Bitcoin Forum

And I mean in the context of your close friends/relatives, I don't mean here, since we obviously know you're into bitcoins.
 
I'm getting at... have you told your friends/family about bitcoins?  Or, like me, do you just avoid doing so because of the weird looks/questions that you're going to get?
 
Case in point, I told my wife, tried to explain about them, and I got stares, and then, "Have you bought any with our money yet?"   
"No, I just mine them, and it costs a little bit more electricity than normal."  [tonto's note, just a few dollars a month since they're 5770s]
"Well whatever, just don't spend any of our money on them."
 
And then the other day when I used some to buy a new Corsair case on newegg, she asks, "So how much did this cost again?"
"None, I used bitcoins to buy them."
"Hmmm, so you didn't use any of our money to buy that?"
"Nope."
"oh ok"
 
And that's all that's ever spoke on it.  So I just avoid it now.  If any of my friends ever tell me (or I overhear them speaking) that they're into bitcoins, I'll tell them, otherwise mum's the word!

Same thing happens to me.
I've mentioned it a few times to some close friends, and I've gotten nothing but confused stares from the computer-illiterate ones. The computer-literate ones, however, began mining. :)

*makes a whipping sound*

My family and friends support me and my dad for example is in with me but for those who give me blank stares I tell them you will hear more about it soon ( kinda like the "you heard it here first" feeling). 

And this is why my fiancee and I each funnel a bit of our expendable income into separate individual checking accounts each month - I don't want to hear "you spent HOW MUCH on video cards?!?" any more than she wants to hear "How the hell much can a purse cost? It's a f***ing BAG!"

In all seriousness though, my fiancee is into bitcoin as well, and is actually the one who found us investors for my mining operations. I'd still be pushing 300 MH/s if it weren't for her efforts (3 GH/s FTW)

I also carry Zimbabwe Dollars and Yugoslav Dinar in my wallet to help explain inflation and fiat currency to random people. I proselytize about bitcoin a lot.

LOL @ Tonto.  That's funny!  I told my girlfriend about it and all I got was "change the topic."  Thank god I don't live with her.

I'm not mentioning them to family lately for a different reason.
I mentioned them when they were trading a few dollars higher - and a couple of family members insisted I buy some for them.
A bit more rallying and I can mention them again perhaps ;)


I imagine bitcoins could be convenient in a lot of households where someone shares a bank account and/or credit card and would rather not raise unnecessary discussions by using them for online purchases.  

You just described the second reason I got into them :)

Me too  ;)

I tell everyone I know and everyone always talks to me about them.  They think I'm half crazy aside from the fact I made a sort of retarded amount of money in a short period of time. 

Now the GF and her friend are trying to become bitcoin entrepeneurs, it's pretty great.

I have tshirts.

i told my gf and my family about bitcoins and how i invested 2.5k into buying mining equipment.

i got yelled at for a few weeks until i showed them the first dwolla transfer for 500$. that shut em up pretty well.

I think you lost a bit of yourself when you're scared of 'weird looks'...

I told about bitcoins to a lot of friends and to family members.

Told them about my escrow services and other biz I'm about to start involving only bitcoins.
80% of their first reaction was: are you sure this is legal.

After some more talk they were more interested and wanna join or get more info by themselves.

My wife is happy that I started that project and support me every day. She's fabulous :).

Talking to my little girl that probably she will use bitcoins when she will grow up, but... she's 6 months old lol, so for the moment she only like when I show him the coinedbits.com Bitcoin coin.

My girlfriend thinks they're cool and she's encouraging of my new hobby/investment... but she has no idea what the ramifications are of these coins.

My sister wants to look into them further, but told me not to mention them until after she passes the bar exam this month. Once passed, she'll start researching and I know she'll be hooked.

My friends are all interested by skeptical. They're waiting to see if others adopt them... they don't want to be first movers.

My father hopes they'll help bring down central banks.

My sister is not terribly computer literate or interested in computers, but she was able to understand hashes and the block chain concept.  She's interested, but no where near enough to be involved.

I've not had the opportunity to try to explain the principles to my mother and her boyfriend.  I expect that if/when I do, their comprehension and reaction will be the same as my sister's.  I gained some credibility with them by being interested in and invested in PM's since around the time the US went into Iraq.

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My girlfriend hates the things.  So I take every opportunity to explain to her how Bitcoin is going to make me super rich and how I might even become the king of planet Earth using them and so forth.  Really over-the-top stuff.  Lotsa fun.

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I'm not aware of any of my immediate co-workers actually buying any.  But we are all computer geeks so the mechanics of how Bitcoin works is not a problem.  We are all interested in economics and politics and society and such.  I'm a bit surprised that more of these people have not gotten interested enough to do some more hands-on testing.

 I'd like to get married one day but I'm not into sharing everything. No matter how close people are we're still 2 separate people. In my experience sharing without being clear about things is where the arguments starts. Thus, if I do get married I'd like it with a prenup, not to protect my wallet, but to protect the relationship by keeping money out of the relationship.

 Does this make sense?

My girlfriend bought 4.8 BTC at MtGox for 16.50 US$ (just before the hack) and she's still waiting to sell them higher... :P

Your missus is a dream killer.

My boss bought bitcoins.

My GF hopes they make me filthy rich.

I had looked into Bitcoin back when it was around $1/BTC and thought it was great, tried to mine but it kept giving me errors so I moved on.

Then I read a few articles here and there, read the one about how Bitcoin had gone from pennies to a couple of dollars and how that was a 2000% increase. I tried mining again, it again gave me errors and I moved on.

Then I read an article in June about how it had been worth $10 at the beginning of the month and skyrocketed to $35 before dropping to $20. At that point I knew that I should no longer wait on the sidelines.

I sent out an e-mail to my family telling them that they should seriously check out Bitcoins, as the family geek to the family I was giving them helpful advice, hoping they might invest a little bit and see it go up to $100 or more.

My brother wrote back asking if this was one of those Nigerian scams. I told him a bit about it and he just responded with some Guardian article about how some legislator wanted to ban Bitcoins and how once that was known the price dropped to $17/BTC. I just responded that of course governments will try to make it illegal, it is competition for them. I also mentioned that $17/BTC was up from $10 just a few weeks prior.

My brother-in-law e-mailed me a link to a libertarian talk show that he listens to and said that they talk about Bitcoins once in a while.

I explained to my wife that we needed to get in on Bitcoins now before it goes up any more. She did not understand it but I told her that it would most likely at least double by the end of the year. We have a $35k balloon loan coming up next year and we are racking our brains on how we will pay for it.

I ended up taking $10k from my Roth IRA and buying Bitcoins.

My mere presence on the first day of enjoyment made my boss become a bitcoin miners. He now owns 11 GPUs, all ATI Radeon.

Hope he at least gave you some sort of a raise for introducing him to BTC!

No one around me knows. Not even my family. I kind of like having money without everyone around me begging for some of it.

hehe, same here (sorta)
i told some, and it was quite an argument (good kind) about it actually paying out till i showed em my first income (a meager 10 euro, but still, proof of concept)

i tell anyone that listens, the more people joining the bigger it gets the more money we all make!
wow, and i wonder why people think its a piramid scheme ;D

I've told my friends. The first time i told my friend "hey, have you heared about bitcoins?" he googled it and ten seconds later, HE was passing ME links!

+2

+3

yeah, going along with what she tells you to do is a sure fire way to win respect.  news flash: women already have pussies, they don't want another one.

I don't want to see my friends and family get burned. I told everyone about it when it was at 3, then 8, then 18. Once it hit 30 and dropped I stopped talking about it. Most of my money gets converted into bitcoins. I just don't endorse them anymore. My mom on the other hand used to work for IRS and thinks this will be huge. 

While I love the bitcoin concept and am learning a lot since discovering them... I hope you are joking.

If not... good luck!



As for me... I have told only my computer geek friends, a couple of which have toyed around with it like me. I don't tell the women in my life anything about bitcoin, or any of my finances... learned from experience to keep the money conversations private ;)

Normally, I wouldn't feel the need to respond to such stupidity, but this decision doesn't just affect you. Have you even read the posts on this forum? Even the more realistic Bitcoin devotees admit that, with the speculators clearing out, the price will never be as high as it was during the bubble's peak. I hope for your wife's sake that you don't get wiped out.

I mention Bitcoin in many different circles, so far no one has ever shown enough interest to think anything other than "oh that is neat"

A family member I told says that Bitcoin would cause havoc, riots, etc if it catches on.   That family member is also super religious, not sure if they are tied together, but I am pretty sure a money that can unify the nations is part of the sign of the times.

I want a Zimbabwean note!