Bitcoin education can change the world, but it must be community-led, independent, and focused on putting tools in the hands of students.
This is an opinion editorial by John Dennehy, founder of the El Salvador-based educational program My First Bitcoin.
Community-led, independent, and unbiased Bitcoin education will change the world.
I know most people would superficially agree with the importance of education, but to be honest, that’s often just lip service. So let’s discuss why Bitcoin education is so important, and why we need to not only agree that it’s important, but also take action.
bitcoin is a tool
Bitcoin is money, yes of course. But that’s just scratching the surface. Bitcoin is also a tool that, when used correctly, empowers the individual. It gives us agency in our own lives, which encourages decentralization and personal responsibility. All of those things will resonate far beyond money, they will change the very relationship we have with the concept of power.
All previous revolutions have focused on which group wields power: Bitcoin can help us change our relationship with power itself. It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of this potential.
But realizing that potential is not a certainty. And the best way to predict the future is to create it.
Education is the first step in bringing new people into space and will therefore have a significant impact on the path they follow. that is why has to be pure. Bitcoin’s profound potential is that it allows people to make their own decisions, so starting that journey by telling students what to think isn’t just counterproductive, it’s counterrevolutionary.
Community-led, independent, and unbiased Bitcoin education is an idea whose time has come. This is a revolution, the first steps new people take must keep the core spirit of Bitcoin.
Proof of work is what matters
But how? How do we turn that theory into reality? Talk is cheap, proof of work is what matters.
my first bitcoin is working on how to implement this style of Bitcoin education in El Salvador and beyond, and we are quickly learning some lessons.
These efforts must be led by the community. That means when we enter a new field, we identify the best students with teacher potential and train them to do just that and continue teaching long after we leave. The local context matters too, and the people who understand it best are those with deep roots.
Bitcoin education should be interactive and Bitcoin tools should be used. Many people are skeptical of Bitcoin because it’s not physical, so it’s important to get your hands on it and show it, rather than tell it, whenever possible. We do this by sending satellites to the phones of students in class. We also give them free sats at meetings, where we often negotiate a discount with the bar or restaurant that hosts for anyone paying with bitcoin to encourage attendees to make their first real-world transactions. Using Bitcoin is always easier than people think and proving it first hand is extremely effective.
It also has to be simple and accessible. Unnecessary complexity is a problem in the fiat world that encourages dependency rather than agency. Things like the law, taxes, or even car repairs are so complex that we need to trust someone else to navigate those systems for us, leading to centralization and deferral of liability. If we strive to create a world that empowers the individual, we must create systems that are accessible.
More advanced learning will always be needed and that will necessarily be complex, but the first steps a new student takes into the world of Bitcoin should be simple and accessible. It has to be useful. This is where the local context matters, because Bitcoin will solve different problems for different people. It could be convenience, cost, censorship resistance, or so many other things. That’s why the teacher has to be local, he knows the context that matters most.
Thinking about the world in a new way
And it can’t be about making a profit. Greed is a powerful thing, and many people are drawn to Bitcoin because they believe it can earn them more dollars. No.
bitcoin is No a way to make more dollars, is a way to make dollars irrelevant. To teach people how to make a profit is to entrench them in the old way of thinking: the goal should be the opposite. The power of Bitcoin is that it teaches us to think about the world in a new way, to think about ourselves in a new way. In the fiat world, money and power are synonymous. If the goal of trading bitcoin is to create more comparative power over others, then that is the same legacy world mindset and it will simply change who wields power, rather than changing our relationship to power. Bitcoin changes the incentive structure and encourages collaboration while giving agency to the individual. Trade fosters competition at the same time that it fosters the centralization of authority.
Bitcoin will win, that’s for sure. What we have to decide is how.
It will be a long and difficult journey to ensure that Bitcoin is not co-opted by the negative forces of centralization. This is the greatest challenge of our time. If we do this right, we can change the future course of civilization.
Community-led, independent, and unbiased Bitcoin education is an idea whose time has come. Start a project in your own community and make the status quo irrelevant.
This is a guest post by John Dennehy. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
