Why I Wrote Bitcoin Clarity

In 2017, “What is Bitcoin?” was the most Googled question, and two years later still, nobody is exactly sure what it is.

Bitcoin is young and it’s not going away.

There is a huge opportunity here for anyone willing to learn something about it!

But there are several serious problems why trying to learn about Bitcoin.

  • “X is the real Bitcoin”
  • “X cryptocurrency is faster, cheaper, and better than Bitcoin”
  • “Bitcoin is dead, Y is the next Bitcoin”

Creators and promoters of competing cryptocurrencies have a direct incentive to create misleading information and promote their cryptocurrency.

The opportunity ability and intent to mislead consumers is all there.

But because both ignorance and fraud are widespread in the extended cryptocurrency community, it’s difficult to distinguish between the well-intentioned people who are unintentionally wrong when explaining Bitcoin, and the scammers who are being intentionally deceptive. Intentionally or unintentionally, the information promoted by influencers is often for personal and tribal gain.

Kiara BickersBitcoin Clarity

What I quickly learned is that influencers are generally not invested in improving your understanding.

Kiara BickersBitcoin Clarity

Where is an authoritative place to learn about using Bitcoin? There isn’t one.

Another problem in understanding Bitcoin is that.. Bitcoin is complicated.

Unless you’re a cryptographer or developer, you really have no way of understanding Bitcoin on your own.

There are millions of people that want to learn about Bitcoin, but they don’t know where to start or who to trust.

Similar to a doctor or lawyer, if you don’t believe one expert, the best option you have is to get the opinion of another.

Likewise in crypto, you have to decide whose opinion you’re going to trust..

You’re economics nerd friend, some guru on Twitter, or your financial advisor,

Who they are determines what type of Bitcoin propaganda they sell you.

  1. Bitcoin as “digital gold”: Bitcoin is a digital security and a store of value.
  2. Bitcoin as “cypherpunk money”: Bitcoin is a way to transfer value securely over the insecure internet.
  3. Bitcoin as “a dumb investment”: Bitcoin is the first of the highly volatile cryptocurrency asset class.

Everyone is subject to bias and the solution to that is transparency.


Clarity is a way of being coherent and transparent about your thoughts, to communicate what’s important.

I focus on answering three simple questions:

  1. How does Bitcoin work?
  2. Why does it work?
  3. And is it valuable?

With three simple tools:

  1. Visuals
  2. Mental models
  3. And Systems Thinking

I sketched out hundreds images to visually explain everything about how it works. Then I got a great artist that I met at my local coffee shop to redraw it. (Shout out to Jordan for doing an amazing job with that!)

I worked with Bitcoin developers to create the mental models that accurately map to the technical details.

I worked with traders to cover to the section on markets and mindset.

Then I used systems thinking to structure the book.

I’ve made this as easy as possible for truly the average person to understand.

Regular people don’t want an expert to tell them what Bitcoin is, they want to be showed what it is, by giving them new ways to see it for themselves.

Without code, economics, or cryptography.

The book is available for preorder here.

And for people who want group training I’ve created that here as well.