Quote from: goldade on Today at 08:22:09 PM

Quote from: witcher_sense on September 01, 2020, 10:45:01 AM

This post was inspired by tweetstorm https://twitter.com/Beautyon_/status/1179057801706065920

The author of the tweet argues that in order to use bitcoin, people should not be required to know or comprehend theories and technologies on which bitcoin is standing. He claims that for bitcoin to be successfully adopted, it needs to be simplified to such extent when people don't bother to know how it works, why it works, what purposes it was created for, etc.

At first glance, it seems reasonable to make bitcoin more simple, user interfaces more convenient, the cost of onboarding onto bitcoin a bit lower. Undoubtedly, it all will lead to a faster adoption of bitcoin. But.

Bitcoin is digital money. Unlike iPhone or SmartTV (examples from the tweet), it needs to have certain characteristics to be considered so. More importantly, not only does it need to have certain characteristics, these characteristics should be continuously sustained by participants of the network. The more decentralized the network, the easier to keep it robust and valuable. If it were centralized, it woudn't be robust and valuable, it would be shut down already. Decentralization is the key factor.

Now imagine the situation in which bitcoin is being adopted only by uneducated who have no idea how bitcoin works, who don't think too much about decentralization and necessity of sustainability of characteristics, they don't even know why they are using bitcoin instead of fiat! If they don't know what full node is, they will not bother to run one. Decentralization is gone. Bitcoin is gone or less valuable due to decrease of decentralization. Faster adoption is bitcoin's demise.

What should we do?

Should we learn bitcoin or not?
Should we promote simplicity and avoid complexity?
Can bitcoin continue to exist if majority of people don't want to be taught about importance of bitcoin and ideas behind it?

This is an interesting piece. There's a saying that says 'when the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable'. If people didn't care to learn or understand what bitcoin is all about, it will become abused in no time. Everyone needs to understand that what makes bitcoin what it is, the major ones which are decentralization, anonymity and transparency.
So to answer your questions?
1. Yes, we should learn bitcoin. Anyone who would count as a user of bitcoin should take time to learn what is what.
2. As much as simplicity should be promoted, it should be done in a way that doesn't neglect the core factors of bitcoin. We should find a way to strike a balance between the two.
3. Yes, I believe bitcoin will exist. It has been existing for more than a decade now with only a tiny percentage of world's population aware of it. So I do not think it will be affected by majority learning or not.

A technological piece like bitciin is bound to birth curiosity among the people who use it whether the creator intended them to or not. So this is utterly useless. We can simply explain it in bite-sized chunks to people but over time, they'll crave for more knowledge about bitcoin as they believe it will cause them great gains, or would allow them to gather more bitcoins in the long run.