Yesterday, a neighbour asked me if I know anything about "cryptocurrencies". A couple of years ago I would jump at the opportunity to explain to him all about it, teach him how to set up a wallet, open a Kraken account, etc. Now, I just replied "I've been reading about it, seems to be a thing. Don't know much more than that though, sorry..."
Can't be bothered anymore. It's the same old story, the more others know about you and what you can do, the more work and trouble will fall on you, because, in the end, it comes down to human nature. Everyone's looking for a free lunch, a pill they can swallow and suddenly solve their lives' problems. Well, I say "fuck you, get on your bike and work for it."
Hm. I checked my records and I got into Bitcoin in late 2012 when someone told me about it in casual technical conversation. Granted it's a problem that I had been working on since the mid 1990's, but when I heard the concept that each block had a checksum that included the PREVIOUS block's checksum I suddenly thought *FUCK, THAT'S IT!!!* and started looking.
If that person hadn't talked to me about it I wouldn't have really given it thought till the mid 2010's. So in honor and respect of that I'll give a basic discussion to anyone who asks. And if they start arguing about how it USES THE WORLD'S POWER or is a fraud, or HOW ABOUT THIS SHITCOIN I'll just say "sounds like you already know a good bit, nothing I could say can further that" and start talking about hookers and blow or shit like that.
If someone has a root already nailed into their mind it's pretty impossible, pointless, and annoying to try and weed it out. Better to let life do what it does and let them learn for themselves. Glinda understood this with Dorothy, that's why she had D loot the Witch of the West and follow a pointless road.
Oddly enough I had a root already in my head and saw bitcoin as the right solution to the damn problem of what happens when some fuckhead hacks the database chain and changes an earlier block. And here we are.