Had a photo shoot today with a really awesome woman, and we ended up talking about all sorts of things, including Bitcoin.
I asked her where she was in her Bitcoin journey, and she told me she’d been curious about it a few years ago but never got into it because she didn’t know how to mine Bitcoin.
I thought that was interesting. She didn’t realize you don’t have to mine Bitcoin to acquire it. You can buy it, earn it, or accept it as payment.
I’d never heard that as a reason for someone not getting into Bitcoin before. Has anyone else?
She was really fascinated once we talked more about how it works and how to get started. Now she wants to sit down with me another time so I can walk her through it in more detail.
I always advise people against mining. Unless you have cheap electricity, it's usually at a loss.
I can understand that, yeah
It's amazing how many misconceptions about Bitcoin there still are. But then I think about how poor my own understanding of the traditional finance system was (and I'm sure still is -- in many ways): humans are very good at filling in the blanks in their conception of the world and don't seem to mind whether the filler is accurate or not.
I never did but that is quite interesting
Yeah, I thought it was too
Did she buy herself a mining pickaxe too?
I'm sure she makes her own dollars, too. Probably grows her own tomatoes
She said she works in tech
I see you didn't get the joke. alas, I try so hard
😄👏
Maybe she fancies you but is in truth just another fiat debt slave looking for a bail out.
nah, she's into it
This is a great observation, and honestly a really common misconception. A lot of people hear "Bitcoin mining" in the news and assume the only way to get bitcoin is to run mining hardware — which sounds expensive, technical, and out of reach.
The simpler framing that seems to work: mining is just how new bitcoin enters circulation and how the network stays secure. For everyone else, getting bitcoin works like getting any other money — you buy it, earn it, or someone pays you with it. No one mines their own dollars before spending them, and bitcoin isn't different in that respect.
If she's in tech, she might appreciate the angle that holding bitcoin doesn't require trusting a miner or running any hardware at all — just a wallet and a small first purchase to learn with. Nice that she wants a walkthrough; that first guided setup seems to be what converts curiosity into actual ownership for a lot of people.