I vividly recall the moment it clicked—when I saw Bitcoin not just as a digital novelty, but as an economic singularity. I started preaching about it like a prophet on a mission, convinced that once people heard how revolutionary it was, they’d instantly “get it.”
In my mind, the world would undergo a quick and universal awakening. Spoiler: it didn’t.
A Grand Gesture That Didn’t Convert the Masses
Look at what’s happening now. Even Michael Saylor, who restructured his entire enterprise around Bitcoin—plunging billions into it—can’t make everyone stop and pay attention. You’d think that kind of move from a publicly listed company would dominate headlines and force a civilization-wide re-evaluation of money, right? But no. The mainstream gave it a passing glance, then moved on.
It reminds me of all those critics who roll in waving the same decade-old arguments—“ICO this,” “NFT that,” or “tokenize your entire life!”—as if the Bitcoin community hasn’t addressed these angles a thousand times already. (Pro tip: check out Bitcointalk if you still think these ideas are ‘new.’) The current fad is memecoins. Same playbook, fewer steps. A few early adopters might get rich; the rest lose money.
No Single “Orange Hero”
I’ve touched on why grand “orange heroes” flounder to convert the masses in The Illusion of Orange Heroes. Just because an influential figure steps up to champion Bitcoin doesn’t guarantee everyone else will line up in agreement. And here we are, with Saylor—someone who transformed MicroStrategy into a de facto “Bitcoin leveraged fund”—yet the broader world shrugs.
It’s not because the idea of a global, decentralized currency is dead on arrival (far from it). It’s because people are resistant to new mental models, locked into daily priorities, or simply too jaded to give it serious thought. Often, folks have heard “Bitcoin is a Ponzi,” “Bitcoin is for criminals,” “Bitcoin is only for the wealthy,” “Bitcoin is a bubble,” “Bitcoin is old tech,” or any of the other countless myths. They tune out before learning anything substantial.
The Power of Perspective
This ties back to how deeply Bitcoin challenges our concept of money. In my piece, Time To Discuss Decimals: Bitcoin Doesn’t Exist on Its Own Network, I explain that a “whole bitcoin” is just a convenient human metric. The network itself tracks satoshis—the smallest unit, 1/100,000,000 of a bitcoin—and that’s it. Even this small tweak can unsettle someone’s idea of what “currency” should look like.
Yet no matter how profound that shift in perspective might be, it barely registers for most people. They’re too busy or dismiss it as irrelevant. So sure, a few finance outlets debate Saylor’s strategy, and some headlines pop up. But your average person remains unmoved.
Grassroots, Not Heroic
I’ve made my own quirky attempts—like selling my chairs (a nod to a fun Bitcoin meme), or ranting about how rigged real estate feels—and still, few blink. No single gesture or voice, no matter how high-profile, compels global acceptance overnight.
In fact, these “orange hero” moments only reinforce what I’ve come to realize: Bitcoin adoption is grassroots. It seeps in person by person, year by year, rather than arriving with a single “Eureka!” broadcast. And honestly, that’s probably for the best. Top-down enlightenment doesn’t stick. People cling to inertia, old narratives, or new alt-hypes. Meanwhile, Bitcoin just keeps doing what it does: confirming blocks, unperturbed by passing fads.
The Calm Center of the Storm
I once helped my uncle start his Bitcoin journey. Before I could blink, he showed me a “portfolio” of altcoins I could barely pronounce. More power to him, but that’s not my game. This is what happens: a swirl of hype cycles—NFTs, “multi-verse tokens,” memecoins—tries to overshadow the simplest truth: Bitcoin is just money—hard money, mathematically capped, globally verifiable.
It doesn’t try to be a platform for every tokenizable gimmick, nor does it morph every two months chasing buzzwords. That steadiness is precisely why it endures. As I often say, Bitcoin remains the calm center of a swirling sea of half-baked token projects.
It Takes Time, and That’s Okay
So yes, I admit I was naive, thinking a single event or a heroic figure could instantly shift the world’s monetary paradigm. In reality, adoption is messy, decentralized, and personal. People discover it in their own time—not because some billionaire made a grand gesture.
If you’re reading this feeling late to the party, trust me, you’re not alone. It’s never too late to question your old beliefs about money, ignore your ego, and maybe dip your toes in. Or just keep reading, keep learning. Because for all the noise and hype cycles, Bitcoin remains—doing its thing, block by block.
The world might say “meh,” but Bitcoin keeps giving them reasons to reconsider. Maybe that’s the real singularity: a silent, slow-motion shift where one by one, people realize they were wrong to dismiss it. And even if they don’t, Bitcoin carries on—continuing block by block, forging a new financial reality that few headlines truly capture.
Because at the end of the day, Bitcoin doesn’t need you to believe—it’ll keep ticking along regardless. There might never be one great Bitcoin event. Bitcoin might just be a slow and ever-growing economic machine whose time has come.