Has Bitcoin actually become easier to understand?

I was thinking about this after seeing how many different explanations of Bitcoin there are these days.

The funny thing is, I feel like Bitcoin has become easier to access but not necessarily easier to understand. Buying it, setting up a wallet, or learning the basic terminology is probably less intimidating than it used to be. But once you start getting into things like self-custody, UTXOs, fees, confirmations, mining, nodes, and how the protocol actually reaches consensus, it gets complicated pretty quickly.

And I wonder if that's just part of the learning process.

For people who have been around Bitcoin for a long time, what concept took you the longest to properly understand?

For me, there seems to be a point where you stop thinking about Bitcoin as simply “digital money” and start realizing there are a lot more layers to it. I'm curious where that point was for other people.

What Bitcoin concept did you initially misunderstand but eventually have a completely different view of?

Could be something technical, economic, security-related, or even something that seems really obvious now in hindsight.