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“You can't win an argument. If you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.”

— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Thanksgiving crypto cheat sheet

For all the recent fireworks, not much has changed in crypto since last Thanksgiving — or, nothing that’s going to convince anyone of its merits since the time you tried convincing them last year, at least. 

You’re unlikely to win any converts by telling them, for example, that the crypto industry was the largest donor in the US election or that it’s cheaper than ever to trade memecoins. And good luck explaining why dogecoin is worth $61 billion again. 

The only way to win an argument about crypto (to the extent any argument is ever winnable), is to explain what crypto is good for.

So, for those who celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional fashion (e.g. by arguing with extended family), here’s last year’s cheat sheet on what crypto might be good for, with a few cross-outs and addendums to get us up to date.

I still don’t get it

The best explanation is always the simplest one: Crypto is internet-native money. Update: “It’s like sending a text message, but it’s money,” as I heard it neatly explained on TikTok recently. 

This, you can tell them, allows for borderless, instant, irreversible, permissionless, low-cost transactions — which is sure to win you a lot of blank stares.

So tell them instead that if crypto existed when the world wide web was invented, they’d never have to get up off the sofa to look for their credit card while shopping on the internet and they’d never have to see any ads, either — they’d be paying some tiny fraction of a cent per page view instead.

Crypto is non-sovereign money. You don’t have to be celebrating Thanksgiving in Argentina, Venezuela or Zimbabwe to appreciate this one — even those in the US are getting antsy about how freely their government is spending their money. Update: Even the USA sovereign now appears to appreciate non-sovereign money.

Bitcoin is like gold, but better. Weightless, highly divisible, costless to store, cheaper to send, and easier to hide. Update: And now at least as easy to buy, thanks to ETFs.

Stablecoins are better eurodollars. It’s unlikely anyone who celebrates Thanksgiving will know what eurodollars are (hardly anyone does), but invoke them anyway because it’ll make you sound smart. (Also, you’ll be right).

A bank account in your pocket. If you consider turkey an edible bird, this one won’t mean much to you. But it means a lot to a lot of people who have never heard of cranberry sauce. Update: US politicians are warming up to the idea of putting a US bank account in everyone’s pocket so they can sell them some bonds, too.

Banking for robots. You’ll have to read the room on this one, but if your extended family is full of e/acc types (i.e. they want more AI, not less), tell them that crypto will provide the banking rails for all the autonomous AI agents that won’t be allowed to open bank accounts. Update: People have gotten skeptical about this, but I think that’s because AI agents aren’t very capable as of yet. They will be.

Proof of humanity. If your audience tends towards AI doomerism, explain instead that crypto is the only known method of distinguishing humans from robots on the internet — captchas are not going to save us from the Terminator. 

Proof of attendance. I attend every UNC home basketball game and I’m certain if Coach Hubert Davis was aware of my loyalty he’d let me sub in for a couple of minutes of garbage time in the next blowout win. Only crypto could make that happen.

NFTs. Start by conceding that paying for jpegs is silly and then explain that, in the world of deep fakes, NFTs are a way to prove authenticity. Depending on your audience, you can sell them on NFT sneakers, magic mushroom NFTs or NFTs at MoMA. Let’s just not mention NFTs this year. 

Law enforcement’s new best friend. Despite recent headlines, crypto may be the worst money to steal, as evidenced by the US government becoming one of the largest holders of bitcoin. Update: There are still lots of headlines, unfortunately.

DePIN. Decentralized physical infrastructure is an all-new business model that empowers individuals to contribute their physical resources, like solar panels or 5G hotspots, to a network in exchange for cryptocurrency — it’s a new way of creating businesses that were previously infeasible.

Cheap mobile plans. If “DePIN” is too theoretical, as it surely will be, just say “$5 $20 mobile plans.” Update: $5 turned out to be a teaser rate and while $20 is still pretty good, it’s probably not good enough to win over any skeptics. But if your audience has a combover, tell them instead about HairDAO, and if they want to live forever, VitaDAO.

Programmable equity. If you’re headed to Scarsdale, Greenwich or East Hampton tomorrow, tell them that tokenization is coming and ask them to imagine 24/7 trading, getting extra dividends for locking up their Apple shares, selling a fraction of their beach house and buying equity in their nephew’s future earnings. Update: You’ll be pushing on an open door with finance types after a year of adoption from TradFi institutions like BlackRock and PayPal. 

Ethereum sign-in. Ask them to put a dollar value on no one ever having to remember a login ID or password ever again. Then tell them the entire crypto market cap is only about $1 trillion $3.4 trillion. Update: $3.4 trillion is a much higher bar, so we’re going to need more than Ethereum passwords to get over it. Also, they don’t seem to be happening, anyway.

Speculation as a use case. I asked you not to at the start, but if all else fails, tell them they could have made 1000% by buying BONK just before Halloween Chill Guy on Nov. 19 and then selling it the next day. Update: Let’s be honest — crypto is still mostly about memecoins.

If even that fails to land, here’s the one use case that no one can possibly, well, argue with: Crypto gives you something to argue about at Thanksgiving when you’re done arguing about sports and don’t want to argue about politics.

Just don’t expect to win.

— Byron Gilliam

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