Bitcoin Forum

The Bitcoin Education Project is looking for economists to help develop content for our free crowdsourced online course:

https://www.udemy.com/bitcoin-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-crypto/

Please either post in this thread or PM me for more details

Wow! Excellent work :)

Great site!

I'm willing to contribute, but I still don't have a clear overview of bitcoin economy. Basically I think bitcoin is suitable to function as a store of value (currently there is no similar product as powerful as bitcoin), but it has to be visualized like gold to get wider acceptance, especially woman

As a medium of exchange, it is a mixed bag, unstable price, limited exchange, consumer not able to do a charge back, etc...

I don’t have any problem to understand Bitcoins as a carrier of value. With all respect, why do you think women need to think about gold?... :)

Are you a bitcoin miner or just a buyer/user?

I'm an educator seeking to spread our currency to the world. I need good economists to help explain the complex issues of a deflationary currency and the metrics we use to understand how bitcoin is doing.

How are you planning to pay for all this if you are not a miner? Even miners don't mine bitcoins for free.

The say way Satoshi paid to develop bitcoin. Through volunteers and community donations. I am working for free and I got Udemy to support us at no cost. We will never have to pay for bandwidth for our lectures. The more people who enter the bitcoin world; the more money my bitcoins are worth.

I would consider myself darn close to an economist (my website - learneconomicsnow.com) I'd be willing to help out, PM me details

It's important to understand that starting bitcoin and developing it are not the same thing: the former involves Mining (creation of X), the latter — Minting (promotion of X as a thing of value — a.k.a. sales). Your service clearly helps turn bitcoins (a "mined form" of binary code) into BTCs (a "minted form" of binary code). So, the question becomes, how do you motivate someone to sell something that has no utility to begin with when there's not even a tiny commission attached to a sale?

Let's face it, it is in the miners' interest to start paying the sellers to increase BTC's circulation... Otherwise, their innovation (bitcoin) will continue to have less than a $3 underlying value (i.e. the cost of extracting a bitcoin), until it finally would hit zero after all bitcoins have been mined and most miners have long moved onto the next lucrative opportunity.

this is a youtube course I did on currency and money to see what I can do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2NvDFEhCM&list=PL4B597A0247C4D0C4&index=4

I'm not entirely sure how you are linking this to mining. My goal is to educate the general public on bitcoin. The only thing this could accomplish would be for more demand for bitcoins thus reducing supply and increasing prices.

I'm linking your service to selling something that has been created out of a thin air. The only sure way to create demand for bitcoins is to turn them into BTCs through increased spending, not hoarding. So, figure out a way to pay your lecturers in BTC.

It wouldn't reduce the supply, you'd just be shifting the demand curve to the left, the supply curve would stay place (technically ASICS will shift the supply curve to the right)

what are you talking about?

His project works along these lines:
- People stay away from things they don't understand
- People who don't understand cryto won't buy or sell stuff in crypto
- If people are educated to understand crypto they won't stay away
- More people will buy and sell stuff in crypto
- Everyone in the COmmunity wins... what's the problem with this?

Topics that would be discussed in Bitcoin economics:

- The economics of Money (what is money, what is it's function, how does bitcoin do this)
- Economics of Bitcoin distribution (how does the method of bitcoin creation effect who gets them and the structure of production "Hint: the structure of production tends to cater towards those closer to money creation than downstream money receivers")
- How different countries rules effect the local use of bitcoin
- How technology effect the use of bitcoin
- The Division of Labor in the bitcoin community

plenty of stuff to write about

Maybe there is a language barrier and he is having difficulty communicating his ideas? Yes you have correctly summarized what I am trying to do. Fair point on supply not decreasing, my point was the demand will drive the price point higher, which is what we want as bitcoin holders.

There won't be any worthwhile buying or selling of products/services without the increase in spending by miners -- they are the only ones who initially seed BTCs into circulation, thus increasing the total BTC money supply (not to be confused with the monetary base of 21 million bitcoins).

that I totally agree with, but most of miners just want to sell there BTC for cash so the more people want BTC to buy goods the more they will pay miners for the coins they've mined then the real BTC economy can begin.

It may help to think of miners as the FED of bitcoin-based economy: they are in complete control of fluctuations in BTC money supply by how much bitcoins they decide to put back into circulation after taking them out through transaction fees.

How do you know that it's the miners who are actually selling their bitcoins? Current exchange rate fluctuations could be due to Smart Money using the Pump and Dump schemes.

I never said it was the miners selling it right now, but right now there isn't so much of a goods market so what else would people really mine it for at this point. The early stage of these coins is just about production, I think we are about 60% of the way through this stage for Bitcoin, after production has peaked then it's about distribution (people setting up goods and services), and the third phase will be major adoption and establishing capital markets in BTC.

How about paying those who promote the adoption of bitcoin through services like The Bitcoin Education Project? We are all in this together, but bitcoin miners have yet to realize that without spending there won't be a bitcoin economy. Hoarding will not get them anywhere in the long-term (the public will soon get tired of the Pump and Dump schemes)... In fact, it may even spell the death of bitcoin, especially if a competing crypto-currency will figure out a way to motivate its miners to spend like there's no tomorrow.

Well then put your money where your mouth is, We are accepting donations:

189tfJJhCJFtkr4MZJgcB3yuGTfUh7cvUL

agreed I sell wallets for .1 BTC

These stages will pretty much come and go without any one of us doing anything significant to aid in their progress... Let's just refer to them as the bitcoin project life-cycle. However, what's important for everyone to agree on at the very early stage (before the final product is shipped for consumption) is what type of bitcoin project do we want to distribute: a make believe virtual economy (a.k.a. yet another MMORPG economy) or a real-world BTC-based economy. I tend to have an affinity for promoting the latter form/shape... What about you?

Do we really want bitcoin to be a more realistic alternative to Second Life (http://secondlife.com/)?

I'm not in need of your service... But miners are — it's in their best interest to generate demand for BTC. Unfortunately, they still believe in bitcoin being GOLD 2.0, not BTC.

Consider it a donation to the economy as said coins will be used for commerce. We already paid for out website with btcs and also some graphics work in btc.

As a manufacturer or just a distributor? In any case, your price is way too low.

At that price it only costs an average miner $0.30 to buy a wallet from you.

How much does it cost you to manufacture/source a wallet?

Much appreciated

Only if you can figure out a way to break the hoarding mentality... Right now your focus seems to be on boosting demand for bitcoins, not on spending them as BTC.

Figured that be a price that would go against the hoarding instincts, but I priced so that even at bitcoin being $60/btc I would still at least breakeven.

these are ductape wallets

check it out here: http://www.coingig.com/AlexMercedStore

It's nice to see listings with no mention of any currency other than BTC. How has coingig.com been working for you so far: is it worth opening a merchant account there?

it's super easy took like 5 seconds to open up the store, it's pretty darn cool and it automatically reprices your lising based on the market price of BTC

Our course mentions bitmit.net and other bitcoin e-commerce websites and will eventually have several lectures to help merchants accept bitcoins. We are actively working at increasing commerce in actual bitcoins.

However, the very first step will always be teaching people the fundamentals of bitcoin. They need to learn how to ride the bike before riding the mountain trails.

I will also mention that we use all BTC donations for services and products sold in BTC. For example btcedproject.org was obtained from orangewebsites.com an icelandic host that sells services in BTC.

Even if you don't decide to donate. I would really enjoy suggestions on how we can encourage more people to use btcs as a medium of exchange. If you'd like to record some lectures, then I'd be happy to post them.

What's there to teach? Currency is currency — there's nothing more to it than understanding where and how to buy/sell things with/for it. You don't need an economist for that.

But it's the bitcoin miners who actually need a lesson or two on how to turn their freshly-mined bitcoins into BTC without the help of "pump and dump scheme" enthusiasts.

However, something tells me that they would need to open up their pockets sooner or later in order to pay for those lessons.

How much are you willing to pay for producing these types of lectures?

Perhaps there's a miner who would like to cover these costs for you?
(Let's see how much in donations you'll get after this discussion.)

I think a project of this nature should be worth around 1% of the entire bitcoin economy. It will resolve the PR issue bitcoin faces and bring the mainstream into the currency. It will compel corporations to build products that will use bitcoin as a medium of exchange. It will bring in non-profits. It will give small businesses the knowledge necessary to start accepting bitcoin for their products and services. Citizens of countries with unstable currency can start transacting with bitcoins instead of their local money. This project's value in my opinion is of equal importance as the development of the protocol itself.

Let me know when you get enough in donations to pay at least 50BTC per lecture. (Naturally, this fee will be halved in about 4 year.)

Lol, well you could always assist us in that donation drive. It's been fun talking to you :)

Don't sell yourself short: your project is worth every satoshi of a 50BTC bounty per lecture.

I really hope the community sees that one day, until then we will just have to keep the faith that fellow bitcoiners will see the wisdom in supporting a project that will make bitcoin mainstream.

It's in the works as we speak... Unfortunately, no bites yet... But, not to worry!

Oh miners, where are you? Here's where you can turn you useless GOLD 2.0 bars into useful BTC currency (https://blockchain.info/address/189tfJJhCJFtkr4MZJgcB3yuGTfUh7cvUL).



Likewise!

I have a degree in economics and I have experience trading been here since 11
I agree the most important thing for bitcoins success is that people in this form get together and do shit, if we don't care they won't. when they don't care you lose yr money

I could teach about trading and staying safe about it

PM me your bio. I'd love to work with you

Most of the economy theories are just a joke, utilized by banks. Swedish central bank even invented a nobel price for those theory that they think will benefit them

A good start is to describe why today's debt based monetary system is flawed

Are they a joke?
Or are they very clever and have been doing exactly as wanted for quite a long time?

OP, I pm'd you.

Hehe, I suspect you're getting a LOT of PM's. There's a lot of budding economists around this place.. xD

The more support the better. Building a revolution here.