How do you explain crypto to your wife?

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I've been dealing with crypto since 2014 and my family and friends always had the impression that I was wasting time to earn peanuts with faucets. Lately they are starting to realize that what I'm earning isn't insignificant anymore. Now they are getting interested and among them is my wife. She wants to know more about Crypto...

How to do it?

I have a very bad track record for onboarding people into the crypto world. When I start to explain stuff I see the eyes in front of me glaze over after less than 5 minutes and that's it. I think I'm not able to break it down so that people can understand.

Therefore I need your help!

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How do you explain crypto to a complete newbie? How would you proceed? Where would you start? Have you had some experience already?

Depending on the age level, I use different examples. For young adults or adults, I start with the working mechanism of global monetary system and make connections to crypto in terms of supply/demand aspect. Besides, I inform about blockchain by using chain as a material. Basically, I narrate that "information is stored there and you can view anytime".

For elder people, I use gold + 401K-like examples. Without diving deep into blockchain features, I only give the information that everyone can see it transparently. Otherwise, we may spoil everything with tiny details 😂 I always talk about crypto while talking with my family members or friends. As they get used to it for 4 years, they even have enough idea about the rationale behind the crypto and blockchain ^^

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This makes a lot of sense. I was going to start with opening an account on coinbase and check what a wallet address is but I think this would lack the fundamentals of how things are working... Thanks a lot for your answer :-)

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I am a wife. Since I understand programming and economics and math and such, crypto was not a problem for me. If I tried to explain it to my "normal" female friends, I would use a shopping analogy. Your crypto accounts are a gift card. What you can do with that gift card depends on the store prices that go up and down. You try to buy on sale. Then hold on till the stuff you bought is "vintage" and valuable.

As for the digital aspect of it, you take actions and get rewarded. People create tokens and give people a reason to value them. I don't know why people who use a Starbucks card claim crypto is some mysterious stuff.
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I think that you are right that the explanation has to be gender relevant. The way I know my wife is that if I don't manage to catch her interest from the beginning, she will just give it up. I'm trying to come up with the minimum input with maximum effect :-)

Thanks a lot for your amazing comment!

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That is a great analogy... Like your explanation very much!!!

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I haven’t really tried to explain crypto to anyone yet since I’m so new to it myself. I would try to use simple analogies to make it fit something they were already familiar with. I have found this helps keep people’s attention too. For example;
Imagine you are a kid with a box, and in that box you keep candy bars. You have a friend who lives in the next town over, that also has a box for candy bars. Your friend calls you and says they just bought two new toys, and they will give you one of them if you give them 1 candy bar. You can’t get to your friend because they are so far away, but your next door neighbor goes over there all the time. They say they will take the candy bar over, and bring the toy to you, if you give them 1/2 a candy bar. You give them 1 and 1/2 candy bars, they keep half a candy bar, give 1 to your friend, and bring you the toy. That’s basically how crypto works. You have your box or wallet of coins you agree to send someone else coins for something, and you pay a fee to someone else to move the coins from your box to someone else’s. From there you can move into talking about bigger concepts like decentralization, and supply and demand.

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I like your analogy. It's definitely a big challenge to explain crypto to a newbie. In my opinion the key point is where to start. How to keep the person interested from the beginning.

Thanks a lot for taking part!

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Wow now this is a mission that is hard to accomplish, my girlfriend got into crypto exactly into hive because of me constantly talking about it.
I found it the easiest way to explain to people is to show them use cases. For example me showing my bitpanda account to my girlfriend basically every day since January. I am testing their BCI25 (crypto index and gained over 75% on my total investment of 265)
I showed her my earnings on posts I made and I showed her NFTshowroom and since she is an artist she got hooked by the idea.
Showing others how to use crypto for themselves. You still have to do the whole explaining, but you can point anyone who wants to learn about crypto to https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/ all they need to know is explained in the simplest way here.
Understanding the technologies is not important to make use of them. Ergo you do not really know whats happening inside your phone when you play an app but you are totally capable of using the app.
I have no freaking clue what happens in the smart contracts of cubdefi but I see the system works and is semi easy to use so I use it because gains are noice!
Also there is a new project that could be really interesting in onboarding people to adapting the blockchain. Just reading through it myself, and it sounds like something that could work for a much wider audience.
https://fioprotocol.io
Esplaining blockchain to my father was like him telling me yeah bro thats basic cryptography but he is still not invested in it. Would solve his life for retirement. Even he is retiring in like 5 years...(I still believe that major crypto adoption takes more than a decade from now on but the growth will be exponential therefore if my dad would invest a smaller sum now it would be a nice addition to his retirement funds in 5 years...)
Dustsweeper solymi returning from mission "missionary easy" aborting mission suspect is gazing into the nothingness and is telling me that they trust their fiat more...
Sending 1$BST into the mission failed jar

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Thanks a lot for this amazing comment! I think that Hive can be a nice starting point because once you have an account and enough RC you can just start. In the end I believe that if the person is curious enough, she will want to learn by herself. But even Hive is a huge challenge... Try to explain Hive Power, HBD, voting power, voting percentage, tribe tokens in a fashion that a newbie can follow lol

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I totally get it but in case of my GF she got involved and as soon as you have to use an exchange and buy Hive for your HBD So you can make a deposit to NFTshowroom and you know its worth something, you will get eager to know more. For example she wanted to deposit directly on nftshowroom, has a 1% fee is you deposit on leodex it is only 0.25% stuff like this makes you want to learn more. And as soon as you see that there is serious money involved you want to know your shit :D

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noice thanks!
!LUV
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I agree with @idiosincratic that it depends on age, I would add that it depends on how much the person is online.

Talking about younger people: my two sons are gamers and I have tried to show them a couple of times that they can make money from crypto-games. Yes, they were interested in it, but they didn't really like the games they saw on the Hive blockchain.
As for the others - my wife was also interested in this crypto, but in the sense that when I show her she keeps telling me to take it all down and convert it into fiat. I don't know, maybe I should show her a shoe shop that accepts cryptocurrencies?

But maybe it really is easiest to impress complete novices with crypto. Just show them the exchange, the process of how to make a transfer from card to exchange, and how to buy at the exchange. And then, of course, pumping them with articles ...

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my wife was also interested in this crypto, but in the sense that when I show her she keeps telling me to take it all down and convert it into fiat

Haha, this is the exact same reaction I get each time I say that I earned something with crypto.

I believe that the biggest challenge is to get the person interested from the beginning. Then either the person is learning by herself or the mission failed :-)

Thanks a lot for your comment!

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I don't know, maybe I should show her a shoe shop that accepts cryptocurrencies?

Order Wirex card, take her to the shop, buy some shoes... Mission accomplished! :) :)

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Haha that sounds really nice and easy 😎

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Don't explain 😁 - else after few days, you will be cooking and she trading 😁

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Haha! You are quite right about that. I think I will rather show her how to make posts about cooking :-)

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Hi I think explaining Crypto is a little easier than explaining what a blockchain is.
I would call it an alternative currency that is not controlled by anyone especially the banks.
It is all digital so there is no physical footprint.
When I explained this to my wife. She did not like the idea of non physical. She said it was like it is imaginary. It is a hard sell if looked at this way.
I got around this by saying that it is good for buying things and should be treated like gold where you only buy what you can afford to lose.
I hope this helps.

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Hi I think explaining Crypto is a little easier than explaining what a blockchain is.

This is a very good point. I could hardly explain the blockchain technology accurately if I wanted to. The way I know my wife, I need to be able to tell here only the minimum so that she gets interested and learns by herself. However if I don't manage I think she will give up quickly :-)

Thanks a lot for your comment!

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When I explained this to my wife. She did not like the idea of non physical. She said it was like it is imaginary. It is a hard sell if looked at this way.

You go to the cinema, pay for the ticket and watch something "non physical" :)

Or, you pay your TV subscription, or mobile fees, etc... I bet that currently, more than 50-60% (or even much more) sold things are non-physical...

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It's magic internet money. I have tried explaining it. One child says it's a scam. The other used to say it was a scam until I showed them how it's real money. I now tell them, using hive will make them money they can actually spend.

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It's quite amazing that people who don't understand anything about it always have the opinion that crypto is a scam in some ways. It's not easy to prove the contrary because people tend to have a very limited openness for such things. Thanks for your comment!

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First just start by explaing that a cryptocurrency on a blockchain is just a digital cash journal, that everyone have the journal and are validating that all transactions does not break the agreed upon rules, and that each transaction is locked by a crypto key.

Next explain that Hive has a built in social media in that journal, and that each interface uses that journal to store the posts, comments, votes and transactions that you make, and which you sign with your accounts crypto keys.

And finally explain that Tokens are like gift cards, and each Tribe the store where you use it while Hive is more like the Dollar which everyone uses.

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I like your step by step approach. I think the sequence really matters and it should become understandable really quickly. Too much theory will make it difficult I believe.

Thanks a lot for your comment!

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Yeah it needs to be easy and simple.

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The open ledger is key. If you're bored some time...I made a series of comics that "explain" bitcoin. The series is called "Bitkenstan" and episodes 77-86 are the bitcoin 101 lessons. Ep 82 talks about the ledger and 84 uses a scoreboard instead of a ledger. (It's a story, best understood in order.) Link https://bitkenstan.com/list/index.html !LUV

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That is great, keep up the good work and enjoy your day.

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I have trouble explaining crypto to others. Crypto right now feels like something you need a PhD for, other than for the superficial level. I don't mean a PhD in any particular field, but a PhD in crypto. Pretty much everyone who understands crypto well has a PhD. That's why I feel the gap is still so high and mass adoption still far.

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Crypto right now feels like something you need a PhD for, other than for the superficial level. I don't mean a PhD in any particular field, but a PhD in crypto.

That's exactly how I see it! I mean I've been learning this stuff for several years and it's so dynamic that you can never stop. If it's defi one day, it's nft's the next and maybe something totally new the following day. My problem is: how to give only the necessary information for somebody to start without overwhelming them...

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I still haven't gotten people into this space (yet), because I've taken the approach to wait until people are ready and start asking questions and I see that they are truly interested.

But whenever I get the chance to introduce people into this space, I will teach them by doing. I've seen that for me, when I myself got introduced, that it worked by doing it myself with an instructor by my side. Also showing some instructional videos with graphics in how blockchain technology is set up and after every step ask them if they understood the information and ask them to explain it in turn to you.

With every topic I give one example and let the newbie give an example of their own, to test if they've understood the material or not. Furthermore I've seen from my own experience as a newbie, that I learned by doing with a mentor beside me, instructing at every stage.

And then also give them "homework" to write a post for example here on Hive and/or let them do their own research about a certain topic and let them present what they've learned so far.

The important thing is that my "way" takes time, but that's because people have a certain amount to focus and it's important to know we can't teach them everything in one day and that patience is key. I know that, because it also took time for me and certain things had to be repeated for me to remember it.

It also helps to know your "students", because everyone learns differently and if you know how they learn, you can apply your teaching method to them.

Man this is a full on post hahahaa

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I will teach them by doing

I think that it's almost impossible to transfer all the necessary knowledge about crypto in a course type of environment. Simply because the crypto world is evolving so fast and it's almost impossible to keep up with it. The best is to give a real example that should arouse the learners own curiosity so that he starts researching and learning by himself.

Thanks a lot for your great comment!

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That is true because I keep learning along the way and even those who were at the start of this technology keep learning and evolving.

I knew about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology before I opened up a Hive account and invested some coins into crypto, but was really a silent investor. It was until I joined Hive that I got more and more interested and started learning about some ins and outs.

You've mentioned that she's a teacher or something in that sense? If so, I would start with Hive and Noisecash and gradually show videos about the blockchain. If she want to know or learn more about the coding behind it all, you could also show her how you could give computer commands with coding; the simple coding commands of "open", "copy/paste", "select", etc. My partner showed me a couple of years ago and a "new world" opened to me hahahaa

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Thanks a lot for these nice tips. They might come in very handy :-)

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This is how i will explain this to my wife:

Crypto is another form of currency that we can use like normal money to buy some stuff. There are not much shops who accept this form of money right now but there will be a lot in the future.
Just like all the countries have their own money similarly this is money for internet. This money can be used beyond country boundaries and this currency is not printed on paper. It's like using credit/debit card to pay for goods and services.

Hope i did not make it much complex.


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@harpreetjanda your explanation is simple to understand and I believe the person you are explaining it to would definitely understand what you are saying or at least have a clear idea about how cryptos work....


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I will just tell her that "it is a digital cash that is is available for use for everybody but controlled by nobody"....


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That’s also a good point
But this people could be little confused that’s why I start away from this for now.
I would prefer to explain this concept as next phase when one is little comfortable with first definition
Thanks for stopping by and your valuable feedback
!luv 1


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That's a very short version but I agree. In a way it's not more complicated than that :-)

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That's is very sound and easy way to understand it. I think this is the challenge, how to give only so much information that the person is interested but not overwhelmed!

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Very true
The one most challenging issue is that we only want to pass in relevant and precise information but we also don’t want to miss out the most important concepts.
So one need to make the balance.
Too much information will overwhelm the listener and they may not engage much and less information will just them too by not giving the correct picture.


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I had actually gone through this. What I did was to start with explaining how a centralized bank has a lot of issues with security. Then I explained that countries often abuse their economy by printing too much money. Enter the BlockChain and decentralized security, and I explain it like a bicycle chain. Then I go into how with bitcoin there will ever only be 21 million, and how other coins represent projects, and communities on the blockchain. Then I introduced her to Coinbase and guided her through the tutorials, and as she earned and saw them gain in value she was hooked then I introduced her to Torum and a Bitcoin faucet. She is not quite ready for CTP or Hive yet but she will come around. The important thing is to not push be friendly and have fun with it. This is a much larger subject than can be written in a comment. Let me know if you need any other help 😀

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I really like how you did it. Step by step, keeping it simple and then building on that. That's what I need to do. I was thinking to start with hive but then I realise that the platform only seems easy to use but actually it's far from that. You need to know so many things first. I believe it's better to first link crypto to fiat through an exchange like Coinbase. Like that the person knows "ah I can actually transform this into 'real' money". Then you can go deeper :-).

Thanks a lot for your comment!

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How do you explain crypto to a complete newbie? How would you proceed? Where would you start? Have you had some experience already?

I usually would not try to explain crypto in english, as it's not my native language, I will not be able to be precise enough and to use the correct word to explain clearly to a complete newbie.

If I had to explain it, I think I would start by explaining the blockchain first: something like a database, or a register, where information and interactions are recorded. And where security is ensured by algorithm which are needed to validate each modifications of the database (miner, PoS validator, etc.)

Then, I will explain crypto, which is a currency similar to the electronics money/fidelity point some shops allow you to use to buy stuff. The value of this "money" depends on what you can use it for, or on what other people are ready to pay to have it. Some crypto can be use as wealth store, like gold, some other can be use to really buy things, like a real life currency, and finally, some other crypto are closer to shares of a company. Thanks to the blockchain, the exchange of these crypto is secured, as well as your ownership on it.

I never tried to explain crypto to someone, as I am myself relatively ignorant of many things, I wouldn't like to give incorrect advice to someone else.

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Thanks a lot for this great comment! I think that the sequencing of the teaching is very important and you do it very well here. The trick I believe is to give only so much information as not to overwhelm the learner.

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I explain crypto to people by telling them it's similar to the dollar amount they see in their bank account. They can use their debit card online, and purchase items without turning it into cash itself. They can use the digital concept of currency to make purchases.

Crypto is the same way, only instead of it being created by the Federal Reserve or by banks when they extend credit, it's created in some method of derived value, whether that's from upvotes showing content worth, or the mining concept with Bitcoin. In each case, they're ascribed value in something that has a crypto amount applied.

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You are quite right to try to keep things as simple as possible and not go too much into detail. If you make an analogy with fiat money, then the person can understand it in an easier way because he knows what this is. Thanks a lot for your comment!

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Explaining crypto is a challenge. I think we all "get it" in degrees. For some, it's just "internet money" that you see or send on your phone and that's good enough for them. Some want to know the tech behind how it works. Then you try to explain from there. Some are curious about the money aspect. You often hear the question, "But it's not backed by anything so it's worthless, right?" This starts the conversation about money and fiat and gold and clams and rai blocks and trust and that whole story. As for my wife, it's been a long road. For years I could hardly say "bitcoin" without getting a scoff. Recently, when things really started running up past 10K, 20K, and such, after a big jump of like 10% in one day, I said something like, "Bitcoin made a big move today," my wife said, "Yeah, I know" and I think she quoted the price. I was like, wow! !LUV

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I said something like, "Bitcoin made a big move today," my wife said, "Yeah, I know" and I think she quoted the price. I was like, wow!

It looks that you have done a great job! :) :)

And you are right about the questions that usually "rise up" and when you know more about the crypto (and fiat), it's not that hard to compare them... And these actual bankers are doing us a big favor showing how worthless is fiat money... :)

Thanks for the comment!

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Honestly I tried explaining to a friend beforehand and I tend to try them to imagine themselves being the product. Why do you give your data to Google, Firefox and other electronic systems for free? You hear all about how business need data to get an edge over their competitors and how data is important.

Inside crypto, we are out of the traditional system and we have more digital type technology which appeals more to the ordinary people. So to start off, I suggest Brave and Presearch. This is just some slight differences but not hard changes to do. If you continue to use Brave and Presearch, you can start getting paid for what you are already doing. The system is different from what you normally know and you are now a product rather than being used.

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That's the right way of thinking! Changing things in their roots! That is the only way and to no look back... ;)

Thanks for an awesome comment!

!LUV 1

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