It was 12:45 a.m. on a Friday morning in Riga, Latvia. Without going into too much detail, I was having a good time with fellow bitcoin and Lightning players.
I was there to attend the Baltic Honeybadger conference, organized by the plebs for the plebs. And you could feel this! Everyone was eager to help and understand what other people in the ecosystem were doing or were there to learn.
We stood outside a bar where all drinks were paid for in bitcoin and people seemed to be having fun. At that moment, I stepped back, looked around and observed what was happening. Most of us were far from home, in a foreign city at almost 1 in the morning, but we were just talking about bitcoin and how we will use it to make the world a better place.
That’s where I realized it. Although we tend to fight on X, while looking like absolute crazy people, in the end we manage to agree on one thing. It doesn’t matter what your origin is. For some strange reason, we tend to blend together once we meet in real life.
Meeting other Bitcoiners in real life, making those connections, and taking advantage of the time to discuss ideas or even establish new businesses are the best things about this community. It’s also the perfect time to clear the air and have better conversations than the ones we have on social media.
This got me thinking: What if bitcoin offers more than the benefits we all know? What if you have a secret superpower, one we haven’t fully utilized yet: in-person connections?
Social movements are the backbone of technological progress
One of the core values of bitcoin is that of the cypherpunk movement. Value logic in code above all else. Doing so eliminates human errors and corruption, which have always been problems for humanity.
Cypherpunks imagine a more decentralized world where everyone has full control over their identity, privacy, and rights online. Bitcoiners know how important all these points are. However, most people don’t mind Big tech monetizing their data.
The pioneers of the cypherpunk movement saw it coming a long time ago. Instead of turning inward, they went on the offensive, publicly stating their goals and ideas and explaining why government spying would be a problem in the future.
What might have started small quickly became something big, and before they knew it, a group of cypherpunks had to defend the right to encryption before the US Supreme Court. The US government .was so scared by encryption that they took on a group of mathematicians and cryptographers. Imagine that!
This small group of enthusiasts built a social movement first to educate and show people why we need mass encryption and how dangerous an authoritarian state is. From that, they created the tools and software we now use every day. Think PGP, HTTPS, or messaging like SimpleX.
In order for us to accept and use encryption, we had to have a social movement that we could identify with. Most privacy-conscious people these days may not know about cypherpunks, but they keep their values alive. The ideas that were put forward 40 years ago are still valid today.
The same should be possible for bitcoin. To achieve this, we, as a bitcoin community, must be more proactive and transform our online communities into more than just online discussions, but real-world connections. Just like cypherpunks did in their day, we must first strengthen the social movement, whether by organizing events or providing physical copies of essays, books, and think pieces to read.
If we only stick to the digital realm, which is easier because bitcoin is digital through and through, we will miss many great opportunities to strengthen the social movement. Or worse yet, we are victims of the ever-increasing censorship mechanism we see online.
Break free from social media algorithms and gatekeepers
Most discussions about bitcoin happen online, whether on X, nostr or other chat forums. This is part of everyday life for most of us as we seek to engage with all of our friends online.
However, this comes with enormous sacrifice for most of us. We have to play by the rules of these platforms, which means they monitor us, censor us, or in some cases even block us.
Our biggest problem is staying on the sidelines or not being accessible to people looking in from the outside. Of course, there’s always the argument that people can go the extra mile and find other sources or ways to participate.
The sad truth is that only some do. Normal people don’t take extra steps to read a different source or go to a different platform than the social media site they’re used to. If there is a comprehensive solution, they are more likely to use it.
One step to solve this is to use bitcoin friendly places like nostr. Not only because you can experience Lightning through Zaps, but also because it is a protocol where users can decide how they want to participate.
Currently, it might be the best solution to onboard regular people and show them the differences between open protocols and closed platforms. However, we are trading time for something digital. Getting users to connect will require a lot of effort from the community and the nostr builders.
Fortunately, we’ve had a secret superpower for a long time and I don’t think we’ve been using it to the best of our ability. We need to do better and connect with as many people as possible in real life!
ABC – Always connect with other Bitcoiners
So far, we have established that bitcoin needs more real-life connections to free itself from digital censorship and make it more accessible to people around the world.
One way to do this is to use places like nostr, connect with as many people as possible and take the conversation from a digital dialogue to a physical one. Whether it’s hosting an event, attending a conference to strengthen that bond, or going into town and trying to convince people about the orange pill.
All of that can be organized on social media or online, but it’s complicated. Some people may not feel comfortable sharing where they are or may strictly use their profile to help spread the word about a particular issue.
This is where the social layer of bitcoin comes into play. I am a big fan of Orange Pill application, a dedicated app to meet nearby Bitcoins and interact with them directly. The idea is not to spend the day endlessly scrolling through the app, but to find people nearby, connect, and find a place to meet in real life. Take the digital realm out of the equation and just use the app to show you nearby Bitcoiners.
Since you already know that all users are Bitcoiners and want to help the ecosystem, there is no need to make small talk or try to find out if the person you are interacting with wants to meet you. Most OPA users commit to meeting fellow plebs. Personally, I love using OPA at conferences because it makes it easy to meet other visitors and potentially make real-life connections.
I also like these types of applications to make orange pills for both merchants and individuals. I can show a small business that there is a large group of potential customers around them. All they need to do is accept bitcoin or, better yet, access the app and participate.
The same applies to people who have not yet taken the trip down the rabbit hole. If they can see other Bitcoiners nearby, possibly even find commoners who share similar interests, and come together in this way, the entire community will benefit by expanding with local bitcoin hubs.
We need those bridges between the digital and physical worlds right now. The bitcoin movement is silent; It grows in the background and I think it’s time to bring it to the forefront and make it available to as many people as possible.
This is a guest post byJoel Kai Lenz. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of btc Inc or bitcoin Magazine.