Great find, starting at
2:45 in the video: the theory that money didn't evolve from barter but rather from that extremely familiar local practice of remembering who owes who a favor, showing that Money (analogous to capital-b "Bitcoin") actually came about as a
ledger system to make this local practice more accurate and universal in its ledger-maintenance function. Money was a ledger system that used scarce physical objects to operate. From that point of view, it's extremely easy and straightforward to understand why Bitcoin is revolutionary and why it's not "worthless tokens": it's just a way better ledger than Gold or other physical-object-based ledger systems.
Rather than trying to convince people that "bitcoins are money," which is often a hard sell and takes people weeks/months/years to come around to, I believe we should be trying to convince people that "Bitcoin is a better ledger than Money," after explaining what Money really is (maybe just linking to this video at 2m45s).
Instead of spending ages trying to convince people on the back end that bitcoins are money after starting with the temptingly simplistic
"bitcoins are digital coins you can send through the Internet" line, simply invest a few minutes at the start to reconceptualize their idea of money (Money; really just remind them of that thing
everyone has done at some point in their lives: keeping mental track of who owes who what), then the rest flows very easily and quickly, bypassing entire classes of objections and misunderstandings. As a bonus, thinking of Bitcoin as a ledger rather than as a bunch of coins avoids many of the most common errors that even Bitcoin believers make in assessing various aspects of it, including of course investment decisions.
This guy's post on reddit is an example of how easy it can be when you do it right.
