Anyone reading this post has an IQ higher than the average person.
What makes me say that? Well, the average person in England for example reads The Sun which we know due to the popularity of the paper.
Unfortunately, as us intelligent Brits know, The Sun is a sad perspective of news. One of todays top stories:
"70 year old man's escort is son's girlfriend".
Equally, last week, I was at my girlfriends cousins house. He has 4 daughters ranging from 6 to 12 - He's an intelligent investor, very wealthy, but had no idea there were parental controls on the iphones/ipads he's given to his daughters and didn't know about the dangers online *sigh*.
We live in a non technical world where most people aren't technical, but those who are technical tend to be more successful these days...
The bad news, is for BTC to become the type of global currency we want it to be, the world needs to embrace it. In a world where our laws don't embrace international crime over the web, how are people going to ever want to explore something they simply don't understand?
I feel Bitcoin has a major problem and one that can't be solved for a generation or two, and that's to do with intelligence and understanding.
I invested at $1k - As a technical person, I'd been following the rise and can see the long term sustainability and benefits of BTC. If everyone around me non technical who also started hearing about it invested, that price would be $10k+, but I can't see it achieving high limits due to the reasons stated. I now worry we'll see the price lower long term as the world moves away from it..
Thoughts?
It seems rather arrogant to me to claim that we're all smarter than average people because we're interested in bitcoin or technical matters in general. Just because someone doesn't know their way around a smartphone doesn't mean that they're stupid, it only means that cell phone technology is not a priority in his or her life. I know many older folks who barely know how to turn on a computer, but who can run circles around me when it comes to other skills.
What I'm saying is, if your whole world revolves around one thing, whether it be a game like chess or restoring antique cars, you'd obviously spend a lot of time around like-minded individuals and it might be easy to label outsiders as stupid since they don't share your passions, but that's not fair. Maybe that's what's going on here a little.
But to the main point, we can't expect people to embrace bitcoin by becoming "smarter". Bitcoin needs to stand on its own. If it offers incentives over our current financial system, then people will naturally embrace it. If it's required to have a PhD in computer security to use it, then it's obviously flawed and is not destined to succeed. Afterall, you don't need to be an expert in electromagnetic theory to use a microwave oven. I doubt scientists met up in the 1940s and said to each other, "you know guys, most of the idiots out there don't understand how magnetic waves work. I'm not sure if this is going to catch on."
Of course it caught on, because it's easy to use. That's what bitcoin needs to be. Maybe it's just not ready yet. Maybe it never will be. But if that's the case, then bitcoin failed the public... not the other way around.
A proper understanding of bitcoin requires at least some basic knowledge of computers and networking, even better if you know a little programming. It also requires knowledge of and understanding of the underlying economic theory, and it helps to know why competing theories are flawed, especially the day to day fiat system we have all lived with our entire lives - which requires being able to step outside the box. Politics and human psychology on a large population scale also helps.
Individually, these are all high-IQ fields. And we employ them all every day in discussion threads. Forget arrogance, we are as a group not only more intelligent than the average person, we are more intelligent than the average intelligent person.
All that said, the only thing required for the average person to invest is just one thing: Greed. Once people believe bitcoin is here to stay the masses will come flocking in.