One of the best things about crypto is that it often overrides opinions.
A lot of it is black and white, ones or zeroes, a binary code.
With crypto, nine times out of 10, either you can do that thing or you can't.
Because, the name 'crypto' should give it away shouldn't it, cryptography is like math. And 2 + 2 is always 4.
For the aforementioned reasons, when the person you're talking to has no idea what they're talking about, it takes about 10 seconds to realise that. And it should take no longer than an additional 10 seconds to dismiss their opinion.
This is because you can have an uninformed opinion on, say, wine or math or cars or watches.
But you can't have 'opinions' on math.
This is why I still don't fully understand why people worry about opinions expressed by people such as Jamie Dimon.
Every time he talks about Bitcoin or crypto, he makes it clear he absolutely knows nothing about it.
He's said a lot of risible things about it but my favourite is when he said, if he were in power, "he'd shut Bitcoin down".
The second somebody says that, you should get up and leave the room. Or change the subject.
The one thing you shouldn't do is take them seriously.
There is only way to "shut down" crypto, and that is to shut down the internet. For everyone. Permanently.
Dimon and people like him don't know that. Or maybe they think that's hyperbole. They think they can change that.
An IT guy at a company I used to work with used the best possible analogy to explain cryptography to me.
He said, "cryptography is like math. Look at it this way. If you give me a calculator and make me do 2+2, the result will be 4. If you point a gun to my head, it's still 4."
Crypto is like that. It runs its own course. It plays by its own rules. And it can't be stopped. It can be demonised, slowed down, hindered, but it cannot be eliminated.
People need to understand that. And if they do, then they need to accept it.
And the beauty of it is, for the first time in a long time, or maybe ever, we have something over which your local baker and the world's most powerful banker have exactly the same amount of control.
