Bitcoin in a suit, we need to learn to listen

Editor's note: John Biggs is a New York-based writer. After working as a programmer for several years, Biggs decided to become a full-time journalist. His work has been published in the New York Times, Gizmodo, and Men's Health magazine. Biggs is currently an editor at TechCrunch and is also the CEO of Bitcoin startup Freemit.

A week ago, I sat in on a panel discussion on the topic of “Blockchain” in Belgrade (the capital of Serbia).

The group was also typical: a young guy from a VC firm, an older banker, and a crypto-anarchist in a t-shirt. It was like watching a movie called "Is Bitcoin Good or Bad" for the 50th time. I knew what was going to happen, but I couldn't look away.

The panel discussion started normally. The VC investor said he just liked blockchain technology, not the uncertain future of Bitcoin. The older banker said Bitcoin was bad, but the anarchist was quiet. He asked the banker to continue talking, and the banker said, "Bitcoin is hard to trace, it's just a fad." The crypto enthusiast still didn't express his opinion, "Bitcoin is another tulip, it will never succeed," the banker shouted.

The anarchist remained calm, and the banker felt that there was nothing more to say, so he ended his conversation.

The anarchist then calmly explained what he saw as the future of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. He made many convincing points, which he had practiced many times. The banker was still immersed in his own jokes, the VC investor talked about blockchain, and the audience grumbled below.

Ultimately, the anarchists won the discussion through rational argument.

‘Bitcoin in a suit’

It was a quiet debate about Bitcoin in late 2015, and the craziest people in the room were the ones who were against Bitcoin. We won.

I approached this anarchist, Aaron Koenig, and asked him what he was thinking about when he was at the podium. He responded:

“I’ve been through (this discussion) many times.”

He's been through these doubts before. He knows how to handle them, and how to ignore things. In fact, the people who don't understand Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the craziest these days. It's a fascinating twist.

We’re basically seeing the dawn of Bitcoin wearing a suit.

Just as Red Hat made Linux an operating system that IT departments could use to replace Microsoft, new Bitcoin users are making the cryptocurrency an alternative to banks.

Hundreds of years of tradition in banks have led people in those big institutions to believe that their way is right and will always be right. And those outside the banking industry, these "sea monsters" who are willing to explore, are looking for a new way on land, and they know that this (the bank's way) is not the case.

There is a quote I really like by Wilhelm Stekel, who is famous for his character Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.

"The mark of an immature man is his willingness to sacrifice himself for his cause," Stekel said, "and the mark of a mature man is his willingness to live humbly for his cause."

True Bitcoin believers need to remember this: we have already won. We have moved past the crazy talk about digital gold and the end of government.

We are in a position to make real, meaningful change in the world, and to do that we need to listen more and talk less.

Investor concerns

As an amateur Bitcoin entrepreneur, I have seen the investor class’s concerns about the digital currency continue to loom.

They’ve seen enough naive Jeremiahs from the desert to plan to put our DNA on the blockchain.

They've seen investments fall apart much faster than they did after another HSBC scandal. They've been burned by the guys who wrote their bank's code in PHP and ran it on public servers. Now they'll be grinding their skills and objecting to every request.

But here’s one thing you need to remember in every investment: Disagreement is a buy signal. Short-sighted people choose to dwell on the past, while investors know that something is brewing.

In 1995, it was as difficult for you to tell someone what email was than for scientists to tell each other where Peru was on a giant telescope.

Gradually, the use of Hotmail and email became more and more obvious. This is true of any complex technology in the past: when the technology becomes part of the white noise of commerce, communication, or reproduction, the naysayers die.

Embedded in the bank

So let them laugh as much as they want. Let them scoff. Let them say you're wrong. None of their objections are real.

They just want to piss you off, get you to react, get you to fight back. But the battle is over. Bitcoin is in almost every bank (they call it "blockchain research" when it's really just two Bitcoin researchers sitting in a room passing around news articles from CoinDesk) and there are investors willing to invest in actual products.

That’s right: the idea of ​​pie in the sky is obviously unrealistic, you have to build something, and once you build it, the pies will come naturally.

As we continue to move forward, we will face new problems to solve and new businesses to build. This is inevitable. I remember eighteen years ago, I was sitting on an airplane and heard someone say he was going to build a website for a movie theater using Sun servers, and it would cost millions of dollars.

Now, thanks to Linux and a lot of front-end work, the cinema can use a website-building tool like Squarespace, which will make it easier to use the currency of the Internet, just as it makes it easier to use the Internet itself.

And this takes time and concentration.

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-in-a-suit/
By John Biggs
Compiled by: Satuoxi
Editor: Satuoxi
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/bitcoin-in-a-suit)