One of the main promises of Bitcoin fiction is to provide a new and exciting method for orange-pilling the population. Bitcoin is complicated. Understanding the mere basics requires studies in areas as diverse as economics, philosophy, game theory, cryptography, law, and several others. The road is long and treacherous. Bitcoin fiction might provide a shortcut.

The human being is fascinated by stories; it seems like we can’t get enough of them. Stories are a great medium for communicating complex ideas. By putting the concepts to work, showing examples, creating situations, using similes and metaphors, the writer has an arsenal of tools to work with.

If one wants to understand Bitcoin, fiction will probably help.

However, what happens to the people who aren’t interested in understanding? Will the unsuspecting masses read a Bitcoin fiction story unprovoked? Go to a bookstore and contemplate the insane amount of material that’s printed every year. Why would a person who’s not curious about Bitcoin choose our specific genre of fiction?

Is Bitcoin fiction only for bitcoiners, then? Are we preaching to the choir?

What Is Bitcoin Fiction Exactly?

If a story features Bitcoin in a meaningful way, that’s a Bitcoin fiction story. Bonus point if the author can convey the complex ideas lurking behind the orange coin in story form. Lately, the team behind 21 Futures: Tales From The Timechain took to calling the genre “cypherpunk fiction” in honor of the pioneers who created the technologies Bitcoin is based on. The core concept remains the same, though.

Fiction’s Power To Create Societal Change

In 2014, Ursula K. Le Guin received the “Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters” at the National Book Awards. In her acceptance speech, she could’ve very well been talking about Bitcoin fiction:

“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom.”

Beautiful words, but… can fiction really affect society in a meaningful way? Has it done it in the past? Nobody would dare to question the impact George Orwell’s “1984” had on the world, but humanity fell for the trap anyway. The proverbial boot is currently stamping on our human face.

In the article How Fiction Impacts Fact: The Social Impact Of Books, the author writes about “Keith Oatley, a professor in the department of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto and a published novelist himself.” He conducted experiments and determined that, because of the empathy for the protagonists that fiction creates taps “into our emotions, their effects can often have more impact than nonfiction.”

The article quotes Oatley, and he could’ve very well been talking about Bitcoin fiction:

“…reading fiction improves understanding of others, and this has a very basic importance in society, not just in the general way of making the world a better place by improving interpersonal understanding, but in specific areas such as politics, business, and education. In an era when high-school and university subjects are evaluated economically, our results do have economic implications.”

Yet, the question remains: are we preaching to the choir?

My Experience Sharing Bitcoin-Only Content In Hostile Environments

One of those times my career came crashing down and I got a few hours a day to myself, I had a decision to make. I knew I wanted to keep writing about Bitcoin while retaining the rights to my work. I wanted to tackle my favorite topic without worrying about keywords and SEO guidelines. I wanted to do at least one good thing for humanity and spread Bitcoin.

I considered submitting to the big Bitcoin publications, which would’ve helped my career and probably would’ve been the soundest decision. However, where was the fun in that?

I decided to focus my efforts on HackerNoon, a popular publication with a tech-savvy audience. There, anybody can submit articles, and the barrier of entry is a group of editors who work with the writers until their work is ready for primetime. They also decide if the piece is worthy of a spot in HackerNoon’s homepage, and that placement can make or break the article’s reception.

There’s a problem, though. The publication’s characteristics are very attractive to shitcoin aficionados, so HackerNoon is filled with musings about Web3 and ads about projects on this blockchain or that one.

I took the challenge head-on, declared myself Bitcoin’s ambassador to HackerNoon, and explained the difference between Bitcoin and crypto and what the only digital scarcity that matters is. The editors liked the pieces; both got a 24-hour spot on HackerNoon’s homepage, but they didn’t spark the debate I was expecting. Shitcoiners just ignored my message.

I kept on trucking and still post the occasional article on there, but the point remains: if people are not interested in Bitcoin, they probably won’t read.

Is Bitcoin Fiction The Right Move?

In many cases, writing fiction is not a choice. It’s a compulsion. And Bitcoin is without a doubt the most important development in today’s world, so it would be ridiculous to leave it out of a fictional story set in the present or the future. If the objective is self-expression, Bitcoin fiction is the right move.

If the objective is orange-pilling the population, explaining why Bitcoin is the most important development in today’s world, fiction is a powerful tool. Just know that only people interested in Bitcoin and the occasional explorer will read you. It’s fine either way, because it’s not your job to change the world for the better. Bitcoin will do that.

Lastly, if you decide to venture where no Bitcoin writer has gone before and submit your stories to traditional literary journals, know this: if they reject the piece, you can always blame it on the mainstream’s war on Bitcoin. So, it’s kind of a win-win situation. Just make sure to submit those stories to this blog also.

You will want your stories present in the biggest Bitcoin fiction library in existence.