell you about a few things I do, when I tell others about CryptoCurrency. Maybe it can inspire you to inform your peers. First I will introduce what I think often happens, when your friends and family have an immediate negative reaction to CryptoCurrency. Then I will go through what I do to introduce people to new concepts. I am by no means an expert, but I have a bachelor’s degree in communication, and have researched people’s verbal and non-verbal cues. I have also done testing on how we learn new things.

Immediate fear, anger or disbelief

Something you will often encounter, when you introduce your peers and especially strangers to foreign concepts and ideas is fear, anger, immediate disbelief or a mix thereof. I would wager that for most people you talk to, CryptoCurrency seems like a strange and disquieting world. This is upsetting to them. Why? Because your instantaneous response to a very foreign and “crazy” idea, that could fundamentally change parts of your worldview, your core understanding of how things work, is more likely to be “no way is that true - you are lying”, than “okay, that is interesting, tell me more”. The reason is that your brain acts more or less the same to a physical threat; say a dangerous animal, as it does to threats on your core beliefs.

Yes, your brain has a tendency to treat fear of counter-ideas the same way it treats fear of physical threats. No wonder we all scream at each other on the internet!

In my opinion, it is fantastic knowledge. Knowing that you might react with anger, fear, disbelief and hostility to what seems like a threatening idea, might help you calm down, and listen to the ideas presented. It also helps you to know, that others are likely to feel the same way. Now you can try to navigate around those feelings, to avoid the classical mud throw and pointless rage from multiple sides of an argument.

How it relates to CryptoCurrency

”But how does that relate to CryptoCurrency?” you ask.

CryptoCurrency is something completely new. It has only existed for less than 10 years. Your friends and family are likely going to be baffled, if they have never heard about it. Maybe they have heard about it as some “money on the internet thing, which can be used for drugs”. Even though they know that more or less anything can be used for criminal activity, CryptoCurrency is bad, because it is new and because new things are scary. A few logical arguments alone will not cut through the barrier of fear.

You have to talk with people as if they are people, and people can be scared and bewildered. Crazy concept, I know, but it is something we often forget. With the knowledge of why most of us are easily scared of new things, we can talk with each other.

What to do and what not to do

Take things slow. Everything takes time. You have probably had a belief, which have changed. Maybe you thought the moon was made of cheese. As a child, I thought I could grab the moon, if I just reached high enough. Now I know I would have to reach pretty high, and have quite the hand, to grab the moon. Tell people what CryptoCurrency have done for you personally. More importantly, if you talk to your family for example, show and tell them how that same thing, that helped you, could help them.

Explain what CryptoCurrency is, but start with the small bits. Tell them how to buy Bitcoin. Show them that it has gone from next to nothing in dollar value to spiking recently at $3000. No one can understand the blockchain from day one. In fact, I would venture a guess that a large majority of investors still barely knows anything about, how these things work, and that is okay. We all start somewhere. I certainly am no expert on the core code of a blockchain.

Some might say: “but CryptoCurrency can do all these bad things, why is it better?”. They are inclined to ignore the good parts and only focus on the “bad”. I find that the hostility usually relates to drugs or money laundering. Tell them, that these things already happen regardless of CryptoCurrency, but that Crypto has much more to offer (easy global transactions, privacy in many cases, lessening bureaucracy and so on).

The first time you tell anyone about CryptoCurrency, they might not want to listen for long, depending on how diplomatic you are, how well you know them and how much they believe in fiat currency as “the only way”.

But if you catch their interest, they will return

Now you might hear this: “… so a colleague of mine said he tried that Bitcoin thing, and he made some money to pay off his debt. You said you knew something about that, right?”

In your head, you might be thinking: “I told you about that two months ago, and you did not listen. You even thought it was stupid”. This might lead you to not wanting to help or wanting the acknowledgement that “you were right, and they were wrong”, before you help them.

However, from what I have experienced, anecdotal as it may be, people tend to not want to admit fault. Do you really need that acknowledgement anyway? Does it truly make you feel better? Maybe for a short while, but I think it is a lot smarter to go forward by saying: “Cool, yeah I know about that, I will be happy to tell you about it”. The other person know you told them about this previously. That is why they are coming back to you. In a sense, that is already an acknowledgement. They trust you on this topic.

Stay sharp - do not get overly excited

If CryptoCurrency always gets you hyped, maybe you want to tell everyone everything at the same time. One long sentence, where you sprinkle knowledge bombs on your peers. However, you should take it slow. Tell a little bit at a time. Make pauses for thoughts and feelings to process, and take questions too. It is a good idea, to make sure, that you are on the same page, so ask questions yourself. Do not get agitated, if you are an expert yourself and they do not understand Segwit2X and BIP 148 in the first few seconds. That is not, what is important to them right now.

Learning by doing

I believe that learning by doing is a powerful way to learn. Have your family buy Bitcoin. Maybe guide them through making their first CryptoCurrency trade, especially if they are into trading stock. Learning by doing might not be for everyone, or it might at least not be all that is necessary, but it is a great tool, if you ask me.

Learning by teaching

When you teach, you also do, and here is what I mean by that. Teaching others about a topic will help you understand it better. You will get questions, where you do not know the answers. This will give you an opportunity to research the answer together with your family member (hooray for PC’s and smartphones). There is nothing wrong with not knowing, so there is no reason to let your fear take over. No need to try to pretend, you know everything, if you can teach both your family member and yourself something interesting.

To summarize

We humans fear the new and the different. Know that it is okay. If you know that your brain goes into fear-mode when you hear something new and strange, you can tell yourself “It is okay to be afraid or baffled, but let us continue forward”. CryptoCurrency is a strange concept to many, so ease your friends into the topic, and be happy, that you can teach others about the wonderful world of “the internet of money”.

Sources and more information

Article on our reactions to counterevidence:
Kaplan, Gimbel, Harris, 2016, Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence,
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39589

Picture credit: ElisaRiva,
https://pixabay.com/p-2146168/?no_redirect

Funny and inspiring comic from Oatmeal about this topic:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

If you made it all the way down here, I would like to give you a BIG thanks for reading. I hope this inspired you to go out, and tell the world about what you love.

If you liked this article, please give it an upvote and resteem it so more can see. See you in the comments, and Steem on!

- RawbinHutt