Can a man not know that he is a rapist??

I keep seeing pictures of Russell Brand cuz of his rape trial, but, I don’t see a rapist when I look at him.

Disclaimer: I don’t know this guy, I wasn’t there, I am not declaring him innocent or guilty. I have no idea. I’m just pondering.

I have never been a big fan of his. He was interesting for about 5 mins when he left the Hollywood scene and when he got into Bitcoin. ...and then it quickly became clear how off the rails he is... it seems in anything that he does.

Now you don’t get that many women accusing you of assault and willing to go through a massively disruptive process in their life to prove it unless something went very wrong. But despite it being very clear that he is a very unbalanced person, I don’t get any sense of danger when I look at photos or videos of him, and I certainly do when looking at other famous rapists such as Weinstein or Diddy. Now my perception doesn’t necessarily mean anything to anyone, but it fuels a lot of curiosity for me.

I think it might be possible for a man to not know that he is a rapist. When you have a culture where women are shamed out of any connection to their own sexual desires and so very limited in their ability to communicate about it. When you have a culture that makes it very difficult to report an assault. When you have a culture that teaches young men that they need to be the pursuer and that women will ‘play hard to get’ and they need to be persistent. When you have a culture that values men for their ability to ‘dominate’. And when you mix that all with the loss of perspective and connection to reality that comes with massive fame… can a man rape women and not realize that’s what’s happening?

Can a man see himself as respecting women, see himself as respectful of “no’s” and yet be in a position that allows him to just bull doze his way through a sexual encounter not realizing the metaphorical or literal corner that he has backed someone into and walk away from the experience genuinely believing that everyone had a good time? Do you think that’s possible?

“Let people feel the weight of who you are, and let them deal with it.”
- John Eldredge

It’s not about technology, this is about psychology.

Why don’t we have more Bitcoin retail payments in the US? Because the American collective unconscious sees Bitcoin as an investment. A ticket to get rich quick.

When the average Jane somehow winds up with an app on her phone that shows her a Bitcoin balance, she doesn't think “I guess I’ll walk to the corner store and buy some eggs”, she thinks “Ooo, maybe this will make me rich!” and she holds on to it.

For Bitcoin to become something that is commonly used for retail payments it first has to be demonstrated useful as a payments network and that will only happen in situations where it is very much needed. In situations where there is real payments pain. And that has to come first to break the collective unconscious understanding of Bitcoin as an investment.

Technology adoption is not about the tech, it's about the humans.

Humans are who decide what tech does or does not get used.

When trying to create more Bitcoin payments, we need to meet people where they are. We need to build for people who are experiencing real payments pain.

The American Bitcoin community focuses so much on retail payments in the States, but y’all, people in the US aren’t experiencing payments pain. At least not anywhere near enough to make them adopt a new payments network and unit of account. The US won’t be first in line for this one. At least not for buying a gallon of milk at the corner store. We may have more success with niche things like gaming.

And let me bring up Gresham’s Law once again. To avoid a debate on the exact letter of this ‘law’ I’ll claim a variation on Gresham’s Law and call it Hannah’s law😉 I’ve been on about it for years and please don’t dismiss this simple reality; if you are standing in a shop and can chose between spending two different currencies, you are going to spend the one you don’t like and hold the one that you do like. And this is why Bitcoin payments haven’t taken off in the States but Bitcoin as an investment very much has.

So are we doomed? Of course not! We just have to go where we are needed. ...and where are we needed? Well what advantages do we have?

Decentralization. Bitcoin is so decentralized that it is nearly public infrastructure. And that matters a LOT. Other chains are much less decentralized and so much more risky. Those chains will be adapted to serve influential people in that jurisdiction/organization and not necessarily you or your users use case. Platform risk. Bitcoin has the lowest platform risk.

Speed and affordability. We just trounce the credit card networks. But, it’s not noticeable enough of a fee difference to entice the comfortable to take on switching costs. Where this will help us is with the bots. The bots aren’t bothered by changing their habits. They will chose the most efficient option. Also we can scale the way other chains can’t. So sooner or later they will run into scaling trouble and we will be here.

Where we run into trouble…

Volatility and unit of account. There is a pretty big overlap on the Venn diagram of those experiencing payments pain and those without disposable income. Those who need our tech often can’t weather a drop in the price of Bitcoin. And, us, sitting here in our Bitcoin bubble, have already managed the psychological difficulty of switching units of accounts. But we are not the normies that we are building for. That unit of account can be a massive psychological barrier.

So what to do? We need a way to add a stable unit of account onto the Bitcoin payments network. Stablecoins are the obvious choice, but there are other things out there too.

So if we know that we need to meet people where they are, where do we go and what do we build? We go to places that currently have currency volatility and/or have payments pain, and we build easy to use applications that include a stable unit of account option. We build applications where users can see a USD denominated payment and push send and know absolutely nothing about channels and liquidity.

Cough **Wavelength** cough.