The Lolli team wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving! 🍂
We hope that today is joyful for you and your family whether you're celebrating near or far this year. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for choosing to shop with Lolli, for referring your friends & family, and for sharing the good word of bitcoin with the world.
As you're probably aware, Bitcoin up 15%+ this week, 49%+ this month, & 179%+ this year. Because of its recent success, the topic may come up at the dinner table or Zoom call — here's how to navigate the ins and outs of the conversation with ease!
Please note: Remember to stay safe, socially distance, and wear a mask when possible. The CDC recommends limiting the number of attendees as much as possible to allow people from different households to remain at least 6 feet apart at all times.
Navigating the 'Bitcoin Conversation' With Your Relatives This Thanksgiving
You’re sitting down to a family Thanksgiving dinner, and all your relatives are wondering exactly what you’re up to these days. You mention bitcoin, and before you can even utter the phrase ‘cryptographically secured protocol’, everyone’s eyes have glazed over and your relatives are scrambling to change the subject.
Let’s back it up.
The bitcoin world is small, and to anyone on the outside, technical concepts can be really intimidating to hear. It doesn’t help that bitcoin is full of unintuitive ideas about how money should work either, but that’s not your family’s fault.
So if you want to get through to your family this Thanksgiving, and silence your weird uncle’s skepticism about bitcoin, here are a handful of common critiques and useful responses for explaining the importance of bitcoin.
Criticism: Bitcoin is not backed by anything!
Response: Neither is the US dollar. The US treasury department has printed 6% of America’s money supply in just the last year. And all that extra money was printed out of thin air. It’s not backed by gold, or any specific asset.
In fact, the US has been entirely off the gold standard for almost 50 years now. (You should ask your older relatives if the name Richard Nixon rings a bell).
And while bitcoin doesn’t have a guaranteed, asset-backed value either, it has properties that make it a far better money than the US dollar. It’s scarce, almost impossible to forge, entirely digital, and nobody can tamper with its inflation schedule. Not even Jerome Powell.
Criticism: If I can’t touch it, how do I know it’s real?
Response: Well, you can’t touch most of the money in your bank account either. Only about 11% of US money supply actually exists in the form of physical bills or coins.
The rest of it is actually being stored on a spreadsheet. And that spreadsheet is only visible to your bank. Every column of the spreadsheet represents one customer’s account. The bank adds or removes money from your column whenever you make a deposit or a withdrawal. That’s basically how banks keep track of your money.
The difference with bitcoin is that the spreadsheet keeping track of your money is public. And there are thousands of people all over the world making sure every single transaction checks out. That’s what makes it almost impossible to fraudulently send bitcoin.
So while it’s possible that some of the dollar bills in your pocket are counterfeit, the same can’t be said for bitcoin.
Criticism: I can’t spend it anywhere!
Response: Some of the world’s largest retailers already accept bitcoin as payment for purchases (Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Nordstrom to name a few), and the currency has only existed for 11 years. And even though you can still spend US dollars at more places than Bitcoin, you’re being hit with double-digit fees from credit card payment processors and money-printing inflation at the Treasury department.
Nobody can print more bitcoin than its software allows for, so you can be sure that your bitcoin ownership won’t be diluted over time as more merchants around the world start accepting it.
Criticism: The US has always printed money. Why is it a problem now?
Response: Since September 2019, research shows the Federal Reserve has pumped over $9 trillion to primary dealers by leveraging enormous emergency repo operations. Estimates say, in 2020 alone, the U.S. has created 22% of all the USD issued since the birth of the nation.
It’s always been a problem that a handful of people get to decide how much inflation every American will experience. Inflation is a hidden tax on your earnings.
And it’s even a larger problem on a global scale. Right now, countries like Venezuela, Argentina, and Iran are all going through national inflation crises. Their government’s money printing got out of hand, and the citizens are paying the price.
Until bitcoin came along, there wasn’t a feasible alternative to combat government money printing. But because bitcoin is owned by nobody, there is no single person or group who can take over the role of money printing and change bitcoin’s code. That makes it the only major currency today run by the people, for the people.
The scarcity of bitcoin is one of its main features, and everyone who participates in the network is incentivized to make sure bitcoin’s scarcity and security is never compromised.
Criticism: It’s too volatile to be a currency!
Response: Bitcoin’s volatility is a natural part of its price discovery, and the volatility actually been decreasing ever since it was created. As the world begins to learn about and use bitcoin, there will continue to be fluctuations in its price, just like there are still fluctuations in the price of gold and the US dollar exchange rate.
While the volatility doesn't make it a great medium of exchange for many people today, it is still a strong store of value historically.
Ultimately the free market sets the exchange rate for bitcoin, but as the currency gains wider adoption, prices should become more stable. Until then, volatility means that buyers can still get lucky and find bitcoin being sold for unreasonably low prices (just like tomorrow’s Black Friday deals).
Get Your Relatives Earning Bitcoin In Minutes
Now that you’re prepared to give your relatives a ‘Bitcoin 101’ they’ll understand, you’ll want to give them some bitcoin so they can explore the world of digital currency for themselves.
But with Black Friday deals coming up, gifting your relatives with bitcoin can be expensive. Instead, just have them sign up for a Lolli account, and give them the gift that keeps on giving! They’ll immediately start earning free bitcoin whenever they shop online. Simple as that.
Happy Thanksgiving,
The Lolli Team 💛
