Bitcoin Forum

"Hey, have you heard of bitcoins?"

"What's bitcoins?"

"Oh it's a digital currency where you mine for them with your computer or graphics card or ASIC."

"How do you mine them?"

"You change a nonce to make the hash of the block have a certain amount of leading zeros as per the difficulty."

"Cool.. Have you seen that video on youtube?"

--- vs ---

"Hey, have you heard of bitcoins?"

"What's bitcoins?"

"Oh it's a digital currency, basically cash but decentralized."

"So what exactly is a bitcoin?"

"It's just a stream of bits that are cryptographically encrypted. You can transfer the bitcoins to people in exchange for goods and services, just like cash."

"So can't I just copy the bits and make more bitcoins?"

"No, because once you spend the bits, you can't spend them again since there is a history called the blockchain!"

"What's the point of bitcoins through?"

"They can be used by anyone in the world, there's low fees, and it's designed to not inflate! So you're expected to get richer holding bitcoins, instead of losing money."

"Sounds interesting, how do I get bitcoins?"

"Here, have a bitcoin! Merry christmas!"

DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, BRO!

It's definitely best to introduce Bitcoin from an economics standpoint, rather than SHA256d hashing.

well. in all seriousness.

the question of "how are they made?"

will always come up....

not really.  usually the first question is "how can i get some?".

I would say that people I have talked to want to know how they are made before they are keen to get some. They like to know how it works on some level before knowing they can trust it.

Is there a way to encrypt something without doing it cryptographically?

More importantly, I don't think bitcoins are encrypted?  They are just an unencrypted value in the blockchain.


If we are getting new coins every 10 minutes or so, then the currency supply is inflating, isn't it? (Unless of course more coins are being permanently lost than mined)

You should always be careful about what you "expect". We can hope that you'll get richer, but there are no guarantees.

No Tradejackass please STFU you MORON. PT Barnum had your number.. If you don't get the reference, well lets face it, even if you do your a tool at best.

Its more like this anyway you $%^#^!.

You say "bitcoins are really taking off they are worth like $13.00 each"
Friend says "whats a bitcoin"
you say "its a digital currency that you make with a SPECIALIZED PIECE OF HARDWARE THAT HAS ZERO OTHER USES or you can buy them at exchanges."
friend hears you say "its a digital currency that you make blah blah blah blah blah blah must use special hardware blah blah blah"
They then feign interest. That means to fake interest you used mens underwear sniffer. Oh sorry, that word, fake, it means not real, like the love your parents "gave" you.

See, the fact is Bitcoins is not and NEVER EVER will be for the every man.
Its a great idea an I have profited off of from selling the suckercoins as fast as they come in but the barrier for entry was
raised to high. Once it left the CPU it was the beginning of the end.  ASICS will put all the power in just a few hands. Then we have the morons who continually allow website to hold the cash or coins and get supprised when they are robbed blind.

If I was a criminal I would have had a site up and took all the BTC i could from the stupid like you tradeass. Come on, anyone who deals with guys with names like PIRATEAT40 deserved a good hard but pounding.  I mean really, pirateat40,  do names like irobyourcopins or closeyoumouthmouthbreather need to be used to make it anymore obvous this place is full of people looking steal your BTC and pretending to be honorable.  Ohh looky here I traded stuff on some BTC websites, its safe to trust my new BTC site with all you funds.
.

Everyone please continue to value these worthless and useless coins, I am so glad there a suckers buying.. You certainly can make a ton of money buying and selling BTC but the odds are you are just too stupid and will lose it all buying high and selling low.
I sell, always making more and more real money and NEVER EVER losing a BTC.

BTC! Its how I take your money while you smile like a fool.  I get cash you get the equivalent of some MMORPG gold that may or may not last.. LOL
Reminds me of when I used to sell gold for real cash back in the EQ days. That is EverQuest Trade%$^&#, the 1st huge MMORPG that was not that Ultima PVP griefer lame ass one. Bet all those EQ gold buyers felt exactly the same way BTC buyers do. Now we all know the EQ gold buyers feel stupid for buying some dumb game gold and they wasted their real money. BTC will be the same one day, a forgotten relic of the past that took peoples money, made a few rich and many had a good time. Me I had a good time and took some real money for these suckercoins.

Depending on the view, I introduce Bitcoin from an economic/currency standpoint, a commodity/investment standpoint, or for mining.

Depending on who I talk to, a "dumbed down" version of mining is the best way "You use your computer to make free money."

Mining is becoming less important as a price regulating factor as the market grows. New miners will loose money from day one.

And remember: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".

not if you're using someone else's system to do the mining

re: first question, most of the people i've mentioned *bitcoins to have questions as to wtf they are and how they retain value, not how to get them (that comes much later)

 ::)

are you still making coins?
I'd like to buy some  :D

I can pay you in real colorful Canadian dollars!

If you have to talk about it, the non-weird answer to this is that new money is issued to people who process payments. If they want to know who these people are, the answer is that anyone with a computer can start processing payments, and the system is designed to work even if some of those people are dishonest, but most people wouldn't want to bother.

The mining metaphor isn't actually a very good description of what's going on when miners mine. It may have been historically useful in attracting the initial goldbug types who were one of the first groups of early adopters, but it sounds a bit weird to Joe Sixpack, and makes the whole thing sound dodgy.

Correct, inputs are signed but not encrypted.

In general I agree that newcomers don't need to know about mining. That being said, the best approach to explaining bitcoin takes into account who you are explaining it to. If you are explaining it to a random person who you don't know anything about, by all means skip over the mining part. If you're explaining it to a guy who loves tinkering with hardware, then absolutely you should tell him about mining. A ones-size-fits-all approach is not a good idea when pitching, no matter what the idea is.

This. I also think "mining" is a stupid term that should never have been used. I like to tell people that somebody has to keep this wonderful network running, and it takes a little work, hardware and electricity; as a compensation, there are the block rewards. It's no more "free money" than any other work. Sure, it is heavily automatized, but the pay is not that great, so it's essentially a hobby for most participants.

+1 to what TradeFortress  said!

and +1 to what subSTRATA  said too!

i adjust how i explain them based on who i'm talking to and what purposes they would find most useful. pc guys love the tech aspect of "mining" and care less about the economics while business owners are interested in completely different info

I tend to agree, mining is not something the average person needs to know about, it confuses what can already be a bit of a head f**k - some people struggle with the idea of digital currency (why I dont know, we've lived in a digital money world for a while now).

This harks back to something I've commented on before, that bitcoin is poorly branded for the average user to understand, let alone trust. That said, the question of "but how are they made" always comes up, I've taken just to saying the network rewards the transaction processors with new coins... its simpler.

I could not agree with you more. We will have to wait for a younger and more tech savvy generation. Any one over the age of 40 is a lost cause.

I've told a few people, but most of them don't think much of it. But I have had a few people take interest. Overall, most people I've introduced it too think its just to much of a radical idea.

Nah. Age has nothing to do with it. I'm over 40 and feel that I've got a pretty good grasp of bitcoin.  I've talked with several people here who were clearly younger than 40 and couldn't seem to wrap their head around the necessary concepts.

Just like Scientific American laughed off poor genius Stephen Wiesner when he wrote his quantum cryptocurrency thesis in the 1960s. (Though he envisaged the QC being used to protect central bank notes from counterfeiting, at the time.)

Yeah, those "40 year olds" went to drive-in movies and soda fountains with their slicked-back hair, etc. when they were young.

That was all true back in the 80's, but this isn't the 80's anymore.

The long and short of it: A 40 year old is not a "Baby Boomer". He was born in 1972. He was 23 when Windows 95 came out. The "personal computer" really took off a few years earlier, when he was 20.

I doubt such a guy/gal would be ignorant of computers, like some stubborn strain of Baby Boomer (I say "stubborn strain" because plenty of Baby Boomers use PCs today).

I am 36 myself, and "U Can't Touch This" was all the rage when I was in 8th grade. I suppose some members here were just babies in 1990 -- if they existed at all :)

I agree.

If anything, TOO young is a handicap, because "too much tech, too soon" results in learning disabilities of various sorts.

Just look at any "Millennial" and compare him/her to an equivalent who grew up in the 80's. No contest.

I can see how not having computers as a young child really helped me and all the others in my generation.

Regarding parents these days -- They're giving more technology to their children, thinking that there is no limit to what technology can do for our brains.
(How many Millennials would screw up that last sentence!)

A magazine is a broken iPad that doesn't work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk

You tell me that kid isn't going to be affected in very profound ways in her brain development by handling that iPad as a toddler.
She's going to have learning disabilities. It's no joke.

Mining is usually the first or second thing I talk about with people when telling them.
umad?

i was in junior high school when i started freeloading off of SMU, UTA, SSC (superconducting super collidor) & others.  back then you could just dial-in to these universities and telnet out.  some even allowed you guest access on their machines.   being able to access sscvx1.ssc.gov being one of those cases.  this was back in the late 80's & early 90's

I think the mining metaphor was a fantastic way to get enough people interested and involved to get Bitcoin to where it is today.

However, I'm reluctant to raise it myself or to point people to the weusebitcoins video because by now I think the mining metaphor is a distraction to today's bigger Bitcoin picture.

I am a relative Bitcoin newcomer and I spent quite a long time thinking through, reading and writing about the whole mining thing but it's its potential use I find much more interesting by now.

+1 for this one.

I might add if interest is shown that for historic reasons it is called 'mining' because for a good while running this software was the equivalent of early-days gold mining where it was not very difficult to obtain something you could sell for a substantial profit.  However, these days although money can still be made it's heading more towards enthusiasts getting a small reward back for buying some specialised hardware and running it 24/7 to support the network.

Translation of OP:

"WAAAAH STOP TELLING THEM ABOUT MINING. I WANT TO MAKE MORE BTC MINING..BOO HOO!"

 :D :D :D

Exactly this.
It's not as many people would go into the mining game nowadays anyway. The quality of life impact you have to endure is significant as long as there isn't a dedicated room, which not many people are willing to do or afford.

And seriously, on converting electricity to a valuable asset growing pot beats mining hands down. And even in that perspective it is similar since self mined bitcoin has better privacy associated with it much as homegrown weed has better quality.

Mining, to me, was the real reason, or novelty if you will, why it became popular. It gave people something to do
or participate in. Not everyone can discuss currency/economy/crypto etc... but everyone can download a program
and start mining which was fun. It meant they were part of things.

Without mining.. i doubt it would be this popular.

I agree.  Mining is not something that newcomers need to know about.  It'll either confuse them or turn them off from BTC.

Early last year when mining was still a relatively efficient way of generating BTC I told a few friends about it.  Even now, nearly 1.5 years later, they are still fixated on mining and think that's the ONLY way of acquiring BTC. I have tried to explain to them that it is much easier to just buy them off the market or trade for them, but mining has gotten stuck in their head. 

Even after my warnings one just recently bought a $200+ graphics card and got super pissed when he only got a measly amount of return.  He now refuses to consider BTC anymore because he, in his words,  "got ripped off".

Telling them about mining was my biggest mistake :(

I'm gonna reread the whole thing now.

This anecdote is the point of this thread.

It's not about "should we encourage mining from new BTC users" and how it will impact the difficulty level. That's another story.

The question is: will bringing up the "mining" element actually hinder the popularity/spread of Bitcion, because of how the times, they have-a-changed?
Remember, GPU Mining isn't profitable anymore for the average person.

For it to be profitable, you have to have:
A) cheap electricity
B) knowledge of computer hardware (feel comfortable ordering Mobos, Cablesaurus extender cables, rigging cooling systems, setting up Linux, etc.)
C) desire/ability to pore over MH/J tables for the various GPUs, or at least pick decently efficient video cards
etc.

to make it work. Just popping in ONE card -- or even two, which is the most you can fit in the average motherboard, is not going to give a very good MH/J (efficiency).

Reading the miner's subforum, you'd swear that most motherboards come with 5 slots for PCI-X cards. Not true! I bought motherboards on purpose for mining, and the most I've seen is 2 PCI-X (full) and 3 PCI-X (small). Using a Cablesaurus extender cable, I manage to get most rigs up to THREE cards.

Just tell them to pick up a copy of Bitcoin Step by Step from Amazon. :P

That has nothing to do on whatever telling people about it though. The question about generating bitcoin comes out of the discussion naturally and in order to avoid the subject deception would be necessary.
I don't see the point in that.


How about it: Tell it right as above, that's how it works. There is no point in anything else.

As soon as you use the word "I mine for bitcoins" - that looses people, they automatically then link it with a ponzi scheme or some conspiracy, because the concept is to abstract to the average person.

Its not that you shouldnt tell people the details if they wish, its that not everyone needs to hear them up front. Depending on the person I'm talking to I'll change the terminology I use. I do think bitcoin could do with a rebrand in some fashion sometimes.

When the subject of mining comes up. I tell them it's how transactions are verified, and that you get a very small compensation for your work.  The more miners there are the stronger bitcoin will be.  Not just from a 51% attack. If mega-miners(individuals with a large % of the hashing power)start ddosing each other, or one of them goes off-line.  It would more than likely start to destabilize the trust that novices and new comers have.  There sell off probably won't make much of a dent, but it would stall bitcoin growth.  Thankfully bitcoin hasn't been hurt by its growing pains, the sooner its full grown the better.

I agree mining should be kept away from the newbies ears, not only is it bad return it doesnt help the Bitcoin economy.

That's an intriguing sentence to me.  Would you mind elaborating?  As I understand it not only is it is essential for Bitcoin but more distributed mining also increases security.  My argument would then go that therefore indirectly, by giving people reason to be more confident in the security of Bitcoin, they can have more confidence to participate.  If the activities that have the biggest long-term impact on the Bitcoin economy require personal and financial investment then anything that increases confidence in its security, in the likelihood of it ever becoming more than an experiment I would have thought makes a massive difference.

But I'm ready to listen... :)

Mining is necessary for Bitcoin security and transactions, but it does not help the Bitcoin economy much as we are flooded with bitcoin miners. Buying BTC puts money into the system, increasing the value.

Cry more please

I was a newbie once, Now I bitcoin mine sensibly and assuredly. Why shouldn't everyone be given the opportunity to learn and grow, fail or succeed, modify or cease. I was given the chance to stay and do what i like/want to do by my own fruition.

I agree, it shouldnt be one of the main talking points when introducing people to bitcoin, plus its easy to just go on and on about how it works and end up just confusing the person your talking to :p Once they have their minds wrapped around the general concept though, its good to learn about mining