Bitcoin Forum

Targeted advertisement - Who would BitCoins appeal the most to?

tl;dr: Getting more miners could be the most important thing that could happen to BitCoins. More people mine, more people have BitCoins, more people have BitCoins more people will trade BitCoins and finally more people trade BitCoins more people and businesses will trust and accept BitCoins. Gamers could be those miners.


I didn't decide to write this thread with the intention of posing the tittle question to the community but perhaps to offer my own answer. Ever since a week ago when I first learned about BitCoins my GPU is super hot hashing at max speed and my wheels in my brain are spinning supper fast and all I think about is how, who, why, when BitCoin this and BitCoin that.   8)

Anyway so far I've come to understand and figure out quite a few things but there's one in particular that I wanted to share. Basically I was thinking about the already existing coins and what the current situation is where the difficulty to successfully find the right hash of a block is so high that my laptop GPU if I ran a BitCoin client on it would need just under 2years on average to find one. Basically I figured out that at this point unless you are part of a mining pool and own a really good graphics card it's just not worth to even try mining on your own. So that got me thinking further and I said to myself: "if only those with really good graphics cards could see their balance grow reasonable fast then who would be ideal to present BitCoins to and try to get them onboard first?"

And the answer is simple: "Gamers!"

Think about it, gamers have usually decent hardware, they run their PC almost all the time anyway even if they don't always play games, they nowadays usually have a decent internet connection and they are geeky enough to quickly understand the principles behind BitCoins.

So the next question I asked myself is pretty obvious: "if the answer is gamers, then how can I best reach the most of them?"

And the answer is again fairly simple: "Social media!"

I think it could be of great benefit to try our hardest and find various gamer gurus either on youtube or facebook and try and get them onboard to accept BitCoin donations for their otherwise free content. They could even post a promotional animated video if we had a really good one and expose all their fans to BitCoins! For example there this guy on youtube, huskystarcraft who has over 400k subscribers! OVER 400k! Imagine if he posts a promotional video on his channel and gets even a fifth of them interested enough to start mining/using BitCoins!


Bottom line: I think it would harm the BitCoins project immensely if the community didn't grow fast enough and the next 5mio BTC also stayed in such a small circle which otherwise I think is perfectly fine but at the same time hurting the projects appeal. And what I mean by that is that when people learn that such a small number already has so many BTC and then they see how hard besides buying or charging it is to get them, they can get quickly suspicious and discouraged..
We have to find the right group of people who if they decided to participate have a fighting chance of mining some on their own before we rely on mostly buyers of BitCoins and especially before we rely on businesses offering their services for BitCoins.

You're missing the entire point of bitcoins.

Oh? Educate me then :)

Bitcoin’s not about mining.

Please read my post again. Pay special attention to the bold part.

Read our replies again. It doesn't matter who mines the coins, as that is not the main point of bitcoins. The main point is to have a better replacement currency, and you don't get currency for nothing in most cases. If I want USD I have to work for it or buy some with another currency. Same with bitcoins.

I don't understand? Are you objecting to a large number of new miners?

p.s.: I understand perfectly well what the main purpose of BitCoins is. But I also understand how markets usually get there.

You shouldn't market Bitcoin mining. Market bitcoins and their superiority to other currencies.

Focusing on mining will just flood the market with miners who just want to sell coins to get USD with no intention of using bitcoins.

LOL! Kinda like Gold miners flooded the market during the gold rush? You can't be serious?!


Getting more miners could be the most important thing that could happen to BitCoins. More people mine, more people have BitCoins, more people have BitCoins more people will trade BitCoins and finally more people trade BitCoins more people and businesses will trust and accept BitCoins.

Don't tell me you really think the market made a conscious plan to implement gold as money because of it's properties?

I agree, the more miners, the better, for the same reason.

I can feel a bitcoin community split coming on...as the bitcoin phenomenon grows there is going to be alot of new people (like hazek and i) coming along with different ideas and views on how to get our hands on a few BTC....bitcoin has appeal to different people for different reasons, i also think bitcoin would appeal to some gamers but not in a mining (grinding way) thou some may like that aspect of it. i reckon bitcoin and the community has a kinda role play aspect that would appeal to some role play gamers...especially once nefario gets the stock (black ::) market up and running.

   

You're continuing to miss the point.

You should not market bitcoin as "Hey look, generate cash!"

It should be marketed as "Look at the improvements we've made over other currencies".

By marketing bitcoin as about mining, you're giving people the wrong idea. We can't afford for that to happen. Then nobody would take it seriously, and whenever it would be mentioned it'd be thought about as mining oriented.

Which, it's not.

Does it matter if it's mining oriented if people start using it because of that?

Pretty soon a single gpu will be useless to mine with unless in a pool.

Lie to people by telling them they are guaranteed coins and they will hate you for it. The truth might hurt initially but it saves worse disapointment later on.

Dont claim mining is bitcoins only use case because that is the least attractive thing about it.

Yes because people will generate coins and simply sell them for cash, rather than actually use them.

Don't get me wrong, advertising to gamers is a good idea. Usually they're technically inclined and interested in things like this. Just focus on how it is better as a currency rather than mining.

Personally I would say both sides should be advertised equally.

Without people using bitcoins, mining becomes pointless.
Without mining, spending bitcoins becomes impossible.

It should be included in the explanation of bitcoin, but it shouldn't be the main point, more on the level of the block chain in importance, and the important thing about mining is that it keeps the network safe, and for that work you get a reward.

Any serious person who will look at BitCoins one the first things they'll notice once they learn about how it all actually works is what I now understand. And that is that right now there's around 3k nodes and 5,5mio coins out there. And these 5.5mio coins are being held a by a small minority, probably far less then 3k. And there's no way the trading price of $0.9/BTC is realistic with such a low volume and so many people sitting on their stash.

And before you read my reply any further let me make it perfectly clear that I don't care how many who has. I understand what this invention is about. I'm an an-cap supporter and an austrian economist first and nothing would make me happier if the whole world would use a currency that couldn't get hijacked by governments and inflated at will. But that's not your typical user and never will be.

If you want this invention to really take off you can not have a small minority who will sit on all the coins and suppress the supply in order to bid up the price because people just wont buy. What you need is more people who own some, not because they bought them, not because they charged them but because they also mined them. It's irrelevant why these people hold some as long as they do and if they trust BitCoins they'll start trading them with others and the volume in trades will build up and BitCoins will gain mainstream credibility.


I mean do you really think gold became world wide currency because select few people had most of it when it was first discovered? Of course not! People all around the world found some, some found more, some found less, everyone though shared the same opinion about it and eventually they started to trade it as money.

I have a feeling that there's a lot of brilliant minds on this forum when it comes to software and computing who utterly fail when it comes to history and economics and especially human nature. You got to understand these things if you want to see this invention really take off.

p.s.: I call it an invention because I can't really call it a commodity because you can't make anything out of a BitCoin but it's also not a currency, not just yet.

Bitcoin growth depends on a marketplace where you can buy and sell goods and services.

Currently, there's almost zero commercial trade. Most volume right now is already traded on the shuffling of speculative papers or the dumping of more coin onto the marketplace from miners.

Mining won't get people fundamentally interested in Bitcoins. It might lure them into the community, but as soon as they realize how non-lucrative it is, they'll need a more fundamental interest in Bitcoins to stick around.

So, advertising on the appeal of generating coin might be a bad angle.

I have no opinion on who holds coins and whether it's good that a minority hold a large amount of coins.

Read carefully.

Do not introduce bitcoins and push mining them because it is not about mining, that is merely a small part of a superior currency.

Introduce the currency and why it is better, mining will follow.

I can understand both of you, but I think it would be a lot more efficient to advertise to web merchants who are fed up with paypal fees. Imagine buying the adwords "paypal sucks" and linking to bitcoin.org  :)

Maybe it's you who should read my posts more carefully.

First of all I can do what ever the hell I want. Second of all, do you seriously think businesses will accept BitCoins just because of their properties and not pay any attention to who actually has them and how much they're really worth?


Sorry sir, that's not how gold became money, and it's not how BitCoin use as money will spread either. Study history.



Show me one business which wont pay any attention to their real value at this point determined by the various exchanges and will focus sololey on it's good properties? Do you really think a business will just decide: "Oh look a digital currency that has all the right rules and properties, lets gamble and sell our services for it and who cares if by the end of the month we can't buy anything for them!" Will ... never... happen.

They'll look at the exchanges, at the volume, at the number of bid vs ask offers, they'll look at the number of nodes and then they'll look at the number of all the BitCoins currently existing and they'll come to the same conclusion as I did: "It's a way too small market with way to few people hoarding way to many BitCoins for them to have a stable or realistic price right now. I'm not going to risk my money with it."



But new miners have little to no risk in trying out BitCoins. All they have to risk is some CPU/GPU time and the money to pay the electricity bill. And if they get some, hurray for them and if they don't who cares. And those who'll get them will value them because of it's properties and eventually they'll offer them in their own personal trades to other people they know and it will only snowball from there.. That's how you get BitCoins popular! I mean FFS just look at the gold rush period..

More miners is the best thing that could happen to BitCoins! Besides.. are you saying I'm not free to advertise BitCoins how ever I see fit?  ::)

I think we should target the Indian economy - especially the underground market.


There is a flight of value  from the country looking for a way to store it. Bitcoins could be the answer. So how do we start to reach out ?

Maybe approaching Indian universities and yes even Indian gamers ?

I sense an opportunity.  :)

@hazek the biggest problem with getting people into the bitcoin economy using mining is that the same number of of bitcoins goes into distribution through mining no matter how many miners you get, so in the end there's not a big impact on the economy.  By contrast even someone who brings in $5 from USD has a scalable impact--if you get one million people to do it for some reason then that would double the existing value base.  The per person impact from mining is also very small--consider that your typical GPU miner is only bringing in a few bitcoins a week.  Whereas I've talked 6 or 7 people into putting a hundred or so of their fiat currency into bitcoins, and the immediate impact of that is greater than what your typical gpu miner will end up holding in many years.

Right now there are two main ways to grow bitcoin--building useful services on it, and offering it as a beautiful diversification opportunity for small-scale investing.

Most of the people in this community are technically inclined, which means you have lots of people asking for technical advice all the time.  Here's something I suggest doing--within your social group, suggest to people that they take a small amount of cash they are not afraid of losing ($50-$200) and invest it in bitcoin.  Explain that investing in bitcoin now is comparable to buying shares in google or microsoft when it first launched.  Remind people that bitcoin is new and still developing so this is a high-risk, high-reward scenario rather than something they should bet the house on.  Then help walk them through the cumbersome process of actually getting funds into bitcoins.  If every bitcoin user did this at the rate I do this (about 1 new person every two weeks) we would have a very strong base for the valuation of bitcoin.  Remember, just to keep the market stable people have to purchase 7200 bitcoins per day from fiat currencies (the amount being mined) so the sooner we can sell a few million to a few thousand people the sooner bitcoins will settle securely around a decent value.

Once this is done, it will be easier to transact in bitcoin because the existing valuation is secure.  Food for thought.

So wait a second, maybe it's me and I'm stupid but do I understand why what you're saying here can possibly do good for BitCoins.

Are you saying that even though the same number of bitcoins go into distribution through mining it's better if less people mine and those new bitcoins get into the hands of a small minority then if we had more and more people mine and more and more people held at least some of them? Is that what you're saying?

Again it could be me and it could be my stupidity but the way I understand your statement is that "we should try to get many people to offer something of real value to a small group of people who have something of yet little or no value"? Is that seriously your logic?

LOL good lucky with that.

I strongly believe BitCoins has an insurmountable potential and is a truly great invention but even so I'm not willing to spend even 20€ on them with the way things are right now. But I do mine ~0.1 per day.

What emansipater describes is actually very close to how I look at it.  I initially thought this was a good idea, but TheKid has really good points.  If you promote mining, then people are going to be disappointed with the amount they are actually able to mine.  They'll fail to see the point and bitcoins won't stick.  However, sell bitcoins as a great cross gaming platform mechanism to exchange various in-game currencies and I think you might have a hook for gamers (in fact, I wonder if someone might be able to do well building an exchange explicitly targeted at that).  Not having to deal with paypal fees, etc would be a great selling point I would think (I'm not a gamer, so I'm not totally sure).

You do have good arguments about the need to more widely distribute bitcoins (to trade in bitcoins (other than currency exchange), a critical mass of people are needed that actually have bitcoins and are willing to use them.  I'm promoting it via my facebook circles...in just a couple of days I've gotten three people to give it a try.  They all are excited by the potential.

Also, I think bitcoins may already be reaching a critical mass...the rate of adoption, the appreciation of value, etc all point to an already bootstrapped currency...things may take off from here without anyone needing to do anything extraordinary to promote it.  The value of bitcoin is pretty self evident to substantial portion of people that look at it.  Still, more promotion can only help.

No.  This is not what I am saying.  The more people mine, the more secure bitcoin gets, so I hope that lots and lots and lots of people start mining or continue to.  This makes it very expensive for anyone to successfully attack bitcoin.  Ideally, bitcoin will have more computational power in the network than any other distributed computing project worldwide, and be virtually impregnable.

As for economic impact, I'm not suggesting at all that concentrated mining wealth is valuable for bitcoin.  What I'm suggesting is that mining income in general is largely irrelevant to bitcoin.  Mining is an important part of the underlying technology for bitcoins, but it really isn't what bitcoin is about.  You seem to be really fixated on mining--you need to understand that mining is only as relevant to the bitcoin economy as physical printing of money is to the USD economy.  It needs to be done, and done well, and then forgotten.  As long as people know they can trust dollar bills, they don't need to know where they came from to use them.  Similarly as long as people can trust Bitcoin they don't need to understand mining to use it.  To help you understand this, think of a typical USD bill.  It's printed once, which is indeed part of the USD economy, but after that it is spent many, many, many, many times.  The printing of bills itself, while an economic activity, is miniscule in comparison to the activity of the economy at large.  This is how currencies work.


If you were explaining paper money to an alien, they might ask you something similar about attempts to stimulate the economy.  Why would you give food, buildings, vehicles, computers in exchange for a piece of paper?  That piece of paper itself is of little or no value.  Yet as a medium of exchange it serves a highly valuable purpose.  The point is not anything at all about miners getting paid.  Mining as economic activity is virtually irrelevant to the overall success of bitcoin.  It's just an important underlying technology.  What actually makes bitcoin succeed is its use as a medium of exchange.  And the absolute best way to get it used as a medium of exchange is to get people to exchange things of value for it.  By doing so, these people essentially back the fledgling bitcoin economy.  Rather than gold in a bank somewhere, there is a worldwide network of people who are saying, "yes, I agree to use bitcoins as a valued medium of exchange.  I agree to give and receive them in trade for other items of value."  That worldwide network of people is the bitcoin economy.  The way we grow the bitcoin economy is for more people to do this.  None of this has pretty much anything to do with mining.


That explains a lot.  But while you laugh, people like me are building the bitcoin economy.  If 72,000 people (the maximum possible) mined .1 per day and nobody else did anything, the bitcoin economy would collapse.  It is the use of bitcoin as an actual medium of exchange that makes the activity of mining at all meaningful in the first place.  And you should realise that at this point even one person putting 20€ of fiat currency into bitcoin has a bigger impact on the success of bitcoin than a miner who runs at .1 per day for 6 months.  If 72,000 people did that(the currency exchange), we would have an extremely solid foundation of value for bitcoins as a medium of exchange.  It doesn't take much.


sincerely,
eMansipater

p.s. I shouldn't really need to say this, but I'm not some massive early adopter miner.  I discovered bitcoin for the first time a couple months ago, and the vast majority of coins I own because I bought them with fiat currency, received them as gifts, or earned them by working and selling products.  I also mine a few coins a week, both pooled to help cover the costs of mining, and solo to help maintain the vitality of the bitcoin ecosystem.
And I'm very happy every time the difficulty jumps :)

Good post, I'll tip you when I get home :)

You essentially went over what I was apparently failing to convey, thanks.

@Hazek - I'm not forbidding you from doing anything. But the way you want to promote bitcoins is one of the worst possible ways you can do so.

You seem like you're just pissed that you don't generate lots of coins and others do, because you don't have the hardware for it. In bringing more people in to mine, the coins you generate will go down as well as the established  miners, so it won't really change anything. Seems misguided to say the least.

Thanks!  I'm glad it was appreciated :)

Getting paid to do something you love, build beefy computers, hook them up into lans and pretty much sit on it does sound like a good business however I also wonder if all they do with the bitcoins they made is trade them in for USD dollars then eventually those Bitcoin to currency traders are going to have so much Bitcoins that they'll probably close shop. It will end up being like trading furbies. Eventually nobody cares anymore. So my question is why should I take my hard earned money and exchange it for Bitcoins if all I can do with Bitcoins is exchange them back into dollars or maybe I could get another bitcoin client going and trade my bitcoins back and forth...

What am I going to do with all this damn gold! Pfft, I guess I'll just trade it for dollars, lame.

I'm not fixated on anything. I just see the big picture.

Wrong. You can't compare mining bitcoins with printing of fiat money. It has no similarity at all. If you want to compare it to something you can compare it to mining gold. And although mining is incorporated into the network no one is forced to mine and those that do anyway do because they want the reward for creating blocks.  And those who are after the reward are damn relevant to the future of BitCoins because if more people mine, more will own them, and more will trust them, and more will trade them even with those who don't have them.

I understand perfectly well how trust into a dollar came about but I wonder if you do to? Cause people didn't just decide one day "hey look at this dollar paper money thing, it looks nice and has nice properties, we should trust it and trade it" it's not how it happened and it's not how BitCoins are going to get trusted and traded on larger scale either. If you can't understand that people all over the world found and owned gold and then valued and trusted gold and only then was gold trusted and traded as money, if you can't see this you can't possibly follow the points I'm trying to make.

No, it has everything to do with mining. Sure I agree with that the best way to get it used as a medium of exchange is to get people to exchange things of value for it. But I strongly disagree if you think people will voluntarily en mass risk their money to acquire them first simply because they'll recognize their properties. What I'm suggesting is that the more people get some from mining which besides paying your electricity bill is free the more people are out there who own some and play around with them and learn to trust them and can convince others to trade them for something else of value. That's how trust is built up. I really hope you can see the big picture that I'm trying to get across.

LOL good lucky with that. 50$ is one week of food for a single person with avg salary of 800$ per month in my country, not to mention 200$.


Sure we would but you convince 72k people to put 20€ into bitcoins and see where you get. Again you miss the big picture: If 72k people had some bitcoins and played with them and then learned to trust them they'd start making really small trades with their friends and communities. And eventually more and more people would get onboard. The ecenomy wouldn't collapse, it would flourish beyond imagination!

Btw why is the limit 72k?

Viola.

This person is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

Let me ask you we6jbo, but would you mind running the miner and acquire some virtually for free?

You couldn't be more wrong. I just see it as a huge turn off for new people to risk their fiat currency for BitCoins when they learn about it. IE a problem. A problem which I provided an answer to that doesn't even involve those who already own the 5.6mio.

At least, wait until the word "Beta" is removed before any serious investment. It must be tried, tested, and all the varying scenarios ran through until it will get a stamp of approval.

Advertise to the IT crowd, they will be the only ones to really trusting it at first. My mom doesn't like ATM machines, forget the Older Folks. 

Then you have the Teens, they won't even care, it will just be the next great fad. Especially if you tie the BitCoin to a smart phone, and online games. OMG, online gaming, rewards are paid in actually BitCoins, it would be the end of society. Every Kid will tell their parents, but mom, I am making more than you.  When her, 14 year old pays the rent, no more school for Johnny. Unless its Xbox school. ;D

I would love to be the miner and make my wealth that way but the thing is if I can't exchange it for another currency then what am I going to do with all those Bitcoins? Going back to what it takes to being a miner these days. If you're already into the technologies involved in mining, a beefy computer, GPU and especially social networking with alike thinkers then there's really not that much when it comes to investment. Look at this guy "Extreme World of Warctaft Games Rig: 47 PCs" (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/07/extreme-world-o/) he built a huge computer network just so he can play 47 world of warcraft characters. He obviously loves doing this stuff or else he would not have done it in the first place and plus he makes no money whatsoever. Not a dime in this hobby he has going. I think that there are definitely going to be cases where gamers will hop onto the idea of generating Bitcoins but the thing we gotta realise is that generating bitcoins for wealth will quickly die if the bitcoins to cash traders get swamped and there's no facilities intact that will take Bitcoins for services. In the end, these gamers will probably get tired of their new hobby and leave. Worst of all is that these gamers will probably not care for all the Bitcoins they've generated and will simply throw them away - literally delete their wallet.dat file and all those bitcoins they had -. I think that we need to be responsible for the direction that the Bitcoin network leads. If we neglect the currency then our new currency will end up being the US dollar thrown into the fireplace to heat our homes.

How about at Hackerspaces?  There's likely one near you: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
https://i.imgur.com/tSEZG.png (http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces)

[Incidentally, why nearly all Hackerspaces meet on Tuesday, and everything else about Hackerspaces : http://ur1.ca/3e2jk ]


Until they figure out that there's no age limit to own and use bitcoin.  

With bitcoins, an 11 year old can do this, for example:
  Bitcoins -> Amazon virtual card (just like: http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworder.php?id=738) -> the outfit her parents wouldn't buy for her

Bitcoin gives you freedom.  No matter who you are.

Advertise to corporate accountants and tax lawyers.

"Bitcoin, premier, supranational tax minimisation strategies for the electronic frontier and the future!"

Send me bitcoins if you are going to use that phrase.

It might be worth researching sites that offer anonymous like technology such as Tor, I2P and Anonet to see if they have any currency needs. In addition, games and other applications that have their own standard of currency could consider adopting Bitcoin as a replacement or running side by side. I know OSGrid, an opensource Second Life server of connected servers has a currency that they don't use but some of the individuals there might considering adopting Bitcoin as their currency standard.

The whole point of buying shares in microsoft is that if you wait until it's all tried, tested and proven then there's not much left to be made on your investment--everybody else already bought in.  The people I've convinced to buy in are a couple with small children, a med school student, a pastor.  I told them very clearly that this was high risk and they shouldn't put anything in that couldn't be gone tomorrow.  But I still think Bitcoin has a bigger chance of making them rich than a lottery ticket, and people buy those.  $50 is a week of latte's for some people, and knowing that they're investing in something worthwhile with a chance to make a decent return if it takes off is genuinely enough.  Don't undersell Bitcoin, people.  It's a pretty revolutionary concept.  Heck, I would have bought shares in Napster even if I knew it was going to totally flop.  Digital cash is something huge, and this is the first meaningful attempt at it.  Have a little bit of vision here!

p.s.
the first two of those I mentioned are up over 250% on their original investment so far, and the third is just buying in now.  I've never given anyone investment advice before in my life, but I'm pretty happy about my first shot at it.

You guys are looking at this all wrong ... gamers. teenie bops, IT geeks ain't gonna cut it and do not appreciate the unique opportunities afforded by bitcoin.

Think Swiss banks, Cayman Islands hedge funds, Singaporean and Hong Kongese dark pools, Panamanian ex-pats, Columbian drug-lord, Russian mobsters, Vatican private banking, zero fee international transfers ..... everybody's sick to death of the FATF and know your customer facist banking BS. It is anti-capitalism, free trade and not to mention a huge bureaucratic drag on the global economy.

The pent-up demand is like a huge dark monster just beneath the surface that everybody the shadow can see yet no-one is willing to talk about.