I often wonder what kind of information people new to Cryptocurrency use to inform themselves and make decisions about whether to 'buy-in' or not.
And I must say I pity anyone who uses YouTube and simply queries 'should I buy Bitcoin', because if they did, they'd probably decided to keep their FIAT in their bank account, based on the search results...
I used Brave for this little experiment, which I've never used to sign into any of the major social media sites, and searched for 'should I buy Bitcoin?'
Here's a screen shot of the results returned (after a paid ad which wasn't that much better):
(I did a little bit of semiological analysis and annotated in red what the video stills say to me on a gut level).
OK In all honesty, I can't tell you whether the content of these videos has any validity, I didn't watch any of them as the stills alone suggest these people have no credibility, I may be wrong - but the point is based on semiology alone the message from what's above is 'Bitcoin is a fucking scam, don't go anywhere near it'.
More credible sources need a bit more digging
I'll admit that I've bought into BTC knowing only the basics, but now I want to learn a bit more about it and other cryptos).
Thankfully I found this article on Medium: The 10 best videos to watch on Bitcoin as a pretty good starting point, mainly because the third video in directs you to an hour long video with one Andreas Antonopoulos, and if you follow the links to his Web Site you learn that:
- He did a degree in computer science in the late 80s/ early 90s
- He's specialised in digital money, cryptography and cyber security since
- He's worked for governments and large corporations on data security.
- He quit working for said organisations in 2012 because he believed BTC was a way to challenge the corrupt fiat system.
- He's been working full time coding BTC and other cryptos since 2012.
Now, I don't know about you, but if I want to learn more about BTC and other cryptos, this guy seems like a pretty good source to start with!
He's quite well known in the crypto world (but not to us all, I have heard the name before, but never really explored) and he's got tons of material on BTC and crypto out there for free!
Final thoughts on the Bitcoin narrative
NB I do know that BTC is about more than money, I typed that in because the narrative at the moment is 'should I buy' - it's just a shame that the sources you find on YouTube take you to people who look like they have no credibility whose stills seem to focus purely on the money (hence the up arrows).
While the people who have been coding it for the last decade are buried lower in the search returns, and they're the ones that will be at pains to remind you that the significance of BTC and crypto more generally go way beyond mere money!
If you know of any more credible sources for learning about BTC and crypto, drop them in the comments!