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Five Things the Media Gets Wrong About Bitcoin

What the media gets wrong about Bitcoin

Bitcoin is misunderstood by many people in the mainstream, which has resulted in a lot of negative press and misconceptions around crypto-currencies. As a community, it’s important to educate ourselves and promote the positive use cases of this new technology. Here are 5 myths about Bitcoin that every crypto-user should know:

https://www.zapchain.com/a/l/five-things-the-media-gets-wrong-about-bitcoin/GRvsyT1p65

It really causes bad image to bitcoin. The media always reports the hacks or scams about bitcoin. The masses wouldn't bother to touch bitcoin. I hope more bitcoin related businesses step up to campaign for their business and bitcoin as well. When the masses know what bitcoin is, then bitcoin will be popular.

This one is somewhat debatable. Economists define money as being a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. While Bitcoin fulfills the definition of being a medium of exchange and a (somewhat unstable) store of value, it isn't yet considered to be a unit of account. Even those businesses that accept Bitcoin without automatically converting it to fiat still price their goods and services using the fiat value of BTC.


The writer seems to be ignoring the fact that many people see Bitcoin as a speculative investment. For these people, it can be argued that it is indeed "too late". Going from a market cap of several million dollars to several billion dollars and getting an x1,000 return on your investment is easy. Going from a market cap of several billion dollars to several trillion dollars - on the other hand, and getting the exact same x1,000 return on your investment is very, very difficult.

Overall, it's still a well-written article. Another point that I would have liked to see is that Bitcoin is not anonymous but rather pseudonymous. The media likes to say that it is but I guess for many people, it's probably just a matter of semantics.

Medias always get wrong about many things. It's quite natural and nowadays, it is one of the main parts of medias. ::)


Another thing is that most medias tell "Bitcoin is costly and is too late" because they think a person need to have 1BTC to do something(that's what I get from their words). In fact, if a person want to send $50 worth of Bitcoins, he/she doesn't need to buy 1BTC, instead, Bitcoins equivalent to $50.02(incl. fee) is enough. I don't understand what they mean by the term "Bitcoin is costly" or why they say it. ???

yeah...i guess it will take time until they understand that 10 bits  (1 BTC = 1 mio bits) are pretty cheap at the moment  ;)

I've seen many people who fell into that trap. They looked at the price of a single Bitcoin, saw that it was too expensive because they assumed that they needed to buy a whole bitcoin, and so they dismissed the idea completely.

In fact, this was one of the main reasons why some people advocated changing the default unit from BTC to something smaller like mBTC or "bits" last year - i.e. so that the price wouldn't scare potential investors away.

EDIT: Although their reasons for not investing back then were inaccurate, I suppose not investing was actually the smarter choice in retrospect.

well thry are all wrong

1 because real money isn't something that is established by one entity(they are still to accustomed to the fiat scam) but by supply and demand, nothing else

2 this isn't true at all seeing how newegg, microsoft and dell are accepting it, are they black market? fud 100%

3 well no it isn't it just appear that in some countries isn't regulated because they don't know how to view it, if as commodities or currency or another thing

4 if it was just a bubble it should've returned to it's original price, instead we are still at a good value

5 this is relative, it's never too late if the price will get bigger in the future

Five things media gets wrong about Bitcoin:

1. Bitcoin isn’t real money.
2. Bitcoin is only for the black market.
3. Bitcoin is illegal.
4. Bitcoin is just a bubble.
5. It’s too late to get involved with Bitcoin.



Some countries regulate because Bitcoin can replace banks if all people started using it. So they started regulating it for their merit. I am not against regulating but things like NY BitLicense is worse than worst.



Its never too late as long as Bitcoin exists.

anything that people say has value can be money; even in the ancient times, Egypt in particular, cakes of salt were used as a form of currency because salt was useful, and had value to those people. Bitcoin I think, is just the next step in the evolution of currency.

Exactly, you only have to look back to the cowry shell currency (used for over 4000 years and covered nearly the entire planet).

http://www.theperfectcurrency.org/main-history-of-money/history-of-money


I was amazed at the number of community currencies used in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States

"Why do they get these wrong? Because they don't know the facts – here they are." Agree with this quote, media is still be a media ::) i'm personally feel suck with them, they are easily be bribed, easy to manipulate and influencing people without a clear proof.


~iki

the problem with media is, news focused more on the negative points of a subject tends to get better ratings, just look at how the US handled the ebola news, all it was was scare tactics and anchormen/women yelling into the camera about how "the end was near." (a tad exaggerated) Reality is, the facts are boring, so the media would much rather focus on how bitcoin is used to buy drugs and launder money rather than report on how bitcoin can be used for the greeks to retain some monetary value.

The media is just full of corporate shills, just ignore them. Bitcoin is bitcoin, there is nothing wrong about it, enjoy the community and lets work on it better :)

That was a fun article to read. For me, it is a bit irritating to see so much misinformation and misconceptions being spread around by the media. Bitcoin is a great thing and the benefits of it are fantastic. Another thing that is bad about the media spreading misinformation is if people hear something negative about Bitcoin, they may stay away from Bitcoin all together.

the problem is that naive people that know nothing about bitcoin, will not ignore this, this is another reason why how bitcoin work for the mass should be a relevant aspect and not irrelevant how an articles say, in another thread...

it is easy to disrupt people's mind, if they have no knowledges

Well i`m sorry we live in a society with predators and prey. If you are not 1 your are the other.

If the masses are sheep, they get "slaughtered" , thats how it always been, and always will be.

There are no excuses for stupidity and ignorance. I can already see the sheeps bleating in 10 years about bitcoin being at the end of its life despite being 5000 $ / BTC by then, but sheep is sheep and all they do is bleat :D


This is how the uneducated anti-bitcoin idiots look like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUcHZ9yH3j8

The general public will come around eventually once they realize the true benefits of it, but hopefully one day they will regret and rue their ignorance. In the meantime just keep promoting the benefits and positives of bitcoin and hopefully more people will come around sooner.

The media isn't completely wrong while addressing bitcoin but they look more at the negative aspects than the positives. They consider it illegal due to which even I thought it's illegal but the truth is that it isn't legalized but still not legal. Bitcoins being associated with scams is a harsh truth which media isn't wrong while stating.

So the fact is that media isn't wrong about bitcoin but only talks about it negatively as it's not recognized.

The problem is how the media shows it though.  If something illegal is done they normally don't in partial blame the fiat money.   But if BTC is used it get's bad press (in most cases).

The good news is the more BTC matures the more we will have proper reporting, and many more people will know the good aspects of BTC.   There is good effects from BTC being mentioned news as it spreads awareness.  If they are just positive stories it comes out much better for bitcoin awareness/acceptance.