Topic: Need to convince my Grandma about Bitcoin's benefits... (Read 1079 times)

Simply the best advantage of bitcoin is that your grandma currency loses its buying power whenever there is inflation or central bank manipulate market by printing more money while bitcoins buying power is rising rapidly as the time is passing by. And you have already told her enough advantages. 

You are convincing the wrong person.

Convince local merchants.

As the number of merchants accepting bitcoins increases, the benefits for the consumer will become self-evident.  Until the average consumer sees bitcoin accepted in many of the places they frequent on a daily basis, the vast majority of them won't see a benefit beyond the speculative opportunities.

If you are insistent on convincing your grandmother, you can try pointing out the well published and permanently fixed inflation schedule and eventual supply limit.  This ensures that the value that is held in bitcoin can't be arbitrarily reduced by a central bank choosing to inflate the supply with massive printing of additional currency or techniques such as quantitative easing.

You might also point out that (unlike the currency in her purse), she can store backup copies of her bitcoins.  This way if her house were to be destroyed (fire, tornado, flood, meteorite, tsunami, earthquake, hurricane, etc.) she would still have access to her bitcoin assets (unlike any hard currency that she may have had stored in the house).

You might point out that the government has been known at times to erroneously freeze or confiscate the wrong financial accounts, and that while this tends to eventually be straightened out, it be a significant source of stress in the life of the individual who temporarily (days? weeks? months?) doesn't have access to their financial assets to pay for their daily expenses (food, housing, etc).  You can follow that up by pointing out that bitcoins cannot be "confiscated" or "frozen" (accidentally or intentionally) without gaining physical access to ALL backup copies of the bitcoin wallet wherever the owner may have stored them.

Finally, you might point out that at the moment bitcoin is in its infancy.  As a concept it has a HUGE potential, but that the current uses are limited.  It is a bit like someone from the late 1970's trying to understand why the TCP/IP internet protocol would be useful to the average person.  While the current uses may be limited, the potential is probably larger than the average person can currently even understand.  As such, a small investment into this potential while the uses are limited can explode into a significant value in the future when that potential is finally realized.  That future could be decades away, but it very will could be 5 to 10 years away as well.  It can be difficult to predict just how quickly a disruptive technology will mature.

-It's great from the standpoint of those Nigerian scammers who are always sending you e-mails. Because now, all you need to do is click your mouse and the money is gone, with no hope of ever coming back.

Wait, that's not good either. Need to think more.

One of the biggest pluses is its decentralised.

Fee's are still a big selling point for smaller transactions. It's still cheaper to buy something small from a merchant accepting bitcoin than it typically is from small/mid sized merchants accepting debit/credit cards. If you have to deal with sending money internationally bitcoin becomes a huge advantage, that's probably not something your grandma needs to do though im guessing. For smaller transactions where the consumer could save money, the main problem is adoption is still small enough that most places offline still don't accept bitcoin , so that could be a tough selling point for someone now.

As I'm sitting here writing this, I think about it and the truth is bitcoin isn't for everyone...at least not yet. My parents have had their debit card information stolen 7 times in the last few years. I know this is because of one of them constantly clicking on any link and getting infected with nasty malware and ransomware. For someone like that I don't think bitcoin is a good option because they would most likely end up doing something to get their bitcoins stolen.

If you can't sell your grandma on bitcoin thats fine. Move on and focus on the neighbor, the co-worker or classmate, the friend, the cousin, and etc etc. 

You want to gamble with your grandmother's savings? Why else would you want to convince her about btc!

I can interact with people any where in the world to buy their services. BTC crosses boarders with little care of race/boarder and beliefs.

What should I tell her when she asks why bitcoin is better than regular money?

Things I already know I can't tell her:

"Bitcoin transfers are free"
No, in practice 99% of them are not. On the other hand, some banks do feature zero-fee transactions.

"Bitcoin is super secure"
Banks are secure too, for most people

"Bitcoin is cool"
She doesn't care.

"Bitcoin's value can be worth 300% more one month from now"
It can also be worth a lot less... Only God knows.

"You can even buy drugs with it"
"Really? I've got Walgreens for that"


So, what are better arguments?
I need some help here...