Bitcoin Forum

In your opinion, how can we all bring BTC to the public? I've spoken with a lot of people about the future of the currency and they all pretty much laugh at me and tell me to keep dreaming. I believe that knowledge is power and we need to educate the public about what BTC actually is and why it's better than normal currency.  I remember when PayPal was just a baby and no one would trust them with their fiat. The same goes with BTC at this moment. Not a lot of people want to invest compared to normal fiat currency exchanges. What do you think will bring a wider acceptance?

1. Perspective of big profit

2. Stable price

Please note that these two points contradicts each other  :P


Today many people use paypal because it's convienent, not because it's trustworthy.

Send emails or make a phone call to every big online shop asking when will you accept Bitcoin. Of course they will answer they do not have that option, tell you to use another method. However if many of customers demand it, they will consider to add bitcoin. A nice, shinny logo of Bitcoin beside CC/Paypal at bottom of their online store will boost reputation of cryptocurrency and make other users think again.

These to statements also currently contradict each other.

The answer to making BTC mainstream is to make it better than currency.  Which means:

What can be done in the short term to improve it's viability:

1. You need to involve the banks.  They have the infrastructure to make it work, and you will always need banks to lend out money.  Get them to lead the push, and a crypto-currency may happen.

2. Make it convenient.  Cold-storage, flash drives, paper wallets...completely inefficient.  If you want people to use BTC, they need to at least be indifferent between the difficulty of paying in BTC vs. using a credit card.

What needs to be done, but cannot be done for a very long time:

1. Eliminate the need for paper bills and metal coins.  Even in the US, there is a huge need for non-electronic money.  When you get out of the US and other 1st world countries, this becomes even more apparent.  There would need to be major investments in technology to move the entire population into an electronic currency.  There's also an issue of what happens in a power outage?

2. Educate the population on crypto-currency.  Even most tech savvy people have no clue how BTC works.  It will take a while for people to understand what it is.  Not to mention how many people still get viruses on a regular basis.

But the one component that would be completely damning for BTC ever becoming the main crypto-currency:

1. The public cannot be the one's mining new coins and collecting the fees.  This would have to be controlled by the government.  If a crypto-currency was made an official currency, and the public could mine, then we would rapidly approach the equilibrium between cost of mining = value of coin/transaction fees.  Now compare the cost of electricity in the US and Europe to China.  No government would ever give that much income/power away to a foreign country.

Bitcoin will make itself mainstream because it is a superior currency. It doesn't need any marketing campaign.

Most peoples first foray into bitcoin ends with them getting ripped off by other bitcoiners.

Current bitcoin users are the main obstacle to adoption.

For one, wallets need to be more secure and less subject to hacking.   Once people can keep their bitcoin safe and secure without having to worry that some malware has installed a keylogger and transmitted a copy of their wallet file to a thief from a general purpose computing device, then the masses may adopt in masses.  

I think bitcoin as a currency will take off with the under-banked first.   Banks don't like to open accounts for people with bad credit.  Since they don't want these customers, and using a debit card with greendot involves a 1% load fee at the very minimum (more typically 5% or more if you can't load $500 at a time), plus monthly charges; there's going to be a lot of room for a cheaper system.  Think ubiquitous cash-BTC ATM machines and bills/rent that can be paid with bitcoin, just by scanning the QR code on your bill with your low-cost hardware wallet.   Eventually employers might have an option to have wages paid in bitcoin, but the price needs to be much more stable for that.

Merchants will start to love bitcoin transactions, since the time it takes to clear a bitcoin transaction (an hour) is much less than the time it takes to clear a credit card transaction or a check (weeks).

Too unstable... it needs to be more stable and not subject to pump and dumping... plus the now 200 altcoins don't help things. I've lost complete interest in trading altcoins or holding bitcoin because there are so many altcoins... they are ALL WORTHLESS.  The devs in most of them don't have any loyalty toward them.. they make one, pump it up, then start pumping another. Dogecoin was the same way... people pump up doge, then suddenly everyone was supposed to buy worldcoin after one big holder decides to buy a bunch and then pump it on the forums... cryptos are commodity vehicles no better than pink sheet penny stocks, with perhaps the exception of bitcoin, and even bitcoin, I won't invest in any until it's under 200 and the top holders distribute some of their coins out.. concentrated wealth makes it no different than fiat.

I'm patiently waiting for sub 200 per bitcoin.   At $600 I'd rather invest in something like a CZ 75B or a couple of Ruger LCPs, or a Winchester Defender, or some physical palladium... and actually, AMMO... which seems to hold it's value better than the firearms themselves and is easily tradable around here.

Step 1: Wait three to five years
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.

Just by using Bitcoin and believing in it Bitcoin is gaining popularity daily...Or, alternatively we just wait for the next spike to reach ~$10,000 and the world would probably freak out  ;D

That would make bitcoin look like more of a ponzi scheme, because very few would be able to cash out at $10,000.   The thing to look for is a slowly increasing price matching the rate of adoption and a consistent rise in trading volume.   The pump and dump games of the get-rich-quick speculators would slowly fade away.

Bitcoin is well publicised now. It just need time to stablise in value and we will need more reliable and accessible exchanges, so people can get in and out of bitcoins easily. Then they will not be afraid to buy and sell goods for bitcoins.

Easy to buy BTC with fiat or sell BTC for fiat. Bank transfers are slow in today's world.

More Bitcoin ATMs?
I've seen other financial institutions have other businesses like UPS stores, Gas stations, etc... accept cash for deposit on accounts. Maybe an exchange can set something like this up?

I'm dubious on this point. I see four main groups with respect to cryptocurrency:

1. Consumers - naturally pro-crypto (if they've thought it through) due to the more efficient transactions, anonymity, faster transfers, etc.
2. Merchants - naturally pro-crypto due to faster transfers, no clawbacks, no credit card fees, counterfeiting, bounced checks, etc.
3. Banks/Financial Services - anti-crypto because crypto cuts out the middleman - and they ARE the middleman. Asking them to help with crypto is like asking the postal service to help get more people using email.
4. Government - anti-crypto (apart from those rare politicians who actually are for the people) - it will be a challenge to tax and/or control people's crypto, and ultimately a crypto takeover would make it impossible for them to pursue deficit spending through inflating the money supply.

The key is to sell to the first 2 groups, while doing our best to placate/befuddle/defeat the latter two. Especially go after the youth, getting them on board is the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to bringing crypto-currency mainstream.

As someone who is part of the mainstream, I would say that Bitcoin is highly unattractive to me right now.It currently offer absolutely nothing that I can't do with standard currency and payment option nor does any of its purported benefits  entice me at all.That's not even getting into the highly speculative environment  it resides in.I still see Bitcoin something truly landmark, just not something I would adopt anytime soon.

One thing that bitcoin can do that the dollar definitely cannot is to provide a hedge against the loss of value of the dollar.

That's also an answer to this thread.  Bitcoin seems to be gaining in general acceptance, slowly but gaining.  As it does, it will be natural to see it as a hedge or an alternative to keeping all of your savings in dollars.

If our government keeps printing quantitative easy money as the Weimar Republic printed physical currency, the result will be the same and the dollar will fall.  But the bitcoin probably will not be affected nearly as much.  So it's a hedge against the inevitable.

Add it to TV spots  :D

I tried to get my friends into bitcoin. One of them kept repeating that its a ponzi scheme and the other said he wasn't interested because "nobody accepts it".  ::)

Don't worry, more Cyprus-like bail-in events coming to a bank near you in the next few months/years will ensure Bitcoin will become more expensive and hence will gain in popularity.

Hmm excellent point. I've actually completely forgotten that this is probably the biggest booster for Bitcoin: not good developments in the Bitcoin world, but bad developments in the fiat world.

One & only thing that will help is to educate people about it & let them know the profit of having a decentralized money system not only cons. They need to get aware with pros.

Take profit as main point - most of the person will get attracted toward this one word.

being wealth and having good investments is main stream, to be wealth you don't have to b mainstream with BTC, just hit the right market, eg backbone currency.....

retail/mainstream is worth peanuts

That's the problem .

Most of my transaction is not in USD,it's in my local currency(which is progressively hedging quite well against the USD).I understand that this forum is pretty much US-centric but lets not forget that mass adoption doesn't just mean the USA , the rest of the world population needs to considered as well.

Firstly we should make people informed about it by blogs and social networks

We should make people think that Bitcoin is a convenient and reliable currency

The first starting point is to simply stop the bad press and ensure journalists accurately report on Bitcoin.

I think the real problem is that most people are lazy and have an incredibly short attention span.  I've noticed the same thing while at work trying to sell people insurance products.  If it can't be explained fully in a single sentence soundbite, they won't bother absorbing any information you give them.  I've tried talking about Bitcoin on forums and social networking sites, trying to keep it as simple and easy to understand as I can, but people just sort of glaze over like I'm talking about brain surgery or something.  They just think "if I don't understand it, I probably don't need it" and move on.  If it takes any effort whatsoever to learn about something, they just won't bother. 

Discounts! A shop or business of any kind (either online or offline) can absolutely get people to adopt Bitcoin with discounts for those who pay in BTC. For example: "Item X: $Y or -10% if you pay in Bitcoin"

Making it actually usable for any idiot.

Right now you need to be somewhat of an expert to buy/store/use bitcoin.  Mainstream people are cant be bothered with the hassle.

While it is very good currency, there are many competitors and I dare to say nothing much will happen without good marketing. My experience tells me that good product is not enough.

The internet didn't have any marketing to speak of.

Technologies with real utility, real practicality, real value, don't need "marketing".

Marketing is an industry that was invented to sell people shit they don't need or want. It's psychological warfare.

Except when it drops 110$ in a week (and is still dropping)

Only day-traders consider the daily and weekly value.

Currencies and commodities are inherently volatile.  And bitcoin is more volatile than most as financial people try to decide if it's a flash in the pan that'll be gone tomorrow or the thoroughly innovative breakthrough that it's proponents say it is.

The competitors don't have the infrastructure though. And that is what it really comes down to. That is why for Bitcoin to be "abandoned" by everyone there would have to be a catastrophic failure of some kind. The community and numerous businesses / organizations have invested too much into Bitcoin infrastructure to just throw it all away. A lesser coin would've died a hundred times over.

Grassroots adoption. Consider it your duty to purchase and transfer BTC regularly and persuade your friends to do likewise.

I have been around from the beginning of the Internet 25 years ago and founded the first fully national ISP. People laughed at the Internet saying it was for geeks and nerds and no "real" person would use it.

Bitcoin is in the same place now - emerging to mainstream acceptance.

One volatility falls  - which it is doing - the exchange rate stable and more merchants accept it, Bitcoin will take off like the Internet did.

Well first off bitcoin would need to stabilise. I would say that a huge company like Walmart start accepting it. Or a big company accepts bitcoin but its 10% less off the normal price so that many people would buy bitcoin and the miners could sell. This may drop the earnings of the company 10% but it really matters how much they care about bitcoin.

How about getting all the major supermarkets to accept bitcoin.... Then the banks will have to listen since no one will be using cash and also need more bitcoin credit cards in order to pay for the shopping.

And how do you propose we do this

A straightforward solution: http:// (https://)

Well that's my plan... Implementing is a different kettle of fish... But probably involve changing where they buy stock from and giving them cheaper products if bought with bitcoin.

So first we need to monopolize basic food stuffs, then we'll force super markets to pay us in bitcoin.

This is foolproof

I email escorts and escort agencies and ask them if they accept bitcoin (prostitution is legal in most of Europe) :P BTC is perfect for them and their customers; eventually they will all accept it, and when that happens the value will rise and a lot of businesses will start accepting it.

Think about the internet, cable TV or the old VCR, they all got popular because of pornography. Think about money; like Aristotle once said: 'If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning'.

I don't think BTC is the exception. Of course we need better technology or easier ways to convert money into BTC, but those will come in time.

It would be possible one day until then this would do it

1, find a very rich friend
2, give $100m to help get the president elected
3, smile two weeks later it's mainstream

It will happen on its own.

Not to self-aggrandize here, but we have a ton of feedback that tells us that owning a lovely physical bitcoin gets people excited about the future of bitcoin more than most things. 

I give them away as gifts to people that were previously unacquainted with bitcoin and they often come back with questions and new ideas for bitcoin related businesses.

If you need bitcoin evangelism tools, we're makin' 'em. 

You can't have profit and a stable price at the same time. Either the price is stable and it's a good store of value, or the price is fluctuating and you can make profit.

Besides, neither of them is the true power of bitcoin. The true power of bitcoin is being a real form of money, unlike fiat. Because the amount is limited and the right to produce more bitcoin is not in the hands of a single entity. It's much like gold, except it's less heavy.

Yes you can.  It should be stable so it acts more like a bond rather than a penny stock.   Stable, long-term investors will make a profit, day traders need to go back to pink sheet stocks.

Bond-like growth will encourage adoption.  Pump-and-dump games harm it.

This seems like a decent solution. Just start measuring everything in satoshis rather than in full Bitcoins.

I've heard many friends say to me, "I'd rather buy DOGE, it's soooo much cheaper", to which I can only shake my head in disgust.

If you think about how you would define "stable" you'll probably decide it must include fixing the price of bitcoin to some fiat currency like the USD.  And that would defeat it's purpose.

The stability of the ratio of USD to BTC will approach the stability of USD to other currencies as BTC's use increases.  As long as we don't have any boneheads in Congress or the Whitehouse try to wrongfully usurp control of it, it'll proceed just fine.

If a major business accepts Bitcoin (the likes of Amazon, bestbuy, etc) then that should create an environment where the other companies are pushed to accept it as well so they don't get left behind. Especially if this first business gets a noticeable boost in profits because of it. But the problem is, I think, that the corporate world is like one giant impenetrable monolith in alliance with banks and the people in control of this monolith are hostile to bitcoin for many reasons. Which is why we haven't seen a truly major brand accept it yet.

I think I just read something about Bestbuy (online) and Newegg accepting bitcoin through Zinc

That's not them accepting it, that's a company (zincsave) ordering for you after you pay them.

By putting stikkers up everywhere we go for others to see

since obama forced mastercard to stop processing retail transactions in russia.. i think that would be the biggest advert a retailer would like to see

You are misinformed.  Obama put sanctions on a Russian bank owned by one of Putin's inner circle.  This particular bank was denied access to the visa/mastercard payment network.   It is not all Russian banks, nor is it all visa/mastercard transactions in Russia.

ok ill white out comments below which are not related to mainstreaming, (highlight the area to read it)
edit my comment:
obama forced mastercard to stop processing retail transactions of RUSSIAN banks.. i think that would be the biggest advert a retailer would like to see.

but still research harder.
obama has no control of russian banks.. again obama asked MASTERCARD to not do retail transactions for russian banks. the 'other' banks you talk of are not russian government banks(putins inner circle as you call it).. EG HSBC russian bank branches are unaffected as they are not russian, even though they have branches in russia..

the peoples accounts with RUSSIAN owned banks are still accessible in branch and ATM. but they cannot use them for retail purchases.

also research the fact that the sanctions did not cause the ban of mastercard use, the sanctions worked as a penalty and then as a separate order. he banned putins inner circle from dealing with american companies. this was done by telling mastercard to stop dealing with putins inner circle.

he fined 1 bank due to the russian circle link
he banned 2 banks from dealing with mastercard

imagine it like getting a parking ticket(sanction).. you have to pay it, but it wont stop you driving your car. but having a authority tow your and your wifes car(mastercard ban), will do the job.(separate activities, separate forms of punishment)

want other analogy to use..
a fine for trespassing (into crimea)
a restraining order (to not interact with US companies.)

but back to the main point.. if america can mess around with peoples retail habits in a country thousands of miles away... then retailers need better solutions

This.

Just a few weeks ago when I was waiting in line to process some paperwork for the Bitcoin General Store, the person behind me noticed the word "Bitcoin" on my paperwork and asked me about it. Before you know it, I was giving a short explanation to him and the guy in front of me about how it worked and the advantages over traditional currencies.

Then, last week, a business associate with whom I have never discussed cryptocurrencies noticed the BTC wallpaper on my phone and blurted out "You have bitcoins?!" Next thing you know, I'm debunking some of his misconceptions regarding Mt. Gox and other recent events in the news.

It's happening. Be patient and be ready to answer questions.

Government break silence, coin replaces bitcoin.