mrldotsh on Nostr: We‘ve been traveling in and exploring Norway 🇳🇴 for the last 2 weeks. ...

We‘ve been traveling in and exploring Norway 🇳🇴 for the last 2 weeks.

Beautiful country!
Nice cities.
Friendly and welcoming people.

3 things noticed right away:

- Language
- Infrastructure
- Money

Spoiler: Cash is gone and will not come back.
#Bitcoin can fix this.

Language:

Nearly everyone speaks English and fluently so.

Even in smaller towns and when meeting older folks.
(I only want to highlight this because this is certainly not the case in Austria 🇦🇹 where I come from.)

Communication is easy.

Infrastructure:

We only used public transport.
Oslo - Voss - Bergen - Trondheim - Oslo.
On that route, and within the cities, public transport was easy to use.

Important learning: if you want to hopp on a bus 🚌, you need to indicate this to the bus driver when the bus is approaching the bus stop🙋‍♂️
Otherwise, the bus will not stop and pick you up.
Didn’t expect that.
Learned this quickly, though 😅

They really want to go electric ⚡️
With everything!
Cars, bus, ships,…
And in bigger cities, the share of electric transportation is already pretty high.

And I must say, it is really nice!

Leaving aside why Norway is pushing so hard to go electric: From a pure „user experience“ point of view, we liked it!
Cities seem to be quieter and calmer.

From an outsider view, it also seems to work.
Note: I was only passenger and did not need to use the charging infrastructure myself. Happy to get feedback!

The transition phase also seems to work nicely.
But Norway has the resources and capacity to do so.
They did not kill their oil industry.
They used the revenues to build up the new infrastructure.

Money:

Cash is already gone in Norway.
Everything is digital.
There are sometimes even „cash fees“. So, it’s more expensive to use cash.

The next thing is weird to say as a #Bitcoin‘er:
From a pure user experience view, it is nice!
It’s seamless and nice when you can pay everything by just getting out your phone.
Especially as a foreigner.

But you also experience how old and expensive the current banking system can be.

First, I used my debit card I use at home. Works, but is expensive because they charge quite hefty fees for exchange rates (EUR -> NOK).

After a couple of swipes, I saw the fees and went: „ugh… that’s getting expensive“.
Revolut helped here.
Create a virtual card. Exchange EUR to NOK for free. Add the virtual card to Apple Pay and all the expensive fees are gone.

However, the #Bitcoin‘er in me didn’t really like it.

All the data is now captured by 2 services.
Apple, and Revolut.

But again, from a pure user experience, it was nice and easy to use!

#Bitcoin can fix this.
Same user experience.
Better privacy.

But then something clicked in me.

Cash is gone and will not come back!

We are going digital and it might not be a bad thing even if digital does not mean #Bitcoin right away.

People are getting used to paying digitally.
And this might help the adoption of #Bitcoin

When we speak of cash, we mean the printed paper.
But we are going digital and we will stay there.
In the current system, digital money is debt. It‘s not cash. And in the worst form, it might even be CBDCs. Yuk!

#Bitcoin is digital.
It also works more like cash again, but that’s not important for most people.
Most people don’t care about this distinction.

But the user experience in #Bitcoin is much like with the current banking apps.
It’s digital.
You walk up, order something, get out your phone and pay.

And I argue, societies that are already cashless (i.e. digital) may be primed for a quick #Bitcoin adoption once it starts picking up steam:
They are used to paying digitally.

However, why would I want to switch as a Norwegian?
It’s just one digital money for the other?

The incentives in rich, already digital societies are not there. At least for now.

They also experience inflation, though.
However, it’s not bad enough, yet.

And in countries like Austria, if you want to use #Bitcoin, taxes will be an additional burden.

Cash will go away.

But that might not be bad, since we have #Bitcoin now.

Money is and will be digital.

Societies that already use digital money, might be quick to adopt #Bitcoin.

But there needs to be a reason good enough to make the switch.