Friends and family ignorant about cryptos!

Do we all experience this? Most of my friends and family have vaigly heard about Bitcoin. However they all still seem to think it’s just for buying drugs and don’t seem to understand the colossal potential and value there is. Despite numerous attempts to educate them I find my self just banging my head against the wall trying to dispel the ignorant and false myths around Bitcoin. I have only actually met 1 person in the offline world that gets it to some degree. I am looking forward to getting my TenX credit card as I think when I walk into Tesco and buy something with BTC it will be a huge credabilty boost for cryptos. What are your experiences with this?

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Yea, same thing with my friends. If you wanna find crypto buddies offline then meetup.com might be a good place to start. There are a lot of blockchain / bitcoin / ethereum meetups in major cities all over the world.

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Same situation here…But I think besides seeking offline for likemineded people that its better if everyone who has knowledge on crypto should try to educate at least one person close to him. Imo that would be the fastest way to grow awareness. So crypto heads, its your duty to grow the community and educate your family and friends. I myself teach my cousins every day about crypto. Just 10 min a day. Now they are very keen to learn more and they go online and research for them self and try to convince their friends of this technology.

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Indeed! It is a bit annoying the fact that some friends and family might be reluctant to learn a bit of something that’s different, but I do believe that some minds will get curious later on when it is something more tangible for the masses. Tho, i agree with @flexmining , we need to keep trying to educate people, not from a superior position, but like giving them a hint of the benefits we can get out of this (personal and socially speaking). You never know which word of what you say might click that person and they’ll start doing research on their own.
It’s a matter of patience and tact when approaching to someone with these complex topics.

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Personally, I haven’t had to speak to many about bitcoin, but, I believe alot of hype around fraudulent online success stories, just for example MLM advertising etc, may distract or discourage alot of people who do not or can not understand the concept around crytpo currencies.

This can relate to another post here on crytpopub were someone was commenting about wearing clothing tattoos or jewelry based around cryptocurrency, whether or not this would be a security issue. The more we help everyone within our local communities become aware of crypto currencies, the high chances of adoption as well as a general understanding and acceptance to those that you may consider to be “ignorant”.

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Yes, it is frankly frustrating that people keep talking about crypto as some kind of borderline illegal thing to own. Or when they just talk about exiting crypto “while I can and still have positive gains”.

Luckily for me, my dad is awesome and is actually very invested into crypto after many hours of listening to me talk about it. I still need to remind him of the reason he is invested every so often after he reads some stupid article about how bitcoin is a pyramid scheme or something to that effect.

But I do think he has stopped talking to people about it because while he believes in it, he doesn’t have the technical knowledge to back a lot of the points he is trying to make up. I remember this one time where he was trying to tell his brothers to at least invest a little into crypto but was bombarded, by negativity around the legitimacy and real life use cases of crypto. Thankfully for me, I always have my Ten X card on hand so I whipped it out and somewhat silenced the debate. Uncles weren’t convinced per se, but at least they have seen a real life use case and have experience “just the one” (in their own words).

I do think that’s where it starts though. Now my relatives have seen 1 use case, the next time they see another legitimate use case for cypto, they’ll remember this use case. Hopefully it snowballs from there.

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Yes so far for me I haven’t necessarily been bombarded, but along the same lines as “foolish” waste of time etc etc. I have only had one person positive about the idea behind it outside of the online communities that I have started following, oh well.

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David, most of my friends don’t care about Bitcoins past and they are not willing to learn more about about it on their own. In some sense I understand that as they are not Technology enthusiasts in the first place. If I say the word “Starbucks…”

Did you see the logo in your head before reading this? I imagine for many people all they will ever know even with mass adoption is “Bitcoin…” and the logo in their head and they would be ok with that.

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I think you have to be patient with people. Most people have no interest in how currency in general works, much less some particularly nerdy application of it on the internet. This is a paradigm shift of money - a technology that people have taken for granted for thousands of years. It’s difficult for even highly intelligent people to really get it, and that’s only the beginning.

Add on smart contracts and other blockchain applications and you have hundreds of layers of dizzying complexity that no one person can follow. It’s intimidating and humbling.

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I guess we are lucky that we know about this now, we can buy in before the price marches up. It’s just a shame I can’t encourage friends and family to profit from this in the same way we all will.

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David, I agree. I would hate to be well off in 15 years and have those I care about still living paycheck to paycheck in a metaphorical sense. Then again crypto could be dead and gone by then, but at least my arms will be strong from hodling those bags, lol.

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I do like that TenX as it shows people that yes you can buy anything with your crypto. But for me I would rather pay with cash or a regular credit card as they don’t appreciate in value like my crypto.

Am I wrong in my thoughts?

Actually I used to think like that, but then i realized that being able to pay my credit card bills in crypto means that I can be over invested in crypto and hold less fiat overall.

The money I hold and use in Ten X is separate from the money that I consider my crypto investment.

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I am in the US and the SEC said that crypto is an asset and on sale your capital gain/loss should be reported so any for me now would be short term gains.

TenX has put a hold on US cards which were expected in 4th qtr. not sure if this is due to SEC regulations or Visa network card issuer.

I did hear that a bill is proposed that we might be able to spend up to $600 tax free.

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I have been following TenX and they have said that new cards outside of Europe are on hold. This is because of a rule their current card issuer Wavecrest has brought in. They do have another issuer lined up but obviously it has caused delays. It may be that the SEC have caused delays also but I dont know about that.

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Exactly. This is why we’re still “on the ground floor” of the blockchain economy. Crypto is a better way and will win. We will educate folks as we go. But we get rewarded as early adopters and educators of and for the technology.

And get used to this feeling, we’re going to go through it over and over as so many exponential technologies hit the elbow of the asymptote in the coming decades.

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Yes there is a bipartisan bill proposed in the US Congress to allow up to $600 spending of crypto tax free. The rest will be taxed 15% capital gains tax as a security and should be reported as such to the IRS.

On first glance this seems like a reasonable first step. I mean these are investments in companies AND spendable currency. We should welcome reasonable regulation for fairness and justice but, for instance, we should be weary of centralized exchanges and adopt decentralized exchanges asap. In general we need to be proactive about shaping sensible regulation of the decentralized economy while resisting centralization of the economy itself.

I think it is a good sign that the US has brought in this $600 rule. It indicates that the US will not follow China and try to push cryptos aside. The govt just wants it’s cut of the tax and that’s fair enough.

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It’s just a bill right now, not a law yet. If you’re in the US call your reps and let them know if you like this or not.

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Doesn’t help when JP Morgan Chief decides to announce misleading comments for the sake of self profit.