Most bitcoiners have their own, much different definition of what it means to orange pill a person. I’ve seen mentions of getting a taxi driver to download a lightning wallet and sending the payment in sats to them. Is that truly orange-pilling? Hmm… no. It is a great first step, but what makes you believe that that person won’t go on to shitcoins after learning about the ease of using cryptocurrency?
So, let’s define what that is in the terms of this guide.
To orange pill someone means to get them to take the first step into learning about bitcoin, money, self-custody, being sovereign, and to teach them to start questioning the world of lies we’ve been fed our entire lives.
Too poetic? Okay, here’s a more specific one:
To orange pill someone means showing them how to send and receive a bitcoin transaction, explain to them the importance of keeping their seed words safe, and showing them more articles, books and guides so they can go further down the rabbit hole.
I think that’s better, don’t you?
No matter what your definition of orange-pilling is, let’s discuss a few things first.
Orange-pilling comes from the scene in the Matrix where Morpheus offers the blue and the red pill to Neo.
“This your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” ~Morpheus.
The fact that the terms comes from the Matrix is absolutely perfect, because the Matrix is based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Everybody knows the Matrix so let’s talk about the Cave. Inside the cave, people are chained up, in the dark. The only thing they can do is talk to each other and stare forward, where there’s a dim light on the cave’s wall. Someone is moving around objects, throwing shadows on the wall. The people can never see the three-dimensional object, they can only see a shadow, a projection of it, so their world is limited by that knowledge.
Someday a group of people manage to break out of the Cave. They go out into the light, their eyes hurt, the world is massive, they get a panic attack by the lack of a rock ceiling on top of them. It’s vast, it’s too much to bear. And they run back into the cave and tell everyone what they saw, that it’s too bright, too open, too much everything. Objects are real, there’s light everywhere and colours. So many colours, not just the flame, the rock and the shadow.
And they don’t believe them. Maybe they even get angry at them and attack them. Who are these fools to claim that the world is not what they think it is? Who are they to suggest that we’ve all been lied to all our lives?
And that’s the first thing you need to keep in mind when trying to orange pill someone.
Why do some people find it so hard to believe in bitcoin?
The answer is simple. It’s because understanding bitcoin requires acknowledging you’ve been tricked your entire life.
The culture shock is real, I’ve been through it. The stages are as follows:
What is money?
You start to learn what money really is, and how fundamentally flawed the Keynesian system has become. You see that the only way forward is by a hard money standard, whether that’s gold or bitcoin. Then you realise that in a world of information, the only logical step is bitcoin.
Then why bitcoin?
You start to read about it’s properties. It’s antifragile, decentralised. Why is that important? Nobody can control it, great. Why is it like gold that can be attached to an email?
Then there’s the anger and disbelief. We’ve been fooled.
Why doesn’t everybody see this? You read everything about bitcoin, you listen to podcasts, talk on bitcoin twitter and nostr with other plebs. Nobody seems to have all the answers but they make far more sense than the lies of the mainstream media. You talk to your friends and family, you come off as crazy at best.
As I said, you have to acknowledge the trauma the other person is going through. It’s a culture shock, and not many want to go through with it. Think of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, people who got out into the world went back and told everyone that there’s more to life than the shadows on the wall. Or, the same allegory being told by the Matrix, with Cypher wanting to go back, to forget.
We call that Bitcoin Derangement Syndrome, BDS. It’s hilarious but it’s so real. Many early bitcoiners, people who have spend years of their lives either advocating for it or working on it, some making or losing fortunes in the process, go back to the fiat world, shift gears completely, rant and rave against bitcoin and dive back in the Matrix, the Cave, taking the blue pill. They want to be fiat rich, they lie and delude themselves that everything is okay in the world and if they get just enough money they’d be okay.
But they won’t. This is real, and no matter how many lies they tell themselves things will not change unless we change them ourselves. Babies are dying, that’s true. In wars, in artificially induced poverty, in carrying on with the Keynesian ways of thinking of endless imperial expansion and exploitation.
I’ll be honest, bitcoin rewires your brain.
Do you really wanna force that on people?
Yes?
Then let’s read on.