Bitcoin Forum

I'm at work right now w/ 2 of my co-workers and one of them says "did you hear what happened to bitcoin?"

"the creator decided to shut it down, so everyone who had money in bitcoin has lost everything"

other co-worker: "was it that old guy from california they recently discovered?"


me: "are you sure the entire bitcoin network was shut down? I thought this just happened to one of the exchanges?"

co-worker: "No pretty sure this affected everyone's bitcoins"

other co-worker: "I don't know why anyone would put money in bitcoin... unless you're into drugs"

(btw- they don't know I have any bitcoins)

I didn't feel like correcting them or anything so I just kept quite. Regardless I got scared as shit for a moment and I immediately came here to see if there were any new updates... but it looks like he was referring to the whole GOX fiasco.

Wow.. I just got a first hand taste of the common perception/mentality of bitcoin. What's worse is that these guys are highly technical, not your avg common folk. We got a long way to go fellas.

They are "highly technical" but also "highly dumb".

Anyway I hear this type of thing more and more often lately too.  A couple of people have mentioned the "bitcoin ceo" who committed suicide but if you go to the website of the company that she ran, you can't even find anything about bitcoin on there, at least not without a long search.  It certainly isn't a "bitcoin website", or company for that matter.

Everyone I know just says "Yeah, didn't the price drop a lot recently?" and that's pretty much the extent of their knowledge.

Perception is reality.

Yup and with the Bitcoin Foundation embattled, there is no clear voice to deal with the Gox fallout.  This could very well get worse before it gets better and changing peoples perceptions, is a very difficult thing to do.

Well you're not better than them if you're actually feared that "bitcoin network was shutdown"

Time to go back to Speculation and troll more.... Or you actually gave up on that?

and the problem with this and many other stories is:


too many people don't want to poke the bear and correct people or even ask the right questions to get to the truth. they prefer to just let it ride, just to not cause a debate or evoke emotions that someone is wrong.

i call these people 'sheeple' who follow other people based on feelings, that just coast through life and will never be seen at a protest or attempt to confront a scammer and slap them with a wet fish.

.. welcome to the human race. just a shame its a egg and spoon race where people concentrate on the egg 12 inches from their nose.. and not a marathon where people are looking 26 miles infront of them

Oh yes, it's CONFIRMED!

Satoshi's copy of bitcoin-QT has a big red "shutdown" button he can press whenever he wants.  ;D

What? I didn't think the network was somehow taken down, I was afraid another exchange got hacked or something bad happened recently. Why are you being hostile?  


So you are calling me a sheep because I did not correct them? I really did not want to get into a bitcoin 101/debate session at work, and there was nothing I could say that would convince them of bitcoin at that moment. I did not care if they invested their own money into it either. It's like me trying to convince people to buy Apple stock. I'm not gonna try to convince people it's a good investment when I'm not completely sure myself. I could have corrected them about how the creator can't just "shut bitcoin down" but like I said I didn't wanna get into all that at work, from their comments it was clear they had no understanding of bitcoin... to explain why they're wrong I would have to explain how bitcoin works from the ground up which would take time and I didn't see this as an appropriate time for that.

And wtf do you mean I follow people based on feeling? Keep talking out of your ass

People like you who "preach" bitcoin like it's a new religion are the ones making the members look like a cult and the whole concept shady. I'm just a regular guy involved with bitcoin as an investment

Didn't they tell you that the bitcoin CEO resigned and the CFO took all the money? That's all I hear these days..

I know exactly what your talking about. People at my work know I'm into bitcoin. But of course I keep quiet how many I have, keep em guessing.
How gleefully they quickly pointed out that bitcoin has hit rock bottom and finished, after reading media reports lately. I casually pointed out bitcoin is up 3000% since a year ago, and more businesses are accepting them every day. They quickly ignored that and focused in on how I've been suckered in and scammed, apparently.

I gave up in the end and kept quiet. Yes, bitcoin has a mountain to climb in front of it, that is certain.

Guys Guys, we should let everyone think that Bitcoin is crashing/crashed. Thatll enable us to buy up all the Bitcoins when people start selling out of fear for cheap, then we can bring everyone back in by pumping it up.

Try not to let it drive you crazy.  I had dinner with two buddies last week who basically said the same thing.
And you saw the text message from my step brother.

Every time you hear this, just buy more Bitcoin, and thank God that you are actually going to be that much more rich one day.
Because by the time the idiot masses realize whats happening, it will be way too expensive for any of them to make any real money.  

At some point the predictions of its long term value hitting $40,000+ will become mainstream thinking.
It will be added to investment portfolios en masse, and by that time, whole bitcoins will be somewhat rare.
As millions begin adding it to their portfolios, your whole whole bitcoins worth more and more and more.

You'll be rewarded for educating yourself.  That's how it works on planet earth.  Always.

-B-

After collapsing of MTGox many rumors around here peoples too much talking about this but ver few know about this just because of this too much bad comments coming from peoples

haha this is so common with people not into bitcoins ..!
same thing happened with me twice last week, one of them was a close friend telling me that Bitcoin is bankrupt . nd I was like , WTF dude, do you even know what you are telling me , then I tried to explain him what actually happened nd he was like,
and his reaction was
https://i.imgur.com/TIElDJS.jpg
And silently in my heart  I was like " Dude I Do " 

haha, yes i heard similar things too. the good thing is, at least they heard of it! they will learn what it is in the future maybe.

When i visited my parents last month, I was asked if I lost all my Bitcoins. Apparently they were referring to the Mt.Gox melt-down: With the exchange reporting a large number of missing Bitcoins.

Heard about the apparent suicide at work. Had to filter through all the Mt.Gox news to find reference to it here.

It's a conundrum.

If the masses don't believe in bitcoin, they won't use it, and it won't go up in value, it might fail.
If the masses DO believe in bitcoin, they'll use it, and it WILL go up in value.

So, in essence, your co-workers are always right about bitcoin. If they think it's failing, it is. If they think it's succeeding, it is.

Humans are herd animals. They evolved to accept what the herd says, not to think. Herd movement provides safety. Individual movement puts you into harms way (potentially in front of the herd). While thinking is important for humans, herd still comes first.

The good news is that Bitcoin functions just fine without one bitcoin being worth a house and without all the destructive masses on board. Perhaps not what you want to hear if you are an speculator investor though.
 

There is a lot of truth to this.

"The last posting from your IP was less than 360 seconds ago. Please try again later.'   I know someone from my work is on this site all the time, because every once in while i get that error. we all share the same NAT.
I wonder who you are!!!!!!

I am deeply offended that you did not correct them and actually believed that Bitcoin was shutdown, you can't shutdown a worldwide project.

^ refer to post #9 ITT

You can shut down a worldwide project but you cant shut down a decentralized project..! this is why torrents are still there even after millions of $$ has been spent demolishing  the network

My co-workers now will come ask me first about any bitcoin news before believeing it.

i said people who fear debates and would never turn up to protests, or answer back to authority, or correct a friend, due to emotions are sheeple.
sheeple panic sell due to emotions
sheeple think ethiopia is 100% anorexic, when the reality of 2014 is that they have skyscrapers and macdonalds.
sheeple believe the red cross spends more money on the poor then it does on its own buildings leases/mortgages and staffing wages
sheeple believe media and fear causing a debate

i never used the phrase "you are a sheeple" i said certain people with the attributes mentioned in last 2 posts like sheeple.

~everyone starts looking around their cubicles~

Likely they're not "dumb" but simply misinformed. The question is, why would they be informed? Most people don't know what "fiat currency" means, but they use theirs fine without knowing.

The Bitcoin protocol is not universally interesting. Irrespective of how big Bitcoin gets there will never come a day when you can stop the man in the street and ask a question about miners or the blockchain and expect a cogent, accurate response. If Bitcoin is ever going to gain a significant measure of adoption among regular folk then it is vital that a comprehensive systemic understanding not be a prerequisite to its use. This shit simply doesn't matter to most people, and it shouldn't need to. They should be able to just point their phone at the barcode thingie, press the button, and know that payment has been sent.

The best we can do, in my opinion, is gently correct the major inaccuracies in simple terms (Bitcoin is a technology like email, not a company, and no one person or company controls it) and let people find out the details for themselves, if it interests them.

You should have corrected them, OP. Conveying a fact isn't the same as trying to get someone to switch to Apple or change religion. You don't need to get them into bitcoin. You just should have a reasonable try at correcting things that are factually wrong.

I know how it is, I know a lot of people don't actually want to learn anything. Just try once though. These aren't anontrolls on a Yahoo! page, these are real people you work with. It's worth a try.

so true...go watch some of Mark Dice's "fake peitition" videos... idiots in California believe Martin Luther King Jr just died yesterday... etc... good grief

what this means is that $600 is still low

this is like the internet in 1999  :D

We have an uphill battle to go with the media.  For instance, lets say a few ideal things come into place within the next 6 months.  lets make some modest predictions and possible media responses to them:

Lets give ourselves a decent scenario for news in July:

-Wikipedia integrates BTC*
-US Based Exchange launches and volume surpasses btc-e within 30 days of operation.*
-Sweden recognizes BTC as secondary currency.*

So lets stir up some possible news headlines for all of these:

"Wikipedia accepts Bitcoin, but converts it all to USD immediately because they consider it "A Speculative Assett"
"Will US Based Exchange go bankrupt and get hacked like Mt Gox?"
"A country that hosts most of the worlds illegal file sharing accepts bitcoin, coincidence?"

And of course, because this is actual good news, the price would reflect that.... it is likely we would see a headling like this:

"Bitcoin barely passes $1000, still WAY off their record highs from last year.  Is the currency losing steam?"


So that just goes to show you, the media sentiment gets more attention when it does negative press on bitcoin, because they have done a good job of painting it in a dirty image, and they will do everything they can to say "I TOLD YOU SO" until no one wants to hear it anymore.  It will be an interesting year....

I also see every day that people are ignorant beyond possible, I just can't believe how that is possible....
And those are grown people not  6 year old ones.....

Reminds me of the days people said...

H T T P COLON BACK SLASH BACK SLASH ....


meanwhile it is not even a backslash, but that sounds more "technical" than slash. :)

Specializing tends to mean that you can't see the larger picture as clearly as a generalist
That said we need specialists to explain bitcoin to get rid of misinformation
I do enjoy poking my bear otherwise nothing would get done and things only happen if you make them happen

When Gox went down my phone started ringing. There were a lot of "I told you so" and a couple "Sorry you lost all your coins"

Not sure why some people are so happy to see others fail. They seemed so happy that they were right and I was wrong about Bitcoin.  Little did they know.

People are so clueless when it comes to Bitcoin, mostly because they consider mainstream media as a credible source.  I used to try and correct people, now I don't bother. I figure they can figure it out for themselves down the road. I just know who to laugh at it Bitcoins do take off to where we all hope it does.  I'll be sending them all postcards from somewhere very nice.  On the back all it will say is "Wish you were here, but I told you so"

mine an ex msft employee sees it as an experiment.. Not a currency because you cant manipulate intetrst rates using bitcoin.. no banks would lend etc etc.. another said it had no fungible value since u cant pay taxes with it

You could possibly not be more wrong if your life depended on it. What the masses think in March 2014 is irrelevant.

See what the masses will think in March 2016, that's what's relevant. Stop worrying and hold like a man.
 

I feel like it's in the best interests of everybody involved in the conversation if I explain things.

So they were talking down about Bitcoin because they heard some rumor somewhere. Had you just said "well, I use Bitcoins whenever I can because it's easier than a credit card, I don't have to type in my personal information, and if the merchant gets hacked like Target did; the hackers won't get any personal data on me. Just because one business that trades Bitcoin over in Japan files bankruptcy doesn't mean Bitcoin failed, I didn't do business with them anyways. I use CoinBase, an American company. Bitcoin is something actually worth investigating, you should look at it with an open mind..."

Then I would say, "It seems like everybody has that great missed opportunity in life where if they could just go back, it would change everything. I think that's what Bitcoin might be to a lot of people who don't know what it really is."

I've changed the opinions of 5 people so far just by explaining logic. That's 5 people that would otherwise trash talk Bitcoin and discourage others, but now use it and support it.

TV makes us all smarter   :D

You can't have mass adoption without the masses.  Not sure why that's so tough for some to reconcile.  ???

While talking to a co-worker about Bitcoins I explained to him that there are no Bitcoins; they're entirely virtual. He thought I was insane.

As far as I can tell 99% of people seem to believe that Bitcoin is a fly-by-night company run by drug dealers who issue some kind of digital funny money as part of a ponzi scam.

Silk Road and Mr Fancy Coffee have done quite a lot to back up this belief, I suspect there will be quite a few more "I told you so"s to come.

Dirty, filthy money...

Yes, that video pissed me off. How the fuck does he say "who cares" so many times?? It has potential to be one of the best investments of our generation... obviously people care!! He was a complete douche



It's very simple. People do not want to take the risk by investing in bitcoin, but they don't want to feel like they missed out on a huge opportunity either so they hope it fails. That's why people who don't know about bitcoin are so negative about it.



That's a good way of explaining it. But see, I don't like to recommend anything that I am not 100% about... I rather come back to my friends/co-workers a year later and be like "remember bitcoin? boy it's over $2000 now... I'm really glad I bought some last year"

There's more to Bitcoin than price action and speculation.

Try to step in their shoes.

They think, and still do, that Bitcoin is a scam. They resent that you tried to pull them into this scam. They are happy that they were right and still have their money. They want to prove it to you that they were right and you should get out. By continuing to believe in Bitcoin, they think you're a brainless cultist idiot, and they are basically saying they don't want to listen to you.

They're NOT happy you failed - instead, they are happy that THEY were not conned, and are saying 'I told you so' to the con-artist (you).

Now - your opinion is completely 180 degrees from what they think, and you think what they think is ridiculous. So, in trying to get them to open up about Bitcoin in the future, know where they are coming from. It's going to be a hard struggle to get them back, especially since now they don't trust you (not your fault, the medias, but fault doesn't really matter).

A friend of mine is a cashier. While he was able to understand what bitcoin is because he already was familiar with most of the economy related terms I used while explaining; he just couldn't believe such a thing is possible.

Maybe he was afraid that he's going to lose his job to a piece of software.  ;D

Yes there's a lot more to bitcoin. But for now I only care about the price and how much profit I make.

That's all that 95% of the people are into bitcoins for - profiting - which is why bitcoin is going to fail, and nobody is going to make money.

Most people love what they do (like designing a web site). A side-effect is making lots of money. If you just care about the making lots of money aspect, but don't care about what crud you're making (Mt Gox, exchange scams, others losing money, long bitchain), then what you're doing is doomed. People here will soon realize it.

You don't need to recommend anyone buy bitcoin in order to clear up factual misstatements.

I'm sure you didn't mean it, but your words make it seem that you have a desire to cruelly taunt those who don't do as you do.

Profit drives new bitcoin services, utilities and infastructure.

Making profit is not a bad thing.

I agree, never recommend it to somebody who doesn't know what it is. If you look over what I wrote again, I suggested that they research it with an open mind; never once did I recommend they buy it. Challenging somebody to learn the truth about something is beneficial for everybody, especially when you insinuate that they've been misled...

Most people will be intrigued because people generally don't like to be misled...

I see what you are saying, but I never really tried to pull them in.  I just tried to correct them on some bad information that they read and believed.  These are the same people who had a similar reaction when I bought a house. There attitude suddenly changed and some went on how I was making a huge mistake. The first year I bought, the market dropped a bit. They were the first to throw it in my face.

Move forward 3 years and it was the best decision I ever made. Trust me, some people just want to see others crash and burn.


Perfect way to describe some of my friends/relatives reactions when I bought my house.

Was the "I told you so" about Bitcoin in general, just Gox or both? Because Gox and Bitcoin are entirely different things.

Not really. We're in the early stages of bitcoin and the infrastructure and merchant acceptance still has a long way to go. Bitcoin is designed to counter inflation which by nature is supposed to make it a good store of value and promote users to save. On the other hand when the price appreciates people gain the incentive to spend because it feels like "free money". That's what I see as the genius paradox and idea behind bitcoin, and why it has potential to succeed. When the infrastructure is built and bitcoin is convenient to use for things I want to buy, like it is meant to be, then I will spend my bitcoins. Until then the incentive of profiting is what's really drawing the newcomers in... you really have no room to judge people on why they are involved with crypto currency. I'm not here for "the other 6 billion", I'm not andreas antonopoulos.



No I have no desire to taunt.. but I do hope I get the opportunity (meaning bitcoin continues to succeed). Instead of educating my co-workers with hypotheticals, I'd rather educate them with results


Probably bitcoin in general. Even my friend sent me BS articles on how "bitcoin has collapsed" because of Mt Gox. Most people saw that news as a failure of bitcoin, and this is all thanks to the media blowing it out of proportion. The common perception is pretty negative right now.. Gox really caused a huge setback for bitcoin in 2014 no matter how you look at it

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/43403302.jpg

I wouldn't be surprised if the media or some people start talking after reading your post.  :D

You never need to worry about Bitcoin being "shut down". Even if use of Bitcoin was made punishable by execution by chainsaw without trial everywhere in the world, it would take years to stop the network.

97% of all money is book money, thus virtual too. ::)

I would stop using it immediately. Same as everyone else. ::)

It was an "I told you so" about Bitcoin.  They assumed that when gox hit the news about going under that Bitcoin died on the spot or something. They assumed gox and Bitcoin were the same thing. 

OP as someone who actually knows about bitcoin, you should take it upon yourself to dispel the wrong notions people, like your co-workers, have about bitcoin.  It really does help the bitcoin economy if we clear up all the FUD people have.

Its an uphill battle sometimes, when even a lot of the news stories on bitcoin are often wrong or hit-pieces, but our efforts do add up and they count.

For myself, in any given 10 people I tell about bitcoin:  5 of them, it will be completely over their head, 4 will not be interested or be convinced it must be some sort of scam, but about 1 of the 10 will be really intrigued and become a supporter, or at least interested enough to read a up on it and figure it out.  

THIS is what dumbs down humanity and makes people retarded. It's the bullshit, propaganda, and misinformation in the media. People hear one story about something and it turns into a FACT that they start spreading like wildfire. Combine this with the fact that people don't stop to correct others anymore for some stupid reason and it's a recipe for inevitable frustration. People are too scared of their possible response or simply don't care. It makes for one shitty society when everybody is a misinformed dumbass. I seriously think people are getting more stupid by the day in the U.S. The only exception being the 1% who milk the lemmings, and the rest of us left frustrated with clueless, ignorant, misinformed peers.

I always stop people to correct them and let them know they're spreading B.S./misinformation. Everyone should always correct people if they know they're speaking rubbish.

That sentence sums up the very worst part of the human psyche. Fear and jealousy are terrible things. If you can lose both you'll be a much happier person.

We need to use stronger tactics to spread the word of Bitcoin. Tell everyone you know that you read a survey (dumbasses love surveys even if they're not true) proving that all guys that are into Bitcoin have huge dicks. Women will flock to Bitcoin and talk about it all the time even if they don't understand it. Guys will go out and buy some Bitcoin and brag about it because...well....you know.

This is the Bloomberg video people are talking about.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bitcoin-isn-t-relevant-to-investors-mcnamee-ESz0BNusTJi3R4ZhEuidxg.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bitcoin-isn-t-relevant-to-investors-mcnamee-ESz0BNusTJi3R4ZhEuidxg.html)

The investor guy, Roger McNamee, didn't make much sense. He says that Bitcoin is exciting and has done a lot of good things but as in investor it doesn't interest him because it hasn't surpassed any key metrics yet and it doesn't have a trustworthy backer.

As an investor I thought the idea was to invest in things before they become popular. But then again what do I know about investing  ;)

It sounds like he doesn't understand Bitcoin.

QFT! Great post! So true and inspiring also!

Sometimes when the truth is spoken the speaker gets attacked though.  There comes a point in which it is easier to not argue and let people choose to believe whatever they want to believe about things.

ah that's nothing,

few people here saw a physical bitcoin I bought that was delivered to work.

now apparently all those who saw it have Polio... true story, happened to a friend of a friend of mine...

Journalist = Twitter+Yotube link....oh and the first result of a google search....

So I guess the 24/7 media FUD is working... shocker.


They know that the vast majority of people take anything they put out there at face value and don't ever investigate or think for themselves.

Add me to the list of having friends who listen to the FUD the press prints.

Friend from Kentucky just called me and said he was sad to hear I lost all my Bitcoins (mtGox issue).  I explained to him for 15 minutes that I didn't have any coins on Mtgox and just because an exchange went belly up doesn't mean bitcoin is ruined.  I Explained it to him like the NY stock exchange folding.  I still own my google or Apple stock regardless of what happens to exchange.  And I can always find another exchange for selling them.  He still thought it sounded bad for bitcoin but I explained to him how clueless the press was and how they are just spreading FUD.  He is now educated!  :)

I would start using I2P immediately.

Not sure if I would stop using Bitcoin.

If there is no trial, what is the benefit of stopping?

If I corrected and spent time arguing with every fucking moron who said something stupid, I wouldn't get a lick of work done, or any sleep, and I'd be in a constant rage 24/7.  At some point you have to decide where to pick your fights and when to let morons be morons.

Completely agree with knowing when to pick your fights

Well, you don't have to fight...

It would be enough if OP would say something like: "Are you sure? AFAIK the situation is like this or like that..."

People of course reply "no way, I am 100% sure", but most of them do check later if they are really right about the matter.

That is at least my experience regarding Bitcoin's misinformation.

Seen this many times with other subjects. People like to save face at the moment or something of the sort but they will often look up what you said after.

What is the Internet anyways???  ???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI

I like how the comments were disabled so we can't say learn ^^

You're spot on about the herd instinct stuff. It is the same as what Mencius said about the common people - they're satisfied once they have satisfied their hunger. The ordinary people do not care much to find out about  anything not directly related to their baser animal needs or security.

Bitcoin is only for the enlightened at this moment. Bitcoin cannot be understood without some knowledge about how the internals of the internet works. It also cannot be understood without some basic economic sense about how  monetary systems works, how the gold standard may or may not work. When I phoned up my nephew, a matured grown up programmer/sofware developer with a good degree in computer science, and asked if he was using an android phone (as I wanted to buy a little bitcoin for my multiBit), he started laughing heartily at the other end - What! You buy bitcoin when it has collapsed! You tell me what you want to do. It is the stupidest idea... I myself was laughing as I had read up on how bitcoin works after all the news about how a mountain in Tokyo collapsed - Mt.Gox!    

When people start to talk about "intrinsic" values or that bitcoin is a scam, you know there is no way to educate them about bitcoin. So it is better (sometimes) to just keep quite rather then to argue and drained ourselves tired emotionally. Are you goig to give them a lecture on fractional reserve banking over a beer? Most people who now cannot live without their ipads/iphones do not know a bit about the bits within a byte. The gadgets are invented and then made easy for them to use - but these thing like Facebook is still mainly an addiction - non-stop chatting. But the future of bitcoin is the "real" global  money, not currency! Currency means the current multi-currency fiat money system. Money is the unit of measure of price, real price, in order that the a true free market can work. True money itself cannot have a price! This is the true future of a good cryto-currency - it could be Bitcoin or its incarnations.    

As for the price outlook of bitcoin in the future, it will still have volatility for some time - just mere common sense as there will always be some speculations to take profit. But there is a critical difference between bitcoin and stocks. Stocks is equity of a company and it may go to zero like Mt.Gox. Bitcoin can never go to zero! So the mechanics for bitcoin and shares are very different. Don't try to use candlesticks, Elliot Waves theory or tea leaves TA on bitcoin - if they don't may you rich with stocks, less likely would they make you rich here unless the sticks and candle are pre-programmed always to point only upwards!

Bitcoin, in general, can only rise in price! The simple reason is that there are only a few ready bears willing to leave on the slightest bad news. When Mt. Gox went bankrupt, there was not a whimper in the price movement. I expect the current breed of people who bought into bitcoin are not those going in with a stop loss strategy; likely the majority of holders are many many with "small" amounts. Also, some go in as Bitcoin is their belief and ideology; try asking them to sell bitcoin and be a bitcoin apostate - they will rather perform Seppuku than sell! So if bitcoin were to go to "zero", the private keys just got forgotten in their hard disk - which means the price movement is only upside mobile. My guess about the recent spike to 1000 USD/BTC is that it should be from the Chinese (a completely unsubstantiated guess of mine). I only hear of bitcoin only 2 weeks ago thanks to Mark Kapeles. So the Chinese were late. I believe many Chinese put their money in bitcoin rather than earn 3% interest rate in an inflationary world. So that gave bitcoin a sudden price spike which was killed by the Chinese government. The average Chinese may all be waiting; it would add volatility - but it still may be an upward potential.