Bitcoin Forum

Im not including third/second world because I think eventually people that don't have access to banks will naturally see Bitcoin as the solution, but as of right now, the average person in a first world country in a regular situation, if they learn about Bitcoin they will threat it as something that is worth holding long term, like gold, but not something that's worth paying groceries for with, or anything ordinary. I mean, why would anyone pay something you can buy with fiat already, without having to change your fiat to BTC, losing money in the conversion?

This is why we need an incentive, such as cheaper prices. Purse.io is the only reason I know of why I would want to pay with BTC. Other than that, I see no reason and I value my BTC too much to spend on "stuff".

Therefore it is established that we need to incentive people to use it.

If we can't find any ways to do so, Bitcoin will remain as a new form of electronic gold with special features, maybe until "Government Coin" is launched and millions of people start looking for alternatives (since with "Government Coin" it will mean physical cash, that is paper and metal coins, will be removed from circulation, this may be the point where Bitcoin goes to 100k+ per coin, since the entire underground economy will not simply stop existing, but it will find its way for alternatives, and Bitcoin will be the best alternative)

But until then, like I said before, I don't see real reasons of why the average joe is going to pay with BTC, specially when they don't get paid in BTC, because if you get paid directly in BTC you are more prone to spend it, since you don't need to do the stupid fiat->BTC->buy conversion.

Surely, any kind of incentives are welcome regardless of what kind of population are we talking about. However, is this necessarily the best approach? What happened to spreading the awareness of the corrupt system? Generally, I think a combination of awareness and incentives/services/merchants is required in order to make Bitcoin more desirable.

A decent amount of services offer discounts on Bitcoin purchases. What I see lacking is primarily Ebay/Amazon/Google/Apple/Samsung. Once you have those on-board, you get an access to wast amount of content without having to go through intermediaries (e.g. buying gift cards somewhere, or asking people to buy stuff for you).

You make a fair point, but the solution to this 'problem' isn't a simple one either. It would be great if there was a possibility to opt-in for a salary in Bitcoin.

The salary in bitcoin is been discussed even other times in another thread but my point here is that only first world countries citizens can opt for such a thing. I think this can opt to be paid like 75% in cash for their spendings and their normal life and 25% in bitcoin. They are the only ones who can do it as I think anyone of such countries can make at least 25% of savings from their monthly payroll. I agree with you that this is not easy to do but its the only option to make salaries in bitcoin a reality.

Your points are a good ones and I've always said it's silly to buy BTC just to spend it.  And I'm totally cool with it being digital gold. 

Even if we we paid in bitcoin, stuff is still priced in fiat--rent, utilities, phone bill, and the local adult bookstore are all fiat-only.  And then there's still the problem of volatility,  which makes people not want to spend it. 

the main objection people have against bitcoin is simple
"what can i do with bitcoin once i have it"

so the obvious solution is to make bitcoin spendable. eg if you can buy toilet paper, car gasoline and baked beans. (travel, food, toiletries) then everyone will see bitcoin is not just speculative but actually real and useful.

yes i know people say that bitcoin should be a reserve currency and other currencies should be the daily spend currencies. but those people do not care about bitcoin and only want buyers to buy and hold so that sellers can sell at a profit back into fiat.
greed and narrowmindedness of just wanting a fiat increase could make bitcoin useless and eventually cave in on itself.(pump&dump coin)

by making it useful by expanding capacity and keeping the fee's low and having lots of merchant acceptance. would increase bitcoins popularity and gain more users which (side-effect: will increase the greedy fiat price).. will actually make bitcoin stronger and not cave in on itself.

in short
dont lazily advertise bitcoin as a speculaive reserve currency, purely for a price pump. actually realise bitcoin needs to grow and expand to gain real world popularity and usefulness. then everyone can be happy and bitcoin can be stronger.
dont fall for the sidechain for daily spend strategy. it wont help bitcoin

Maybe the incentive will be the first world observing lesser worlds having an explosion in commerce due to crypto.

agreed,,
why waste efforts trying to convert 320m americans 64m brits. 700m europeans
when aiming for 1.2bill africans, 1.2bill indians, 4.5billian asians would hlp the world more. while having less resistance due to the lack of corporate control there

There already is an incentive, it's just that your typical debt slave doesn't care about that incentive in the slightest.

Guess what, that's OK. Every transaction does not need to be censorship-proof as long as the option exists.

Bitcoin's barrier to entry is having the appropriate level of understanding to realize that there is a need for a system of value transfer that is outside of the reach of those who would choose to exert control over everything. Most people don't understand this. Quite the opposite, most people favor those controls as long as they are fed the line that it's put in place to fight bogeymen. Anyone who is willing to sacrifice their freedom for alleged temporary security has no reason to use Bitcoin.

Majority of population in first world countries heavily relies on credit. People like spending money they don't have yet, as long as they can buy now and just charge it, the hefty fees don't matter. If this feature could somehow be integrated with bitcoin, then that's a pretty big incentive. (unlikely though)

I totally agree but its just finding the killer app or use-case that is goin to take bitcoin to the masses.  i am sure it will happen eventually but it could be 10-15 years out still.  There is still alot of problems with bitcoin: and i dont mean technically, i mean in useability, the average joe just wont have a clue about bitcoin address and can you imagine if the majority of people you know started using bitcoin, it would be a scammers field day.  ive been using bitcoin since 2012 and i still double check everything i do.  :D

There are some services that stopped accepting some fiat based payment options. You know the classified services that supposedly favored human trafficking and stopped accepting CC payment.  ::)

There are also some causes that are being boycotted, such as FreeSnowden and other whistle blowing sites. These sites will not get funding if it was not for Bitcoin. You can check out some of these

sites here -->  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects  ;D ;D

It's impossible to reach the volume of transactions per second that it would be needed in order to reach mainstream usage of people buying on the street everywhere with bitcoin on-chain, it will be with lightning network or it will not be and Bitcoin will remain as digital gold, simple as that.

The best way to get people using Bitcoin is to get a big retailer or service provider accepting it with a decent discount rate (looking at something like 2-4%) as well as offer incentives for employers to start offering tiny vouchers or whatever of Bitcoin that their employees can use. Basically get it circulating within the economy, get companies accepting Bitcoin with some decent discount rates to get consumers to use it more, and get more people throughout the world interested in it and get them something that has some money value outside of the current fiat economy. However having Bitcoin become a more common thing might cause some faith in the fiat currencies to waiver, causing some currencies to begin going down in value. That is something a lot of governments don't want to happen.

Your average Joe on the street isn't going to be buying Bitcoin on-chain, simple as that. People are terrible with basic things like passwords, do you think they are ready for key management? Hardcore fans find it hard to keep their money secure, the average person is essentially lost. Most likely, the adoption of Bitcoin will come from secondary-layers on top - everything from ETFs to centralized services like Coinbase/Circle. Those will bring Bitcoin to the everyday people. Like it or not, the whole world isn't ready to adopt Bitcoin owning their private keys tomorrow. Block-size isn't a problem for adoption yet.

An incentive? Let's think first about who will provide it. Who will pay for it? Who will organize it? The BTC foundation? Coinbase? Your family? All the users of this forum?

Basically this.

No one will even try to incentive it, because there's no need for it. Every organization already make the required income, if not they wouldn't be there for obvious reasons.

People just need to see a reason to use it and an easier way to buy it. More companies need to accept it and have to make using it worth it, like Purse.io!

It'll take some time, and a ton of time to say the least

Bitcoin can only handle 3.7 or so transactions per second, worldwide. We regularly hit that now, so no need to bring more people into using Bitcoin, they'll just get disappointed.

Apparently segwit in April and lightning in August will solve all that tho... so best just relax for a while.

When monolithic lightning hubs have taken over the transactional load from the Bitcoin network, we can talk about growing the userbase again.

agreed, in the context of bitcoin being the "one world order" single currency.

but if you think about it as just another of the 180 real world currencies, used in places that dont have a good currency/banking infrustructure. and not used 43times a month(buying everything) but instead just 5 times a month, (weekly groceries and monthly rent). then it is much more achievable.

also it doesnt need to suddenly explode from 2 milllion users today to 263million users next year. it can grow naturally and usefully.
even stats show that when 4mb blocks are activated (yes even core now likes 4mb after all the cries that 2mb was bad) we can have capacity of 8 million users doing 5 transactions a month happily in the near future, onchain.
(or if you want the greedy fiat lovers pump and dump stats: 1billion users doing 1tx every 2 years to HODL)

my point of my last post is that if we imagine it as a natural growth over the next 20-30 years with rational, workable expansion for real usage then trying to get 8million next year, 16mill in a few years and 32mill a few years after that, is natural and healthy and scaling also grows with it

trying to push for 1billion users tomorrow is flawed for many reasons and wont work or make bitcoin stronger in any way shape or form

as for the developed vs developing cultures
but trying to get 32million americans (10% population) to use bitcoin is actually harder than trying to get 32million indians(2.5% population) to use bitcoin, for these reasons:
1. developing coutries are more open to change and open to better financial self-control
2. developing countries need new financial tools, developed countries (blindly) think they already have everything they need
3. if you had a group of people... 2.5% is a less stressful number to convince than 10%

in short
32m population for real world usage as a medium term target is easier than a 1billion speculative background reserve currency target
by concentrating on a useful bitcoin rather than a speculative bitcoin makes bitcoin stronger.

if you disagree and are going to reply about something related to fiat valuations. then sit back and realise you are not a true bitcoiner if your only goal is to eventually hold bags of fiat. and also realise by going the rational route of useful bitcoin, will also positively increase the market cap so even you fiat lovers will profit

We have a long bumpy way to go before Bitcoin hits the mainstream and it's mainly bcs of limited awareness & not incectives (personal opinion). For example 2 days ago I learnt about PayPal frozing Bundy ranche's donations and commented on their facebook page about BTC especially when it comes to donations, sure I got some likes but I had a wacko posting huge replies saying bitcoin is a ponzi scam and that it got hacked the other day xD

Just teach people about it, mention it like the phenomenon it really is and more will come (like I and you did).

Transaction fees is another setback that should be looked into, you don't pay to spend fiat but you have to pay to spend bitcoins.

sadly we just haven't found something worth than daily stuff to buy with bitcoin.

in this first world you can pay bills, buy home, etc by fiat. that's why people prefer to convert their bitcoins to fiat if they don't find that worth things they can buy with bitcoin in their countries.

i can agree on a lot of points made. and i think we need to raise the number of places you can pay with bitcoin. this is so important.
also we need to develop bitcoin further, as it need to handle more transactions per second.
also fees are a problem. and here is a thing OP missed. the 2+3 world surely would like to use bitcoin, but the fees (which are a joke in the first world) are quite high in their local currencies.

Freedom isn't free. The decentralized network needs a reason to exist. The mining subsidy isn't permanent. Bitcoin's security model must slowly move from coin base rewards to transaction fees. Early adopters have been spoiled by the high coin base reward / low transaction fee bootstrapping period.

Fiat has the wonderful hidden fee (or tax) known as inflation, which is chosen at the whim of a board of directors (to enrich the few at the expense of the many).

Most of the people in western countries will use Bitcoin as a store of value or long term investment as they have seen how much it had grown in the past.
From it's first official exchange price of $0.07 to first halving in 2012, price was around $12,16 at that time, it grew a tremendous 17371%!!!
And now to second halving this year, price of $635,  BTC grew another 5222%!!!
So I can absolutely understand people who speculate for similar growth in the next years.
Let's assume we could make another gain of 500% until 2020 to halving 3. That would be a price of $3175!
Of course that assumption could be completely naive, but I can understand people who think like that.
So seing Bitcoin and treating it as a digital gold is imo not the dumbest.
Sure spending and using it as currency aprreciated and needed as well. But the smart guys who know about the potential will buy back the amount they have spent before.

like any other bitcoin fellow i also like to play with the number in to the moon scenarios. the fun thing about this is, that nobody or nothing in the case of bitcoin has done this before in a globally connected world. so nobody can really say where this has the potential to end up. but if you just look on the number of people using bitcoin then there is a lot of potential. starting now you are late to the party but not to late since we are the first percent to use bitcoin if it goes global.
but will this happen if everybody just holds? no, or at least not that quick. so we do need to not only invest and hold, but also use it. even if it is not much.
maybe just buy bitcoin for holding and spent in bitcoin what you earn in bitcoin. this would be a start. also accept bitcoin, even if it is just for you friends or small stuff you sell. 

Sadly that's not how most people think and never will. Plenty of humans lack an innate sense of bigger picture. Still, hopefully there are enough relatively smart folks who can process that.

I do not think we need a special incentive for the first world population. Most of them have the money to buy and try Bitcoin on their own when they see a need to own or use them. As long as the current paper money system is working this way that the inflation is low and that you can buy daily needed products with it, only enthusiasts will switch to Bitcoin or alternative currencies.
It is time-wasting in my opinion to convince someone who will not directly have an advantage from the switch. It would make more sense to incentive second or third world people. Many people there would definitely have an advantage to switch to alternative currencies like BTC.

Mmmh how the fuck you don't pay to spend fiat? You mean physically? Well physical cash will be removed in the future so what then? Everything will have some kind of tax, well it does right now already.

i can't see bitcoin hitting mainstream first world any time soon or at all... for one the price is way way to unstable me as a merchant why take bit coins when say i sell a product at 1 bitcoin today and then tommorow it could be worth half that price... we need a more stable market and less this bull shit hacking and exchanges going down... all it takes is 1 neg thing to scare people from the 100 positve things they hear and read....

trying to keep capacity down to force a fee war today is stupid to a magnitude of 21million.
fee's are not important today, the block reward exists.
fee's are just considered an unneeded bonus right now.

the fee's become important in 20+ years, it may even be longer then that if we keep bitcoin being useful to have the side effect of a larger market cap so that the reward amounts to a healthy fiat value to cover miners electric bill.

increasing capacity means more people. more people means less each person has to pay to get to a combined total that benefits miners.
this is something that can happen naturally without impacting people.

as for thinking that spending 10cents is meaningless.. that is the mindset of the western world and the mindset of people only caring about market caps. bitcoin needs and should remain useful. afterall once people start to think 20cents fee is acceptable and a $10 holding is just spam then you are just throwing people out of bitcoin making it as corrupt as the fiat banking world.

and this is coming from someone with hundreds of bitcoins.. but atleast i can put aside my greed and see bitcoin for what it is and what it should be

by going the speculation route of not having merchants. the bitcoin valuation will pump and dump more often. so the only way to stabalise bitcoin is to have a natural growth of users and merchants.. (which has a natural side effect of making speculators rich, so no lose situation) rather than the pure speculative route of barriers to entry, forcing capacity not to grow purely to increase fee's now for something meaningless over the next 2 dacades, and large whale investors having no real world uses of it.

natural growth of users and merchants is the logical, sensible route

alright. buying bitcoin to pay for shopping is silly and even it is stupidity. but what about those people who work for bitcoin and earn bitcoin? they need to pay with bitcoin or exchange bitcoin to fiat.
everyone here is not getting bitcoin just for holding reason.

 Well I know natural growth is the best for btc. the worst thing tho is all these hacks and exchanges going scam or closing with users funds.. wall Street would never just close with funds and the exchanges need some better control or face it bitcoin will stay where it is as no legit and trusted place to sell and buy them... alot of people will not trust people they don't know or if they can't see what there funds are doing at all times...

So maybe I will change and say bitcoin can go mainstream when there is a transparent and trusting exchange that show what and where all user funds are at all time and that has no problem spending millions on security

I think that this topic is quite complicated. I cant see any situation where to put in those incentives your are saying. Maybe bitcoin is really not for buying goods? But this thing would rrally matter on how are we going to use bitcoin

Every discussion isn't about the block size. The fact is fees need to take over as the mechanism for securing the block chain. It should be gradual so we don't have the shock of spoiled brats crying about high fees (which we already have today with the currently ridiculously low fees). The block reward has halved twice now, it's perfectly reasonable to expect fees to start taking some of the burden, today.

[offtopic block size debate pushed into every thread franky1 posts in]

Bitcoin is not, and never will be, suited for mainstream mundane transaction volumes while every-transaction-is-stored-on-the-permanent-record-which-every-full-node-must-keep-forever. It's nonsensical to even try and achieve such a thing. Bitcoin can't compete with Paypal or VISA (or any other centralized service) when it comes to everyday transactions. And it shouldn't. Bitcoin provides censorship-proof value transfer, and any and every change must be approached with that in mind. Ignoring it while trying to compete with centralized services is a sure fire way to destroy the very thing that makes Bitcoin useful.

Every transaction does not need to be censorship-proof as long as the option exists.

Franky1, your problem is that you can't see the forest for the trees. That and you think every discussion is about the block size.

[/offtopic block size debate pushed into every thread franky1 posts in]

Bitcoin's barrier to entry is having the appropriate level of understanding to realize that there is a need for a system of value transfer that is outside of the reach of those who would choose to exert control over everything. Most people don't understand this. Quite the opposite, most people favor those controls as long as they are fed the line that it's put in place to fight bogeymen. Anyone who is willing to sacrifice their freedom for alleged temporary security has no reason to use Bitcoin.

To be honest, for the first world, unless something happens with the mainstream financial situation and they lose a lot of their work (houses, cars, bank accounts, etc.), they have no incentive. The status quo works for a ton of them already.

With the third world they can think of Bitcoin as a way to make more money and live more comfortable lives. For the first world, their fiat would serve them just fine.

Let's think about it this way. There will be 21 Million coins and in many videos where Bitcoins are introduced to new people they're made aware of this and also told that Bitcoin at one point will be scarce and will increase in price a lot. Keeping this in mind most people prefer storing Bitcoins rather than spending because they expect it be be of higher value cause of the limit that it'll reach one day for mining. The incentive to increase spending for Bitcoins would be to generally accept Bitcoins as a payment at more Brick and mortar stores which would induce people to buy goods for cheap. Probably a discount on goods purchased using Bitcoins would be nice cause it helps sellers eliminate credit card fees in Western counterparts.

Bitcoins should be advertised as a currency to help the decentralization trend and motivate them to spend it to buy electronic and digital goods as well as daily necessities. To have this happen we'll need a Debitcard operator that provides a Bitcoin debit card for almost the same yearly fee as we pay to our banks for fiat debit cards. We will also need to eliminate monthly transaction fees and ATM fees for it. This way people can use Bitcoins to buy anything outside even if the vendor doesn't accept Bitcoins at their POS.

If we use cheaper price as an incentive the profit for the merchants will be very small or even zero.

Then whats the incentive for merchants to use bitcoin?

Bitcoin advantages like lower transaction fees has to be the incentive.

Lazy much?

the only incentive you are going to get is if you start with yourself and start asking the businesses you deal with to accept bitcoin. this means you should let them know that you are willing to spend bitcoin not fiat on their site and little by little when everyone is sending this kind of requests to services and businesses they eventually are going to add bitcoin payment and it will grow slowly.

Yes maybe we need an incentive to encourage or motivate people to use Bitcoin. But in what ways? Who will provide the incentives?

I do not know how this incentive systems work but for me a government has na big role to play if we want more people to used bitcoin.  Example, you get a rebates when you pay your taxes,fines via bitcoin and so forth.How can you convince someone to used bitcoin if in the first place it is illegal in your country? :)

I've been saying this for a long time OP.

Bitcoins initial success was based on a business that absolutely required people to learn how to use it. If you wanted to buy drugs on the Silk Road you had to use Bitcoin.

If we could start a mainstream (legal) business or product that everyone wanted which required the use of Bitcoin (like Silk Road did) we could start tons of people learning about and using Bitcoin. The question is, "what do we sell or what kind of business do we run"?

What product cannot be purchased by any other means, is in high demand, and can't be easily duplicated by another company? Unfortunately, the only one I can think of is drugs.

I was wondering about something. We see many services offers bitcoin debit/credit cards. It is easy way to spend your bitcoin and use it  basically everywhere where card payments are accepted.
But I was under the impression that this way of using bitcoin is actually not good at all for bitcoin adoption. It only helps service owners to earn more money.

So my question is: should we use it or avoid it?

No. A thousand times no. The core idea of Bitcoin was never about being the cheapest way to do transactions or to receive large discounts compared to fiat money. That's only propaganda spread by guys like Andresen, Hearn and Ver. The core idea behind Bitcoin is to establish a sound form of money that is decentralized and independent from toxic interventionist policy of central banks. That alone is a gigantic incentive to use Bitcoin.

Bargain hunters that use any kind of coupon regardless of its privacy implications are certainly not the target group of Bitcoin. We don't need mass acceptance based on such motives, as these people miss the most important aspect of Bitcoin's invention: enabling monetary freedom.

Given time, there will be more than enough opportunity for a lot of people to realize the huge benefit of Bitcoin's decentralized nature as they will exposed to rampant fiat inflation.

ya.ya.yo!

I can agree with this but we should not get confused with the idea of incentive and idea of building awareness. Free money is not the way we should focus on but we should build awareness with the comparison of features in fiat and bitcoin. People will use bitcoin once they find that it is better than fiat but on the other hand they will convert their bitcoin in fiat if they get it for free.

A few things that would help spread awareness and expand adoption are:
1) More bitcoin debit and credit cards
2) More bitcoin ATMs
3) More retailers and service providers that accept bitcoin. I know that Tesla accepts bitcoin, but imagine if General Motors or Mercedes accepted it? Both manufacturers have vast, international user bases. I think there are some synergies that could be cross marketed with one of their hybrid or electric vehicles. And even if you could not purchase a new vehicle with bitcoin, a step in the right direction would be to accept car note or lease payments in bitcoin.

I don't know about debit/credit cards, people will have to buy bitcoins to deposit on a card, don't look pratical... They can skip the bitcoin and save money.

ATM for me are a little bit useless right now.

The real point here is make the people accept bitcoin in the commerce, I think we can start by online stores and things like that since the block timer isn't pratical to local stores.

About the cars... Who have 50+ bitcoin to buy a car? I don't see much people buying.

First of all to make it possible u have to make more and more people educated about it then only u can expect that to happen .and there should be more and more bitcoin cards and atm cards and there should be erasion of dark markets .

You have a point but the possibilities of being adopted is still there because it would really depend on car owners or company to accept or adopt bitcoin just like what tesla did but i think it would really takes time since people doesnt really know too much about bitcoin and only a small percentage all over the entire population is aware on bitcoin existence.

The trouble is, if you make something scarce they WON'T spend it. This is why economists fear deflation - because if the currency of an entire country is strengthening, people start hoarding it, and all economic activity stops.

IMO the breakthrough will be made with one of the inflationary alts, say doge or steem. Bitcoin will be used as digital gold.

Absolutely right, the right way before that can happen is the way we provide an understanding of what is bitcoin? and what are the advantages of using bitcoin. With that I think we can make it above. Because I believe bitcoin users are still only a few percent of the population of the earth.

i think there are a long journey for us, bitcoin community to give explaining for people in out side and we need to teach them to know bitcoin and ask them to use bitcoin. as long as we can do this, i am sure that in future bitcoin users will become first world population which use bitcoin. i think the incentive for us is the high price of bitcoin which can we sell into the market.

Looking back at my post, I think it's clear that we are not going to see a mainstream adoption of the first world until the governments get rid of cash because until then the average person is not going to miss its use. The average person uses cash constantly, so once you take cash away from them we will see what's obvious: they will look for an alternative and here is when bitcoin gill get massively adopted as the substitute for the underground economy.

Jobs!

The only incentive people need to have is to get paid in Bitcoin for their jobs. Jobs suck, minimal wage laws make people unemployed.

Unemployed people need jobs, therefore Bitcoin should provide jobs to unemployed people ,and get paid in Bitcoin for doing it.

Anywhere from micro-jobs to full time individual contractors, all jobs should be paid in Bitcoin.

You have a good point there, we have already so many alternatives to paying with the credit card, fiat, and debit card when we are paying for stuff like the groceries and gas. The average joe will not find bitcoin attractive if they cannot spend them on the stores they use frequently.

I saw lately on the forum that Starbucks start accepting bitcoins, this is a good starting point. The more store who will accept it, the more people will are willing to acquire them. As soon the giants will start accepting bitcoins, mass adoption will start ;)

If what you are saying is true that the bitcoin is not for going to the shop and paying with it , then what is bitcoin used for ? , i mean all the people that have bitcoin are actually using it to buy things and spend money , why would you even own bitcoin for ? , because you want more money , it is true that you can buy it with fiat but bitcoin gives us so much potential and freedom that is why we use it.

From the way I see it the initiative that bitcoin needs is more places where you could use it on , bitcoin has not received the attention it deserves that is why some people don’t even know about it and that is why it should be used in more places like amazon or eBay as a payment method so people start using as if it was a credit card.

Exactly. So many threads about the same thing. Until somebody spends some casn nothing is going to ahppen.

You are both right that nobody in their right mind will spend his personal cash to advertise Bitcoin in a big manner. But we can all still do something. Start using it, not just holding. If you run a business then give a small discount for people paying in Bitcoin. If you run a Bitcoin company then you could do some advertisement for your business and this would also be a litte advertisement for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin won't go down to $100 even if government coin invented.
Government interested to get control as much as possible through digital currency and they could freeze your funds.
Bitcoin has power due to decentralized system and government don't like this idea.
People will automatically interested to bitcoin as too much advantages offered which quite different from fiat money, it growing as time goes on and fiat value decrease over time.
The incentive should be stores/services and big companies accepted bitcoin as legal payment.

The incentives to use bitcoin are already there and are the characteristics that make bitcoin such a great currency, awareness will rise as governments of the world step up in their nonsense of trying to know everything you do, including what you do with your money.

However all these supposed advantages does not represent anything significant for the common people. Unfortunately the bitcoin ecosystem is so in the hands of technicians and engineers that we think that all people must understand about advanced technologies to adopt bitcoin, and I think that is a regrettable mistake.

I think getting our hard earned money out of the hands of the greedy bastard banks is the best idea to best honest.
For liberation reasons I would say. Also its just cool using magic internet money ^^

Incentive why? Someone travels from Eurozone country  to USA then to China, then to UK and back to his country. How many conversions? How many fiat money did he lose ? Let speak about average Joe who lives is a european country and go to take a cup of coffee with bitcoin wallet. The cafe owner happily accepts his bitcoin and after 2 working days he will see the corresponding money to his bank account. Why cafe owner is happy? Because if Joe was buying his coffee with Visa debit card the cafe owner would have to pay 3% to the bank except all maintenance cost every month (say POS). Then a friend of Joe wants to buy a new laptop from an e-shop but he is a scammer. He buys his laptop using his PayPal account and after 1 month he opens a dispute and asks the charge back policy. So I would like to ask. Do we need an incentive or we need to inform people about pros and cons of bitcoin? 

This will not be enough. Most do not even know about it or see it as a problem, so telling them is a good start, but as sole reason this would not do the trick. It is just like telling someone that smoking is bad for there health, they will not stop.

I think we need to wake up, $15B marketcap can be bought easily by 50 millionaires from a second or even third world country if they decide not to spend much each one of them, if people and specially the richest in the world wanted to buy and hold bitcoins they would've done it already don't you think? we should face the facts some where, 99% of human kind will never truly understand and realize bitcoin and it's worth.
It will remain always and forever something for average people worldwide as each person eventually will hold a few coins and yes we'll see times when price hits $50,000 per coin maybe then general population see the true potentials of crypto.

HELLO
wake up

advertising bitcoin is not the problem.

using bitcoin is.
it needs to be simplified!!
even hardware wallets need to be revamped. the issue is that it is too cumbersome, complicated and needs downloads/browser extensions or server access.. plus needing to copy and paste lengthy gobbledegook addresses and decimal numbers

but there is a solution, should someone want to do it.
SMART WATCHES/FITBIT wristbands

just google "programmable smart watches with NFC" and you'll see the tech is available.


barclays are ahead of the game. first they are doing it with their native fiat payment method,
https://www.shop.bpay.co.uk/categories/buy-bpay/product/wristband/wristband
https://i.imgur.com/NmBx91M.png

but barclays is knee's deep in hyperldger so next will be a hyperledger wristband, which will make hyperledger (bitcoins altcoin(banker) competitor) appealing to people that are not paranoid geeks

just start swarming the big services with email requests asking them to add bitcoin payment. for example starting asking Amazon and ebay to accept bitcoin, or any other big examples like these two.
then when they start receiving requests like this every day, they will add it eventually. how do you think steam finally gave in and accepted bitcoin after 5-6 years?
then the adoption will also follow.

I guess it too late for that even before that happens the government in the world has already launched the fiat virtual currency in full implementation. It is a big disappointing news after our hard work in promoting bitcoins to our friends and different groups and forums this news has appeared.

I was thinking of saving bitcoins for an expected increase in value but I guess I'll gonna convert them to cash sooner than expected. I just hope I am wrong.

 Don't forget South Americans... Places like Venezuela (facing a crisis right know) are adopting Bitcoin to save purchasing power..

So why are they not mass adopting Bitcoin? Or are they and we are just not noticing? Bitcoin could be a good way of at least trying to escape a harsh inflation. I see why some poorer countries do not use Bitcoin for micro transactions because of the high fees, but what are the reasons for the rest?

i doubt that people in those countries (mostly third world developing countries with little resources and lack of interenet access) are really "adopting" bitcoin. there may be some increased activity in these countries because of their economy situation but in the end they don't have enough money to feed their family, so they are not really looking for big investments.

I think it is a long way to go that people going for digital cryptocurrency .and we have no control no matter what ineciative we take , its upto in the hands of government that they will accept it or not .

I don't think that any government can officially accept Bitcoin.
It's because bitcoin is decentralized and can't be financially regulated by financial international institutions.
So, Bitcoin will always remain alternative to ''hard currency'' and another, great'' option for online payment but I don't think it will be possible to receive salary in bitcoin or pay loan in the bank with btc.
 

I really do not understand why people always think that poor and developing countries have a lack of internet access. The number of people with smartphones is bigger then the number of people wit access to clean water. You do not need to make a big investment in Bitcoin. Just exchange some of your local currency to Bitcoin and you might even make some money.

Giving incentives from paying by bitcoins instead of cash, discounts and rebates to name a few. since even the first world country are always looking for extra savings on what they buy.

I will want to disagree with op on the first page about the fact that since the second and third world countries are not in the Bank net then they will automatically see Bitcoin as an alternative. This I disagree, I am from a developing country and one the sectors that have grown at an increasing rate is the banking sector and this has take ages with various incentives put in place to get majority of the citizens in the Bank net, these they have been doing, at the same they are yet to finish not to talk of now bringing in a new currency to solve the solution... Where do we even start from?...

Because living there will require much more money compared to third world country and that's why so many people in first world country when moving out to the third world country will be instant rich as long they have savings in form of their own currencies therefore people need to be smart to keep their money efficiently without doing anything which is unnecessary and yeah I think that giving special discount for using bitcoin will be very effective but the problem is no one is going to do this unless someone who have some shop but also bitcoin geek.

I disagree with you there should be no incentives for using Bitcoins, Bitcoin is already gaining popularity and it's should be highlighted because it's decentralised, it's easier to use. It's owned by none and it's safe and secure what else incentives you want. Plus it's the risk prone to any outside events. Incentives is a bad idea and it should not be implemented at all.

Hmm, I see it is indeed as you say. That someone who already believe and have enough knowledge in the bitcoin will certainly get the richness in the near future and different from those who work all day. Because in the bitcoin we can still benefit by only storing a few bitcoin owned, and this cannot be found in other currencies. Bitcoin is indeed something will be the best investment place in the world and I think in the future will be much better from now on (population levels)
 

Bitcoin has already a lot advantages against fiat, besides the huge potencial to get more value over time, sure some discounts can be made with bitcoin that with fiat couldnt be possible, but those is suposed to be the extra income the seller will get since he/she will save a good ammount at the fees it would pay to sell their products.

To be educated on this field first that means a lot of advantage of course. Because you do learn from them much more you could use it to set up an earning solution for you and to your possible client you just have to educate them properly.

The companies that actually use bitcoin are small companies, if we want for bitcoin to become something that everyone uses and become the best alternative for fiat we need big companies to step up and start using it, like eBay or Amazon to make it as a payment method so that it becomes more popular.

The question is why would big companies want that? It is extra work without benefits. I would not count on eBay, since they are in bed with PayPal. Amazon did not want to because Bitcoin was to insignificant if i remember correctly. We need to use alternatives like openBazaar and if they will become big enough this will not only be good for Bitcoin but also force other platforms to use it.

You are correct in a sense but while the average person right now might not think a lot for the characteristics of bitcoin it does not mean that at some point it will not become important in the future.