2024-11-15 –, Zimmermann Stage
"The Paradox of Free: Confronting Challenges in Bitcoin Education" explores the inherent contradictions faced when offering free and open-source Bitcoin education. While the idea of making education freely accessible aligns with the principles of freedom and inclusivity, it also presents significant challenges. These include the difficulty of motivating top talent without financial incentives and overcoming the perception that free resources lack value. This talk delves into these obstacles, examining how the paradox of "free" can hinder the effectiveness of Bitcoin education and discussing strategies to confront and overcome these challenges. Join us to explore how we can make free and open-source Bitcoin education both impactful and sustainable.
Bitcoiners cherish free and open-source, and for good reason, as it’s the foundation of freedom tech. However, we risk creating an ideal standard which is difficult to execute in practice. Free and open-source education (FOSE) may not be as sexy as free and open-source software (FOSS), but it’s just as significant. Join this session to explore FOSE challenges, e.g., awareness and funding, and possible solutions.
Creating and sharing value isn’t free. Someone must invest time, knowledge, energy and money. It’s a modern free rider problem. When everyone uses something for free, no one has incentive to contribute. The FOSS ecosystem is addressing this risk by funding Bitcoin and Nostr developers. Unfortunately, freedom tech is irrelevant to those who don’t know they need it. Educators address this and bring people into the space.
Today, fiat-minded and crypto-minded people have the upper hand in education with money and institutionalized power, i.e., regulations, school administrators. They are over-riding freedom-minded people and parents.
This session covers:
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Urgency: This is a war of communication and we’re late, e.g., CBDC materials are already in schools.
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Benefits of FOSE: Removing frictions of education. Allowing people to collaborate and share knowledge.
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Challenges of FOSE: Attracting top talent with appropriate incentives. Creating high quality content. Marketing to raise awareness. Addressing noise and FUD.
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Solutions: Moving forward.
