Blog Psychology
«I do not know enough»: the most common reason people never start with Bitcoin
A Swiss study asked people why they had never invested in Bitcoin. The most common answer was not fear of losing money, and it was not doubt about the technology.
In February and March 2026, the Institute of Financial Services Zug and Luzerner Kantonalbank surveyed 1,772 people living in Switzerland. One question went to everyone who had never invested in crypto assets: why not?
That figure has stayed with me since I read it. Not because it is surprising, but because it describes so precisely what I hear in every room I teach in. The women who come to my evenings are not fearful. They are well informed about a great many things. They simply have the sense, on this one topic, that something is missing which everyone else apparently already has.
If you moved here, there are two unfamiliar systems at once
A large share of the women I meet did not grow up in Switzerland. For them the picture is more complicated, because two things are unfamiliar at the same time. Bitcoin is new, and so is the Swiss financial system: three pillars of pension provision, a wealth tax that does not exist in most countries, banks that work differently from the ones they knew.
That doubles the feeling of not knowing enough. And it produces a very specific kind of hesitation: not knowing whether a piece of advice you read applies to you at all. Most of what is written in English about Bitcoin and tax assumes an American or British reader. Almost none of it is true for someone living in Switzerland.
What sits behind the sentence
«I do not know enough» sounds like a gap in knowledge. In my experience it is usually something else. It is the assumption that there is a certain amount of knowledge you must reach before you are allowed to take part at all. And because nobody can say where that line sits, it keeps moving further away.
I studied psychology before I studied blockchain, and that order shapes how I see this. Research on financial literacy keeps finding the same pattern: when people are asked financial questions with a «do not know» option available, women choose it far more often than men. Remove the option and force an answer, and the difference in actual knowledge shrinks considerably.
Three patterns I see again and again
The right moment
«I will look into it properly once I have the time.» That sounds sensible, and it is. The moment never arrives, because «looking into it properly» is not a destination but a state with no end. Anyone waiting until they understand everything waits indefinitely.
The train that has left
«It is far too late for that now anyway.» I have heard this sentence for as long as I have been teaching. It comes up just as often regardless of the price. It says nothing about Bitcoin and a great deal about how uncomfortable it is to start something from the beginning while others are already ahead.
The one question
«I have a question, but it is probably too basic.» What follows is almost always a question that at least half the room also has. It rarely gets asked, because everyone assumes they are the only one.
What actually helps
There is an uncomfortable truth about learning: you cannot learn to swim by reading books about water. Money works the same way. The jump from «I have read about it» to «I understand it» does not come from more reading. It comes from the first thing you do yourself, however small.
- Write down one question, not ten Not «I need to understand Bitcoin», but a single specific question. For example: what actually happens if my phone breaks? One answered question takes you further than ten open ones.
- Choose an amount that does not matter Not as an investment, but as a teaching tool. An amount whose loss would not trouble you. For most people that is twenty or fifty francs. As soon as an amount genuinely belongs to you, you learn more in a week than in a year of watching.
- Ask the question out loud, once In a room where nobody rolls their eyes. This is the step almost everyone skips, and in my experience it makes the largest difference.
Why I think this is a solvable problem
If the most common reason against a decision is a lack of knowledge, then the problem is solvable. Knowledge can be acquired. Someone who decides against investing out of conviction has a different reason and does not need a course. But someone who says something is missing is also saying they would like to have it.
That is exactly why SatoShe exists. Not because Bitcoin would be the right decision for everyone, but because the decision deserves to be an informed one rather than the result of feeling unqualified to have the conversation.