Bitcoin Forum

So my friend was in Canada and it was really cold, none of his friends had change, he had some Bitcoin in his phone. Happened to find a place where they would accept BTC. He bought some coffees and warm chocolate and invited all of his friends with it. A quick payment into the guy's Bitcoin address which was printed in a piece of paper, delivered a nice breakfast for him and all his friends. Then they understood how Bitcoin is money no matter what others might say. They stopped seeing it as some geek weird thing. I think using Bitcoin in real life in return of some useful service in front of clueless guys that still think it's not real money, is a great way to teach them how Bitcoin is very real and the real party hasn't even begun yet. Thats why we must never forget about the importance of small transactions like those. Buying some coffee in exchange of Bitcoin impressed them more than any of the revolutionary protocol tech stuff you could explain them.

Careful, you might prompt some nutjobs to lecture us all on the evils of permanently storing cups of coffee in the holy ledger.   ::)

They'd have you believe adoption in this manner is irrelevant because Bitcoin is just going to be a settlement network for the wealthy.  They'll tell you Bitcoin can't scale to allow everyone to transact in such a fashion, so there's no point in trying and we should concede defeat now.  They honestly believe it doesn't matter if the developing world, or even the average user, is priced off-chain, because the only important aspect of Bitcoin is how cheaply you can run a full node. 

Personally, I think great things will happen if more people use Bitcoin for everyday purchases without relying on banksters or card providers.  I agree that small transactions like that will be vital for future success. 

Actually this is nothing comparing to btc becoming real money above all other. I mean they still see btc as fraud or something like pseudo-money. It is not. It is all real money.

That is such a nice story! I wish I was in your friend's place  :)

And cheers to Canada! They hardly accept Bitcoin anywere in my country. They do actually but in very few places.

I had the same experience on a lunch appointment with some clients. I took them out for lunch and I paid with Bitcoin. They were very amazed and intrigued and we extended the

lunch to talk about Bitcoin. I helped them to setup a wallet and transferred some coins to them and to thank me, they paid with Bitcoin for some desert.

Out of the three of them, two still use their wallet regularly. { I still have their Bitcoin addresses, because I transferred coins to their wallets, so I can check up on them }  ;D

Shame I don't particularly like coffee but if the story was about burgers or pizza I would definetly keep my Bitcoins instead of giving them to the casinos.

The story is interesting, and glad that there are places like that,
who accepts bitcoin as a payment method, personally near me there is not any place like that.
And i only exchange bitcoin to fiat money when i urgently need them.

Nice story, but without adoption of bitcoin by merchants it would be impossible to achieve. In some countries you can't actually buy anything directly for bitcoin yet.
In addition it seems that people are forgetting that money on their banks accounts are purely digital too when they using Debit and Credit cards.

Im really amazed with both of your story. What a nice place there. Directly accepting bitcoin in some of your physical stores there just like how fiat is moving. Hope someday my country will have that too. Even bitcoin debit card are not accepted here afaik. The only good thing here there are lots of online merchants here accepting bitcoin and converting our btc's to fiat is just one click away. Hope physical store here are will adopt bitcoin payment too.

guess you missed the "bitcoin pizza" story that happened years ago which was the first big story of using bitcoin. which ignited the flames of thousands of peoples imaginations

so did they end up buying bitcoins?

Are you an early user of bitcoin? How many bitcoins did you give to casinos? Wish not a lot.

Great story! Hopefully more people will start using their coins than just sitting on them waiting for miracle to happen to the price...

You have a point, but that doesn't disprove the fact Bitcoin as we know it would be dead if the nodes become centralized, which is what would happen if absolutely everything went on the blockchain. Can you guys please consider a scenario where both mining and nodes centralized? Might as well use fiat then ffs. Lightning network will allow for small transactions. Yes it sucks that we can have all of it on the blockchain, but it's better than having a monopoly of centralized nodes. Until anyone comes up with a better solution, we'll have to deal with it.

When people see you use bitcoin in real life they get more interested in bitcoin and try to learn more about it.

This only works if the shop that accepts the bitcoin knows how to actually set a transaction up..

Last time I tried paying with bitcoin, I had to explain what they needed to do with their own system.

It is indeed unfortunate that people don't see Bitcoin as money after these kinds of episodes, and even when they see these things happening some end up not regarding Bitcoin as money.

I remember when I first exchanged Bitcoins for fiat and people around me realized, for the first time, that Bitcoin was money. We have to find a way to make people believe straight out of the box that Bitcoin is money. I think that's only achievable with wider merchant adoption... One day :)

Would be cool if a company like BitPay could sign on a major retailer like Walgreens or Target or something like that. I think that would cause adoption to increase dramatically. Even amazon would be a game changer. Until the avrage person can walk into a store anywhere and buy milk, eggs, bread, and toilet paper, bitcoin will always remain a nerdy thing. 

Nice, but more is needed. You've got to explain, otherwise people would just see BTC as a payment method, like paypal or a credit card. I admit it's a good start for a conversation, though. Many teachers do that in school, they show the students what something can do, before explaining how it actually works.

This is true. Now, bitcoiners just need more places to be able to pay with BTC

If more people were technically inclined then Bitcoin would be growing at a much faster rate. It's just unfortunate that most people don't care about innovative technology and the good that can come out of it, at least not until they are given a reason to care.

I've said it before but I will say it again: I really believe that merchants follow customers, not the other way around.

Added to this, the barrier for entry for merchants is very low. Either open a wallet and get free transactions or go with a BitPay who make everything simple and easy for you for 1% (far lower than VISA etc).

The barrier for entry is not merchants adopting it. Merchants chase money, and they will get familiar quickly with whatever he customer wants.

Once you have customers who can get hold of Bitcoin easily, trust it, and understand it then in my view everything else will follow.

I am working on this, and so are many people - but I think it is important for people to realise that this is perhaps the key event - this is one of, if not the killer app in Bitcoin. Many people say well, we cannot have everyone paying for coffee in Bitcoin. Don't worry about that. That will sort itself out.

What we need is for everyone to have some small amount of Bitcoin, even 10 USD each just to fiddle with - and then it will grow imo.

Coffee is fine. Even scrap payments of 0.005 BTC is OK. Just don't complain about the fees.

Too bad I dont have any local bitcoin accepting shops in my area to try that out.

It will take the masses some time to adjust to what btc really is and what it will be able to do in the future, in the meantime consider yourself lucky you are still one of the few people in the world who know about it and can buy into it still.

I hope I'll live to tell my grandkids that I was one of the early adopters of btc even though I heard about it in 2014 first. :)

Sounds cool. Putting forward a real life example and getting people to see it themselves is obviously much better than spending countless hours trying to convince people with the same message and repeating non stop. In the end a far simpler approach is much more effective.

Best to attempt your first bitcoin transaction in a place well used to it. I've heard a few tales of folks having to educate the guy behind the counter.

Merchants will not start accepting Bitcoin if people do not ask for it. The problem is... people will not ask for it, if they do not know about it. It is our task to educate them and

to get them to buy some. I also saw this predicament and decided to concentrate on individual people at first, but it went to slowly. I then mastered the art to demonstrate

Bitcoin to people in small groups.. I now take on small groups of between 5 to 10 people at a time and I have a +/- 50 to 60% success rating. It makes it easier if they are in a

informal setting like a bar or a pub.  ;)

nah..

for instance.. shops did not wait until customers demand for applepay before they accepted it.. instead applepay went out and got businesses to accept it before actually launching applepay to customers.

bitpay/coinbase has atleast 100,000 merchants signed up. and bitpay needs to advertise these 100,000 businesses more, just like apple pay has to tell customers how great using the payment system is.

yes smaller businesses will then come onboard later as the customerbase using the payment system increases..

but there is no point trying to teach 1billion people about bitcoin if there are only 100,000 locations to use it.. we need to get more of the national and international retailers that people use everyday to be onboard first. then the customers will follow. followed by the smaller independant stores.

this 'chicken&egg' discussion has been going in circles for years, and the short answer is that its far easier to talk to 1 million businesses then it is to talk to 1 billion customers.

not only based on less number of ears to whisper to.. but also because 1 billion customers will ignore it if they cant find a single shop in their town that it can be used on.
so get the shops onboard first and the customers will follow

Well, let's say in 10 years Bitcoin is widely used worldwide.
What would the fee be for a cup of coffee? Because if it's too high no one will use it for such payments which is a shame. Of course, that's where LN would solve things to make it cheaper, but it's not "inside the chain". It doesn't feel like "real Bitcoin" or something. But I also don't see any other solutions for this problem. Centralized nodes is a worst case scenario.

That jives with my experience also. A lot of my coworkers thought of bitcoin as something not understandable for most people. When some of them saw me buy something at lunch, it suddenly became money.

Which is kinda lacking in the economy. We need more merchants to accept bitcoin as is and more big companies to get aboard this train for that to happen! Simple startups won't always do the cut for us to get that global adoption.

Bitcoin will be many forms in the future for it to be transacted instantly. Lighting Network or side chain are one of them. But they are still bitcoins.

I totally agree. People have the wrong impression of bitcoin. They need to realise that bitcoin isn't some kind of foreign currency, it is a cryptocurrency that is going to be the future.

One day I wish my school cafeteria would accept bitcoin, but I think we're a long way away from that.
Most of my friends don't understand Bitcoin and think it is just some fake currency that can be hacked. Maybe in the future they'll wish they asked more about it. :)

This is a great example of ways to introduce people to Bitcoin. The main problem is still the amount of places which accept it as a payment method. Usually, online stores would give a rebate when using it. However, there is very few stores which accept Bitcoin in real life hence most would charge a premium for it. Most people imagine Bitcoin as something complicated but it is as easy at scanning a Qr code and hitting the send button.

people are thought that fiat currency = money. and anything else isn't.

this is wrong, and this is a scam, they do this so they can rob all your wealth off you and give you worthless paper notes in return, and make you think you got the good end of the deal.

anything you can use to pay for services is as good a currency as fiat, anything that is hard to reproduce is even better than fiat currency.

Fiat currency isn't even money, gold is money, silver is money, quality pearls can be money, and crypto can be money.

Just this^^

Buying something in front of people using bitcoin will convince them. Problem is that there are many many places in which you cannot buy anything directly in BTC. At least here in Spain.

This is true, when people can see that you can actually pay for something that you would normally pay for with cash then their interest is spiked, I have seen it in a couple of people where they finally kind of get it.  More places to spend bitcoin will spark more interest.

Most store owners still can't find the incentive of using/accepting bitcoins for their merchandise or service, thinking that it would only leave them with a payment that can go to 0 within some days. Also, to be able to maintain a business in the current times, store owners should still stay with fiat given that not all the necessities in setting up a business can be paid with bitcoins. People are willing to pay, the problem is, the owners don't want what they are being paid.

they have plenty of reason to care, they just don't know it.

how many more financial crisis does it tak for people to realise the financial system is a scam?

This should be a no-brainer ... You pay virtually no fees on the transactions and all conversion to fiat is done for you. You can also set the percentage of the Bitcoin you want

to convert. The savings in fees could be used to incentivize the adoption of Bitcoin by the introduction of discounts at the start, and once that is established, you could

pocket that savings as pure profit.  

It doesn't matter how many financial crisis happens as long as dollar and euros buy you stuff and are accepted worldwide. That's the paradox. The system within itself is a crumbling scam, but on the surface, it just works, people don't see a necessity to pay in BTC unless in certain situation where you would miss it. But make no mistake, the crash will be felt in every day average joe's life eventually too, then Bitcoin will go to millions of dollar a coin. Supply and demand.

I would think that the transaction fees would still be quite low. Even with wide spread adoption, the network would most probably still be able to handle the transaction volume with the block size change. Even if the value sky rockets, the transaction fee could be adjusted to compensate for it.

If the owner spend a few seconds to research, they would know that it is hard and impractical to double spend 0 conf transactions. The risk is relatively small if you spend a few minutes to wait for the transaction to propagate. POS systems like Bitpay allows merchants to convert a percentage of Bitcoin to USD and deposit in your bank account. Bitcoin enthusiast would be using your shop more often too. It takes only a tablet to setup the entire POS.

That's why there's should be more Bitcoin "Real" Shop in this world
Because I honestly think that it's more interesting than buying something online.