Cryptocurrency: Convincing Boomer Anti's

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Why Boomers Don't Trust Bitcoin (And How To Convince Them To Open Their Minds)

Authored by Dan Weintraub via BitcoinMagazine.com,

As with every generation, baby boomers are skeptical of the
innovations embraced by youth. But they can’t miss out on Bitcoin...

Trust is a funny thing. Generationally speaking, one could make the
argument that it is the job of the younger generation to essentially
tell us older folks to go fly a kite (perhaps in more raw terms, and
metaphorically of course) when it comes to our values, our norms, our
advice, etc. Music provides an apt cultural landscape on which to view
this tension.
THE SAME OLD SONG

In every generation, emerging and evolving musical forms have been
decried by the older, traditional set as being bad music, noise, even
not music at all. In the late 1950s, Walter Cronkite referred to jazz
as “musical noise,” and his words were not offered as praise.
Rockabilly of the 1950s was surely detested by many in the traditional
country community. The music of the Summer Of Love was rejected by
many parents who likely embraced jazz and bebop. Punk rockers were
undoubtedly met with blank stares and utter contempt by their hippie
parents, and rap continues to be the object of musical scorn the world
over. The point is clear: Tradition hates innovation, mostly because
tradition doesn’t understand innovation and feels threatened by this
new iteration. And yet, the truth remains; it’s all just music.

Here's where things get a bit complicated.

It’s one thing to not understand, dislike, even personally reject
something new. It’s another thing entirely to discredit the new, to
actively fight against the new, to try and destroy the new. And within
that effort to destroy and to bury the new form of expression, those
seeking to kill off the new thing will, in their rather tired and sad
desperation, create false narratives and stories to rationalize their
adherence to traditional ways. Unfortunately, these narratives can
become so powerful, that they lead to the development of institutions
and movements guided entirely by falsehood, led by self-serving and
power-hungry zealots, armed with all of the cultural weaponry that
tradition has at its disposal; shameless and conscienceless, these
forces will often go to extreme lengths to kill the thing that they
have decided, in their self-concerned ignorance, is evil.

As much as I hope that, somewhere far in the future, such destructive
and reductive forces can be disempowered by truth-informed mechanisms
like the Bitcoin protocol, I am not holding my breath. But in the
present, the power of verification — that very thing that makes
Bitcoin such a revolutionary moment — can be leveraged by the Bitcoin
community as a way to bridge the generational gap, to push back
against the narratives that baby boomers and others embrace in their
rejection of Bitcoin, and to move the protocol adoption curve forward.
MY BITCOIN PITCH TO FELLOW BOOMERS

Here’s my point:

My generation (I’m a youthful 61) has many qualms with Bitcoin. Some
of these concerns are valid (old people hate volatility), while others
are informed by entirely false narratives and prejudices. And just
like with the musical examples above, so many of these false
narratives are incredibly difficult to disarm; for embedded within
these rejections of something new there exists a desperate clinging to
something understandable, something empowering, something unifying in
its self-righteous disgust and self-concentered defensiveness.

Now granted, I’m a boomer, so I have a little more natural validity
when I speak with my peers about Bitcoin. I’m not the AirPods-wearing,
yoga-mat-toting, entirely-self-absorbed and
personal-development-obsessed millennial who my generation loathes so
very much (wry smile). But even such affinity does not get me far with
Bitcoin. Rejection narratives come hot and they come quickly:
environmental degradation, dark web currency, gambling casinos that
make TikTok’ers rich, etc.

My strategy in pushing back against these arguments goes back to music:

    “Look,” I say “You may be right. Bitcoin may be energy intensive
and not helpful to the environment. Bitcoin may be used by scammers
and defrauders as part of their schemes to get rich. Bitcoin may be
the currency, or one of the currencies, of a generation of
social-media heads, people who you hold in such contempt. This may all
be true. But I would argue three things: One, that you are embracing
arguments that you have heard but have not investigated yourself; Two,
that you are basing your hatred and rejection of Bitcoin not on the
merits of Bitcoin, but on the way Bitcoin shows up in the world (just
like our parents rejected our music, because it came with long hair
and blue jean jackets); And three, that you are rejecting Bitcoin
because you don’t understand it, which is so very much what all older
generations do about shit they don’t get.”

And then I say this:

    “There’s one thing about Bitcoin that makes it different from
anything else in the world, and that is the dynamic of verification.
Ignore all of the other stuff just for a second, if you can. I am
entirely willing to stipulate that, after you do your own research and
after you challenge your own prejudices toward those yucky millennials
(another wry smile) that you may still reject Bitcoin, but hear me out
on this one thing, this one really cool and rather revolutionary
element of Bitcoin: Unlike every other human interaction in the world,
Bitcoin does not ask us to put our blind trust in anyone else. No one
owns it or controls it, so we’re not being asked to trust the words
and deeds of bankers or government officials or scammers or anyone; no
one can hack it (take some time to learn about why), so it is, even in
its volatility as an investment, the most secure network of all time;
and no can destroy it, because it is software that runs on millions of
computers, all of which are verifying each and every transaction that
takes place.”

And then this:

    “Look, I’m not saying you should invest in bitcoin. And lord knows
that in a world replete with greedy people and liars, bitcoin is just
as apt to be used by these people as are dollars or gold or real
estate or whatever gets them rich. And truth be known, millennials
make me roll my eyes as well. But you know what, that’s my
generational B.S. It’s my own crap. Just like my parents shook their
heads at my Grateful Deadness and my punk rockness, I shake my head
toward millennials. But that rigidity and silliness shouldn’t inform
my views about an emerging monetary technology and protocol. If it
does, then I am guilty of the very thing that we blamed our parents
for being guilty of 40 years ago. I don’t want to be part of yet
another anti-intellectual generation that rejects stuff it doesn’t
understand, or that embraces false narratives about things because
those are the narratives we are exposed to the most.”

And then my closing:

    “All I’m asking is that you take a moment and consider what a
world in which verification of truth, rather than trusting someone
else’s words, might look like. For example, bitcoin and the Bitcoin
network could have totally ended all of the stuff about stolen
elections, because within this realm of verification there exists the
ability to validate and verify each and every transaction (every vote)
beyond any doubt. Also, with the Bitcoin network and protocol, you can
say goodbye to things like identity theft and credit card scams and
being double charged for stuff you didn’t buy; because with Bitcoin
every, every, every transaction is verified on an entirely secure
network by tens of thousands of computers running unhackable software.
And the thing is, there are so many examples of how verification could
make the world in which we live so much better, because when we can
verify stuff then we end up trusting the whole process. So all I’m
asking is to do a little investigation about this thing before you
reject it; you may find, despite yourself, that as you get it more,
your appreciation for it changes.”

We live in a world in which trust is an ever-diminishing construct. As
I noted in my first two pieces in this series, as trust continues to
erode, we, as a species, are in increasing trouble and distress. I
totally grok why my generation doesn't trust Bitcoin. But I also get
that our mistrust is informed by false narratives, by petty
prejudices, and by a tenacious adherence to things we understand and
know. The thing about Bitcoin that makes it so novel, and so elegant,
is that the protocol, by way of example, cuts through all of the
falsehood. This I feel is the most powerful thing about Bitcoin, and
this I feel is a route toward bringing more and more people into the
fold.

Virtually everyone on the planet, boomers included, is concerned about
the direction we are heading as a species. And at the heart of this
fear is the fact that we can’t trust anything anymore. Bitcoin changes
this through its inviolable verification mechanism. It begins with
money, property, assets. Who knows where it ends.