Meet the man who will introduce Bitcoin to the German mainstream
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Meet the man who will introduce Bitcoin to the German mainstream
Germany is ready for Bitcoin. And author Ijoma Mangold is the right guy to deliver the message.
Ijoma Mangold. Remember the name. He's a German author, literary critic and a journalist, writing for the very reputable weekly "Die Zeit" (which translates to "The Time" and makes Gigi smile I hope). Ijoma has written a book. "Die Orange Pille" - I think you can translate this yourself. Subtitle: "Warum Bitcoin weit mehr ist als nur ein neues Geld" (Why Bitcoin is much more than just a new money).
I had the pleasure of talking to him twice already on my German channel and once on stage at the huge BTC22 Conference in Innsbruck last September, where I also got the chance to interview Michael Saylor.
Ijoma is a brilliant writer and speaker. Just the kind of person that works well in today’s media environment. You can place him anywhere, be it a Bitcoin podcast or some mainstream debate on public television (which is still a huge thing in Europe). I'd almost go as far as to say that Ijoma is a character that the US Bitcoin "scene" is missing.
But maybe that's a cultural thing. Lacking a substantial capital market, German media is not as focused on economic issues as the US media seems to be. That leads to a much lower number when it comes to the amount of pundits. With his book, Ijoma is circumventing this by going straight to the jugular: the "intellectuals" who like to use big words while sipping chai latte and formulating clever critiques of capitalism to be published on Twitter using their iPhone (14 Pro, obviously).
Being Ijoma Mangold, who has written books before and features in "Die Zeit", he knows how to reach these people. The fact that the chai latte and the iPhone seem to be ever more expensive these days does help him - because even the most leftist Berlin intellectual is still a German. And if there is something Germans hate, it's inflation.
But that's not all. After pandemic, lockdowns, work-from-home, war, protests and inflation, people are generally getting uneasy. The other day, a Bitcoiner sent me a video of the Daimler General Meeting - Daimler as in Mercedes. The video was of a mechanic taking the stage. A worker, not an intellectual. Man, that guy was ripping into the politicians like there was no tomorrow. He got standing ovations. And if I got the video, you can be sure: many others have seen it.
This is, of course, a positive thing. Germans should be fed up with the direction their country has taken. And starting a discourse is the right way to go about changing this. Ijoma is the perfect guy to introduce Bitcoin into the conversation in a way a 30-year-old hardcore libertarian Twitter memelord could never do. That also explains why Ijoma is now seeing vicious attacks from German media.
Especially the leftist media where some of the smarter cookies are sniffing out the core argument for Bitcoin: People voluntarily cooperating and freely choosing how they spend their time, energy and money? People taking responsibility for themselves, trying to make their life a litte better every day without state oversight? Dangerous stuff if you believe in central planning of pretty much everything.
But I say: bring it on, let them whine about Bitcoin. There is nothing they can do anyway. In fact: The real leftists, who care about the "little guy" and the worker at Daimler, should embrace Bitcoin. What is fiat money if not the exploitation of the working class?
Ijoma Mangold can and will help forming the conversation. Germany is ready for this. Germany is ready for Bitcoin. LFG.
Oh and I'm absolutely certain there will be an English translation of "Die Orange Pille" soon.
Until next time, Niko
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