My orange pilling experience

Last night I brought up Bitcoin as a topic of conversation with my best friend of 32 years and it was quite an eye-opening experience. I can't really distill it neatly, it's like when you wake up from a dream or mushroom trip and the best you can do is just grasp at the threads you can reach and lay them out. So that's the best I will be able to do here to give you a sense of how it went. I'm curious how your experience orange pilling people has gone.

ME: I've been spending a lot of time learning about Bitcoin and the monetary system and it's been really sobering.

FRIEND: [deep preparatory inhale indicating he has a lot to say about it] Yeah....I don't know. I think it's kinda bullshit.

ME: Yeah, that's what I used to think. But, I know you are a big fan of gold. What is it about gold that you like so much?

[Sorry but this is where I will just scatter blast a bunch of key parts...I assure you, I made the same exact arguments and counterarguments and examples and history etc. that you would make in between these thoughts so it is implied and I won't interject them here.]

FRIEND:

Gold is tangible, gold has so many great uses.

I don't trust the government. You can't use BTC for anything because the government uses dollars. America is the best and strongest government so that's why everyone has to use it.

BTC is tied to the dollar.

Do you think Warren Buffett likes BTC? Do you think Buffett is smart? I trust what he says.

Yeah, inflation is a problem and that's my point, you have to vote out the administration.

Why do you think everyone uses the dollar? It's because they think it's the best currency. I understand currency collapse has happened throughout history and empires have collapsed throughout history but America is the best and strongest country so everyone has to use it. They have faith in it. BTC is just on some computer so BTC can change the code so how can you have faith in that?

BTC just lost a bunch of money didn't it? I don't trust BTC, it's up here, then it's way down here.

What's to stop someone from just fucking with the code? If someone wrote the code then you can fuck with it. What's to stop Satoshi from popping up and fucking with it?

Isn't Tesla somehow tied to BTC? Doesn't Elon fuck with the price of BTC with tweets? See? How can you trust the price of BTC if he can influence the price of something with a tweet?

Look at the price of Google or Amazon, those companies go up because people study the businesses and price it accordingly.

I don't trust Warren Buffett. I don't trust Congress.

[Watches a video of Saylor talking about the virtues of BTC]

That guy has Asperger's, right? [I laughed]

...

That's pretty much how the conversation revolved for two hours. Now, I want to stress a different but important point. My friend and I have diverged significantly politically and philosophically over the decades pretty significantly but I am not the type who thinks you should write people off simply because you don't see eye to eye with them on big ideas like so many people do these days. It only drives the country apart. I am grateful content that he is my brother for all the other great qualities he has and even if I think he is entrenching himself in a way of thinking that I don't think is sound, I don't think he is stupid or bad, not in any way. He has put a lot of thought into it and I'm glad we talked. I could be wrong about BTC but I want to focus on the core principles of what makes a money a good money, why certain monies meet or fail those criteria, and what other options meet or fail those criteria. That's it. Hopefully, with enough conversations you can start to change minds, but you need to be prepared to fail. But having these conversations is the most important thing we as a society can do in our every day lives and circles, imho.