Bitcoin Forum

Met a guy a few days ago, he told me he heard about BTC but he didn't quite understand how it worked. I guess I could have tried to explain (though, I'm hardly qualified for doing this) but I chose not too. Why explaining? Do people need to understand BTC to use it? I don't think so.

This very day, millions of people have been using a microwave oven, but I bet only a handful actually knows how this appliance works. I've read an article telling that millions of Americans are using Viagra. Everybody knows what it does, but who knows how it works? Same thing for computers or cars, most people don't know how they work, and they just don't care.

From now on, I propose we stop trying explaining how BTC works to people discovering it. The nerds already know about it, but to the general public, technology is not important. It's what you can do with technology which matters.

I shall just say that BTC is a new electronic currency, independent from all governments, which you can transfer safely anywhere and anytime fast and cheap.

it is important. i as average joe would like to know what makes bitcoin that different and why is the technology behind it so important before using it. however this might be a personal thing. every person is different.

I work in merchant services and have talked to some of my business owners about it. In sales features do not matter. Benefits are the meat of the issue so to speak. If I were to try to tell them about the technology their eyes tend to glaze over somewhat, but when I talk about the customer absorbing the tx fee and the impossibility of chargebacks I tend to get their interest. 

Yes this is exactly right people don't want technical jargon and get bored easy as you know it also puts them off, they just want to know it is simple cheaper and more safe than what you are using currently and it is no need for all the nuts and bolts. The fact that it is free from governments will be a nice selling point to some but not the majority because they are so far in the system they don't really care, the ease that it can be used and how cheap to send world wide is what should be sold to people, let them work out the tech if and when they are ready. Nice points op.

As long as the people are getting a simple financial system that is able to maintain their day to day transaction avoiding taxes and charges, they are happy. ;DBTC ;D They won't ask around  about "Blockchain101" or "Encrypted Wallet"

of course important no big fee no long time no portatibility problem this things are great in financial world.

It's a classic tale that'll repeat forever. The techno weenies create and seed something. When they try to excite an average personage the automatic reaction will be to glaze over and run away.

It takes a different breed to understand and package the benefits for wider consumption.

Android would not have gotten anywhere if you had to go to a Linux forum, ask a bunch of questions and then download a tar.gz from a .edu mirror. That's where Bitcoin is right now.

The pros took android and gave it back to the rest of us in an easily swallowed form. That's what thousands of companies and people are working on for BTC right now.

not just bitcoin, most people just doesn't care about how things works as long as they have a use for it.

unless you're speaking to a nerd (can't find a good word, sorry) that happens to be on the dark about bitcoin, don't explain how it works unless you're asked to.

Right. I mean how many people know how the engine of their car works?Most of them don't know and will never get it. But they know how to drive it and what is the benefit to it instead of riding a horse.

Simplification for the masses is crucial. Getting bitcoin into POS systems and credit card terminals via NFC would be a large step. The rest is just well thought out education initiatives.    

I would just say "it's a new currency with no banks involved, the money is stored on your phone". Lotta people hate banks.

Yeah, it is very important because also if bitcoin will die (with die I want to say drop/crash to zero dollars) the blockchain will stay and with a large consensus we can create and use a new crypto currency.
Remember that bitcoin isn't perfect, but it is better than FIAT value! One day will come a new currency more better than bitcoin ( one day = > after 2050-2060).

But everyone needs at least a little bit of knowledge. You don't need to know how the engine works, but you know that there is a thing called 'engine', that it requires a fuel, some maintenance etc.

No one will switch from riding a horse to driving a car without the very basic idea of how the car works.

Same with Bitcoin. Without explaining the concept of decentralisation and P2P network, most would still imagine that Bitcoin is some sort of company that sells 'currency' backed by nothing to the naive.


Sure, good explanation (not quite correct, since wallet on your phone doesn't really contain any currency). But majority would struggle to comprehend that you don't need any bank or other entity to issue and control the currency.

I know several girls and boys in my clique who have absolutely NO idea how a car works! But they all have driver's license and can drive a car. But really absolutely no knowledge about the technic behind that.

Or use the internet as example. Most people know how to use a web browser to surf in the web. But ask them if they know what happeneds in the background when a webpage loads on the browser. The border gateway protocol routing algorithm that takes the TCP/IP package that your browser sends, uses the IP adress etc.....95% of the people have no fucking clue! But they know how to use a web browser.

We have to make bitcoin more user friendly. It feels a bit like in early 90s of the internet now without browser and search engines. I'm sure there are companies working on that.At least I hope so. ;D

I think that we should just explain how to use it and what it is and in basic terms why it is better but then if people ask for more about the security and the blockchain then give them the infromation.

I find it is always good to have a "than' in every sentence so people can relate it to something they know
eg faster and cheaper than xyz for transfering money to far off places

I also try to push the blockchain too without using the word itself
eg its a better/easier way to prove to anyone that you own something (eg your house) or to express your views (eg voting) than traditional/current ways of doing so.

and for those over 60
it is like a commune on the internet where people are trusting one another to make progress rather than sitting on our arses waiting for the government to do something ;D

I agree to that to a certain extent. Most new users just need to know what they can buy/do with bitcoin, how bitcoin is different to other payment systems, and what are the benefits for us. After they are interested, they will read more on the technology and understand how things are they way they are. Computer security is probably the only area new users needs to brush up on before they use bitcoin.

I think the best approach is rather than telling them about the technology behind, it would be better for them to discover it themselves. I'm sure most of us here have no idea about it in initially, I mean non-geeks, and once you find out how simple it is to use to transfer bitcoin to another party, naturally you will want to discover more information how the decentralization concept works and how bitcoin cannot be controlled by anybody.

This is so true, but at the same time Bitcoin is kind of unique in this respect in that what makes it so useful is the gritty details that most people don't care about/understand. And if you don't know how Bitcoin works and want to use it then your only option is to blindly trust the developers, which may not be a big deal for most people but a major selling point is the lack of trust needed to make Bitcoin work so that can be a deal breaker.

Also if you are blindly trusting the developers why don't they just trust blindly trust coinbase too and keep their bitcoin online for convenience? Now everyone is using a PayPal-like service to manage their Bitcoin and we've done all this for nothing.

It's not important for those who want to use it after the value has been created by those who will go down in history (or at least enjoy a more fulfilling life).

Most ppl don't know how their currency or the U.S. dollar works and very few stop to think about it. When something is considered an alternative it's investigated and considered suspect. Bitcoin is the altcoin so people don't trust it.

I believe this is almost the same with every fiat currency. Most of the people don't know how our actual monetary system works. I find this kind of bizarre. Day in and day out people are working to get fiat money and have no idea about how it works. And that is what the governments and the elite are taking advantage of. Keep people busy so they don't have much time to scrutinize thinks. And if they start to do it give them scientific and difficult explanations so they will give up understanding quickly.

We can say that bitcoin is just a kind of cash. You can send it to anybody without the help of banks.

it is important because if you want to protect your bitcoin, you have to understand the technology behind bitcoin.
I hope one day people don't need to worry about the security of their bitcoin.

Very true. I remember a survey among young drivers where most said they would totally unable to change a wheel. Sometimes, I feel like an older guy, but it isn't bad because every guy of my generation knows how to change a wheel.

Back to the subject, BTC needs to evolve to be usable by the silliest young teenage blonde you can find. That needs it has be explainable without any vocabulary only a geek would understand.

I guess it's not important regarding the usage aspect as it doesn't exactly require much knowledge to use one of the light-weight Bitcoin wallets and it is practically identical to using online banking if you use an online/semi-online wallet, however, as Bitcoin is a technological currency, one should understand how it works as there is no man up top who will adjust the currency so that your salary wouldn't reduce by half in a couple of weeks. When you know how it works, you can observe and predict what will happen as a result of the block-halving, selfish miners not including transactions in blocks, majority of the hashrate belonging to a single entity, etc.

I guess we'll just have to gather silly teenage blondes into a colosseum and do testing on them.  :-\

Block-halving do not happen very often so I don't see this as an issue. Ditto selfish miners, there will be another miner to do it (if the normal fee is included, but recent software don't let you send a transaction without a fee), there's more of a problem with hash rate, but is it? Many people don't know that when they pay tax, they do not finance roads or schools but they're financing the deficit and the huge debt the country has accumulated. Many of the world richest countries would be declared bankrupt if there private businesses, but life keeps on going without many worrying.

I've merely given said examples as a way to convey what I wanted to say - if you know the technicalities, you can predict and react appropriately to price changes in order to preserve your capital and not have it halve several months down the line. And as I mentioned, it isn't needed to know about how your currency works to survive, but is needed to prosper.

I agree with what you say.  In general you can divide capital into cold money and hot money.  Things are more greys than black and white but suspending this realization for a minute, the cold money is that of the hoarders, the hot money is for the investors.  In the bitcoin world money is coming into the system at a rate of 25 every ten minutes.  Now, that money is most probably completely sold off to pay for the electricity and rent.  Mining is not an altruistic activity now.  The business man sells his bitcoin so he can keep operating.  Users use bitcoin to live without creditcards.  This is the hot money.  A part of the money in the system is being saved, and not used in the economy.  There is money in cold wallets.  This money is virtually not part of the supply.  This is the cold money.

When the award halfs, we will only be able to buy half the amount of bitcoin from the miners and so we will have to go to the hoarders who have already obtained it for the other half.  Now, if bitcoin is going to tend to say $200 in spite of 25 BTC being created every ten minutes, it is bound go up when the creation rate halfs to 12.5 BTC per ten minutes. 

sdp

OK, examples, but block halving is a very bad one since it happens less than one a year. It would matter if it happened every month, but we're far from that. Next one is this summer, and when is the next block halving? Many world leaders will have changed by then, and they may edict very strict regulations on exchanges which may jeopardize BTC's growth. So politics could be more important than tech, but that's not my point.

BTC is now very well known among geeks and web professionals, but BTC needs to be as easy to use as facebook of instagram to convince the general public. So maybe instead of explaining tech, BTC shall carry the message that it's the best tool to send money to a friend, or anyone, anywhere, fast and cheap.

June/July-ish. 2016, not this summer, fyi.  Then around 4 years after that, so probably spring-summer 2020 depending on hash rate growth.

It's really important that we do (need to explain it).  How cool is having a currency without a central issuer... This is the first of its kind.  Most will not get it, but if they're interested then by all means, explain it to them.

Read and reread Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos.  It's a good reference material for explaining Bitcoin.

I was just trying to explain the Blockchain to somebody. I ended up telling her that it's a kind of ledger that is hard to tamper with because you'd have to get everybody who uses that ledger to agree to any changes. Any newcomer is probably going to only care about, "Is it easy to use and can I use it in my daily life?" If he gets curious about the nuts and bolts, it's almost easier to just point him to a few good Youtube videos.

i would say that the technology is important instead, but it isn't needed for averaje joe/josephine, they care only about fast and simple things, better to explain them that bitcoin are just money not contorlled by the bank, and they will surely love it

good point OP. we will reach a point where people use BTC but dont know that they use it. i have no doubt about that.

I think technology is important. It's the most important part of bitcoin. But not details about how the technology works, rather what the technology can enable.

Currently most fiat currencies around the world are quite good, and a lot more convenient to use/obtain than bitcoin. There is very little reason for a normal person who isn't politically motivated to ditch government influence (heck, many people think it's a good thing) to use bitcoin as a currency.

The most important thing isn't to explain in detail how the technology works, but it also isn't regurgitating "decentralization" and down with fiat propaganda. That will probably alienate more people than help them understand the benefits of bitcoin.

What we should do is explain the potential of the technology and how it will enable new convenient and better ways to do things than before, and do things we never thought of before, just as the internet enriched our lives.

No way! If you've got to read a book to be able to use BTC, BTC will fail. Did you read a book to use fiat money? You didn't and that's why fiat money has been so successful for centuries. BTC needs to reach that stage.

You don't have to read a book to understand bitcoin, but like with anything reading a specialist book gives you a deeper understanding of a certain subject. People might be able to use fiat money without reading a book but the vast majority of people certainly don't understand the economics of money or the way it truly works so reading a specialist book on that would give them a better understanding for sure. You can apply the same logic to everything else. I'm sure you and most people know what the stars are but probably don't have a greater understanding of how they work or were formed other  than the very basics.

Huh?  Using BTC is easy.  Just copy/paste and click a few buttons. No book reading needed there.

But actually explaining how it works...  That's another story.

What if someone asks you, "How is it possible that bitcoin (the currency) has no central issuer?". Would you be able to answer that without doing a little bit of research?

I wonder how many people out there have gotten as far as wondering where money comes from and who's running it. I would've thought it's just 'there' for many of them.

Not many. But it's good to be able to answer and explain if someone asks and shows interest.  

... And a little research on your part won't hurt anyway.

I recall watching a video some time ago (but sadly can't find it again to post now), where a guy was giving a practical demonstration of some sort of bitcoin debit card.  He said during the interview something along the lines that the hardcore fans like us often do get a little too caught up in trying to explain the tech before we've shown people why they should actually care.  And what we should be focusing on is making the tech easier to use so that we can simply show people the benefits rather than trying to explain it all with complicated jargon.  I felt it rang true in one sense, but at the same time, we're still not quite at the stage where Bitcoin is ready for everyone.  

If you want to use Bitcoin right now, it is important that you have a reasonable understanding of how it works and what not to do with it.  Because if you do something unwise, you'll lose your coins.  Even now there are still people losing large sums because some exchange got hacked and they left their coins there as if it was a bank, because old habits die hard.  It's fair to say that in future, understanding the technology won't be as important, but at the moment we're not there yet.

This is it. BTC needs to reach that same level when people do not question it. On every dollar bill, there's someone's picture, with his name below. You look at him the first time you have the bill in your hand, and then you forget who he is, what he did and why he's there. You just don't care. There's that Federal Reserve somewhere out there printing the bills, and there's that blockchain thing keeping track of all transactions. There's fish in the ocean, too.

Yes, the adoption rate should reach at a certain level when many ppl, like nerd,geek, elite etc are talking and using it. The average Joe will are keen to use it no care about the underlying technology.

I think the majority of ppl just want something that will save the expense,want secure and easy use.

Hello,

I agree with you that there are not many people who know what exactly is a Bitcoin and how it is being processed for making payments. Few days back, even I was among those people. One day while searching about the Bitcoin information i came across a webpage http://www.cryptextechnologies.com/bitcoin/ here i got to know how bitcoin exchange take place.   

I do not explain a lot in the beginning... I just tell them that it's a NEW payment system, where there are NO 3rd party like a Bank or PayPal taking HUGE fees. A transaction directly between two people.  ;)

The NO Banks and Nearly NO fees normally take care of all the questions they want to ask about How it works... The next question is ussually... How do I get Bitcoins... and that is where people start to struggle.

There are a few people who wants to know more... {For that I normally direct them to resources on the internet ...Youtube videos are the best}

Unless there is a real reason for usage it will be difficult to explain why to jump to it and use it. As payment instrument there is only possibility that Bitcoin will be accepted by merchands and shops worldwide. This will be very good reason for acceptance of people without focus on what technology is behind. How many people is using Credit cards and how many of them understand how it works?

i'm quite agree with you. when i try to explain bitcoin it's very hard to explain to my friends. especially about technically how bitcoin works.
and finally i figure it out that the easiest way to explain bitcoin to my friends is the benefit about using bitcoin rather than explain how bitcoin works.

I think there are plenty of real reasons to use it, though it's more of an underground niche of geeks and libertarians at the moment (and also capitalists looking to make a profit) though I think it will slowly break into the mainstream. I think people will flock to it when companies like Paypal and Visa etc ban its use on certain websites like file sharing sites and adult content (paypal wont work with most adult sites for instance).

Good, that's the way it should be. After all, when you learn to drive, nobody' teaching you how an engine works.

This is very interesting. Well, the technology actually *is* very very very important. But not for the common person using it, that's it. Many people claim that the Blockchain is the only useful thing about Bitcoin, which I don't agree with, either - the Blockchain needs to have an incentive to be mined by people - otherwise it isn't secure. The tokens (Bitcoin) need to have a value.