This is an editorial opinion by Santiago Varela, a bitcoin miner and writer from Mexico City.
My sister turns 18 at the beginning of 2023 and I gave her an unusual gift this holiday season. Because I love him, I believe that the best gift I can give him is an orange pill.
It all started with a letter I wrote to him explaining the gift I was going to give him. Then, I handed over a copy of “The Bitcoin Standard” by Saifedean Ammous and a hardware wallet. However, it is only the beginning of a long process that we must do together if I really wanted to orange pill her.
Of course, I knew that her first reaction to my surprise would not include the typical face of an 18-year-old girl opening presents on a joyous Christmas morning. At first, he seemed more confused than excited. I have no doubt that they are expecting some nice shoes or gadgets. Sorry ma’am, but that’s how we maximalists play.
In my birthday/holiday letter, I shared three reasons why I gave this special gift:
- I want to set them on the path to financial freedom
- I want her to be a sovereign woman in a fiat world where dishonest relationships are normalized
- As a high school senior who doesn’t know what he wants to study in college, he can benefit from Bitcoin giving him some ideas about what he wants to study.
The long process of pilling the orange brother begins with a quote from the prologue of “The Bitcoin Standard,” which I consider a perfect starting point. I asked him to read this quote over and over again before starting his orange-pilling journey:
“This book does not offer investment advice, but its purpose is to help explain the economic nature of the network and its operation, to give an informed understanding of bitcoin before deciding whether he wants to use it. Only with that understanding, and only after extensive and thorough research into the practical operational aspects of own and store bitcoins, should anyone consider holding value in bitcoins. While the rise in the market value of bitcoins may seem like a useless investment, take a closer look at the hacks, attacks, frauds, and numerous security failures that have caused the cost of bitcoins to give a warning to anyone who thinks. those who own bitcoins offer a guaranteed profit. If you come out of reading this book thinking that bitcoin currency is a must-have, your first investment should not be to buy bitcoins, but in the time spent to understand how to buy, store, and have bitcoins safely. It is the nature of bitcoins that ka This knowledge cannot be delegated or outsourced. There is no alternative to personal responsibility for anyone interested in using this network, and this is a real investment that must be made to earn bitcoins.
In that letter, I told him that I would help him set up a hardware wallet and that I would send him a little bit of bitcoin. To start, I sent him $10 worth of bitcoins. But then, to make sure that he invests time to acquire the basic knowledge, necessary and to make him understand the philosophy of proof-of-work, I promise that I will send him $100 worth of bitcoins for every chapter of the book that he reads. . Therefore, I prepared a quiz for each chapter to verify that they read carefully.
However, as someone who is deep down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, I know that making them read books to pile up sats in their hardware wallets is not enough. It’s okay, we’re just getting started. So, what’s next in the orange-pilling journey? Whenever I come across any opportunity, I try to turn that moment into a Bitcoin lesson.
For example, such an opportunity arose after my sister was assigned a project in her high school philosophy class. Knowing that I am a philosophy enthusiast, he came to me for help. The project involves talking to one of the family members but using the famous Socratic method of conversation. If you don’t know what it is, the Socratic method (named after Socrates) is “a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out underlying ideas and assumptions.”
Obviously, we have a dialogue about Bitcoin and money using the Socratic method.
Another thing I’m doing on this orange-pilling journey is pointing out the rabbit hole of the Bitcoin rabbit hole: bitcoin mining and energy. I love bitcoin mining and the energy aspect of Bitcoin. In fact, I’m so glad we have an ASIC in our garage. It wasn’t too hard to make him understand how passionate I was about home mining. Believe it or not, they’ve never even seen my ASIC (they’ve only heard “brrrrrr”). Consequently, I took him to the garage and he gained experience. I also have Bitcoin and Lightning nodes in my garage. That’s really exciting because with tools like Mempool.Space and LnVisualizer I can help them see the real side of Bitcoin. This is when I really felt that everything started to come together.
As you know, knowledge about Bitcoin cannot be delegated or outsourced. When it comes to Bitcoin, there is no alternative to personal responsibility. Even though I’ve told her I’m happy to help her with anything, I can’t lead her down the rabbit hole forever. You have to go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole yourself. I guided her for a long time but the time for her to start her own journey is here. As Oscar Wilde once said: “Education is a wonderful thing. But it must be remembered from time to time that nothing can be taught.”
So, I started treating him like any other Bitcoin pleb out there and let him go down his own rabbit hole. One thing I do is post a bunch of resources (articles, podcasts, videos, books, etc.) and let them go. At the same time, I realized that I could do this with other children the same age as my sister. Even better, I realized that my sister could help me and introduce my digital native friends to Bitcoin because, if you care about Bitcoin, you have to onboard people individually.
So, I decided to turn my garage into a little Bitcoin academy. Although my sister is the guinea pig for this experiment (and, as I write, she is the only student attending the Bitcoin academy), I have to give a shout out to other Bitcoiners around the world who have shared educational content. who to use. For example, Mi Primer Bitcoin (from El Salvador) has been amazing Bitcoin diploma workbook which anyone can download for free. I have no doubt that an initiative like his or like Escuelita Bitcoin in Uruguay is what we need if we want a future with sovereign individuals. We have to teach young people.
Hopefully, this inspires other Bitcoiners around the world to introduce their brothers and sisters to Bitcoin. I was inspired by initiatives like the one mentioned above and stories like the Denver high school kid who became a Bitcoin entrepreneur. With a bit of luck, the next time I write an article for Bitcoin Magazine, it will be about a Mexico City high school student who became a Bitcoin entrepreneur. For now, stay humble and pile on your friends’ sats.
This is a guest post by Santiago Varela. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.